Read Chapter 33: The Parcours

The Sunday morning light was pale and thin over the Seine, the kind of gray that made the city feel like an old photograph. I’d been running for twenty minutes, long enough for my lungs to burn and my head to clear, my footsteps a steady rhythm against the cobbled quay. The water slid past, opaque and patient, carrying the last of the night’s rain with it.

I rounded the bend near the Pont Marie, the familiar silhouette of the old warehouse—the one that had housed AlgoSens before we moved to the glass tower—looming on the far bank. It was a ghost now. A memory of circuit boards and cheap coffee and Antoine’s voice arguing with me over a whiteboard. I’d come here because it was the only place in Paris that felt both like a beginning and an end.

And then I saw him.

Antoine was leaning against the stone balustrade, hands in the pockets of his coat, staring at the water. He wore running clothes too, but he wasn’t running. He was just standing there, a man waiting for something he didn’t want to name.

I slowed to a jog, then a walk. My chest heaved, but it wasn’t just the run.

“You found this place,” I said, my voice steadier than I felt.

He turned. His face was careful, that guarded look he wore when he was about to say something he hadn’t rehearsed. “I never lost it.” He nodded at the warehouse. “We built that thing in three weeks. Remember? The ceiling leaked every time it rained.”

“You blamed the interns.”

“You blamed me.”

“I blamed the weather.” I came to stand beside him, close enough that our shoulders almost touched. “I’m sorry I blamed you for other things too.”

He didn’t answer right away. The silence stretched, filled by the low hum of a barge moving upstream. Then he said, “I pushed you. At the offsite. I told you about my mother and I made it feel like a transaction. Like I was reporting progress on a project.” He shook his head. “You were right to push back.”

“I was scared.” The words came out smaller than I intended. “I said you only stay because you can’t leave professionally. That wasn’t true, and I knew it wasn’t true while I was saying it. I just—when you brought your mother into it, it made it real. Real enough to hurt.”

He turned to face me fully now. “What are you afraid of, Camille?”

I laughed, a brittle sound. “Failing. Losing. Pick one.”

“It’s the same thing,” he said quietly. “After my company collapsed, I spent a year building walls. Every deal I chased, I chased at arm’s length, because I’d already lost something that mattered and I didn’t want to lose anything again. You do the same thing. You put everything into AlgoSens because code doesn’t leave you. Algorithms don’t break your heart.”

“You’re a poet now?” I tried to deflect, but my voice cracked.

“I’m a man who’s been watching you for two years,” he said. “You don’t let people in, Camille. Not fully. You gave Lucas your trust and he weaponized it. You gave your mother your silence and she turned it into distance. Work is the only thing that’s never hurt you, so you pour yourself into it. But that’s not living. That’s just surviving.”

I looked away, at the water moving dark and endless beneath us. “I don’t know how to be different,” I admitted. “I’ve never had a relationship that lasted. Every time someone gets close, I find a reason to make it stop. Conferences. Deadlines. Crises. There’s always a firewall I can build.”

“I know.” He stepped closer. “I see it. You think if you let someone truly in, they’ll see the cracks and leave. Or worse, they’ll stay and watch you fail.”

“That’s the thing, Antoine. I *have* failed. Publicly. In front of the board. In the press. And you still—” I stopped, swallowed. “You still stayed.”

“Because I know what you look like when you’re about to fail,” he said. “And I know what you look like when you’re about to win. They’re almost the same. That’s how I know the difference is just decision. You decide to keep going, or you decide to let it break you.” He reached for my hand, slow, as if asking permission. I let him take it. His skin was warm against the cold morning air. “I’ve watched you decide to keep going, over and over. But you never once decided to let me be part of it. Not really.”

“I wanted to.” My voice was barely a whisper. “At the rooftop. When you asked. I wanted to say yes to all of it. But I couldn’t trust it.”

“So what’s different now?” He searched my face. “What changed?”

I thought about the last week. The confession at the funding meeting. The victory party. The board singling me out. The article from Sarah Moreau, implying that leadership was tied to an unidentified third party in a data breach that might be connected to something Lucas had started.

What had changed was that the ground had shifted under everything I’d built. And the only thing that still felt solid was the warm pressure of his palm against mine.

“I’m tired of being alone inside my own head,” I said. “I’m tired of treating you like a colleague when I know what you are to me. I’m tired of being afraid that if I let this matter, it will compromise the work. Because the work is already compromised. Everything we love is compromised. The only question is whether we face it together or separately.”

“Together,” he said. “That’s what I’m proposing. Not because I need a co-CEO. Because I need you. And I think you need me.”

I squeezed his hand. “I think I do.”

He guided me toward a bench by the edge of the quay, and we sat. The stone was cold, but I didn’t feel it. He kept my hand in his, thumb tracing slow circles over my knuckles.

“I talked to my therapist about it,” he said. “After my company collapsed, I couldn’t date. Every woman I met, I kept at a distance. I told myself it was because I didn’t have time. But it was because I was ashamed. I’d lost everything. I didn’t think I deserved to be happy.” He paused. “It took me a long time to see that ambition and love aren’t opposites. They’re two sides of the same courage. You have to be willing to fail at both.”

I watched his face, the lines around his eyes that softened when he looked at me. “How do you do it?” I asked. “How do you risk it?”

“One day at a time,” he said. “You don’t announce it. You don’t plan it. You just decide, in a moment, that you’re going to let the other person see you. And then you do it again the next day. And the day after that.”

I thought of the meetings tomorrow. The board’s scrutiny. Sarah Moreau’s questions. The leaked documents and the quiet suspicion that someone inside AlgoSens had fed them to her. Antoine had the draft. He had the access. I hadn’t wanted to believe it, but the doubt had lived at the back of my skull for days.

“There’s something I need to ask you,” I started.

But Antoine spoke first. “Sarah’s source. You think it’s me, right? That I leaked the Fondation Aube timeline to make myself look better when the co-CEO proposal goes to the board?”

I stiffened. “I didn’t—how did you—?”

“Because you’ve been looking at me differently since that article came out. More careful. More observant. Like I’m code that might have a bug in it.” He didn’t sound hurt. He sounded patient. “I didn’t leak it, Camille. I wouldn’t do that to you. But I know who did.”

I turned fully to face him. “Who?”

“François Caillou. Remember him? From the health client team. He was part of the cohort model discussions before we pivoted. He had access to the old timeline documents. And I found an email chain this morning—he sent the files to Sarah Moreau herself, cc’d to Lucas’s old account. He’s been feeding her information since the second breach. He wanted to destabilize the leadership so he could position himself for the flagship role.” Antoine’s jaw tightened. “He’s still in the building, Camille. He’s going to be in tomorrow’s board meeting.”

The world narrowed to a single point. Tomorrow, someone would walk into that room with a smile, prepared to watch us bleed.

I looked at Antoine, at the man who had just told me he wanted to let me in, who had given me the name of our saboteur as a gift of trust.

“Then let’s be different,” I said, echoing his words. “Let’s walk into that meeting together.”

He leaned in, slow, giving me time to pull away. I didn’t. His lips met mine, tentative at first, then firmer. The Seine continued its patient flow behind us, indifferent to the shift taking place on its banks. When we broke apart, he kept his forehead against mine.

“Tomorrow,” he said, “we solve the leak. And then, the next day, we figure out the rest.”

But I knew, even as I nodded, that solving the leak would only begin the battle. Sarah Moreau had more sources. François had more documents. And the private equity firm waiting in the wings would want answers before they handed us a cent.

We could face it together. That would have to be enough.