Read Chapter 34: The Investor Dinner

The restaurant was called Maison Blanche, and it sat like a piece of frosted glass on the edge of the eighth arrondissement, its windows glowing warm against the November cold. Camille had worn the navy dress—the one Antoine had once said made her look like she belonged on a film poster—and she regretted it now, because the fabric clung to her palms as she wiped them on her thighs beneath the tablecloth.

“You’re nervous,” Antoine said, low, his voice barely carrying over the murmur of the room.

“I’m calculating,” she corrected.

The private equity CEO, a man named Étienne Marchand, had chosen the restaurant carefully. It was the kind of place where deals were signed over lamb and Bordeaux, where the waitstaff knew to disappear at the exact moment a conversation turned serious. Marchand sat across from them, his wife beside him—a deliberate touch, Camille thought, a signal that this was a dinner between people, not institutions. His chief of staff, a woman with sharp cheekbones and a sharper notepad, occupied the far end of the table.

They talked about the weather first. Then the health client’s pivot. Then the new flagship project, which Marchand called “the one that will make or break the narrative.”

“The narrative,” Antoine said, setting down his wine glass, “is that we build AI that doesn't exploit the people it claims to serve. The delayed launch is us holding that line.”

Marchand’s wife smiled. It was unreadable.

“And the co-CEO structure?” Marchand asked, cutting into his duck. “It’s unusual. Investors like clarity. A single throat to choke.”

Beside him, Camille felt Antoine tense. She put her hand on the table, not touching him, but near enough that the gesture read as unity.

“We’re stronger together than either of us is alone,” she said. “The product vision is mine. The operational grind is his. Neither of us is interested in a throne. We’re interested in building something that outlasts our egos.”

Marchand laughed—a real laugh, not the polite one he’d used on the weather. “I’ve read your file, Camille. Your ego is considerable. But so is your talent. That’s why we increased our offer.”

The dinner moved through its courses. Antoine told a story about the first time the algorithm had failed catastrophically during a demo, and Camille watched Marchand’s wife laugh—genuinely this time—and thought, *we’ve got this.*

Then the toast came.

Marchand raised his glass after the cheese course, his face settling into something more formal. “To AlgoSens. To the next eighteen months. And to the two of you, for having the courage to build differently.”

They clinked glasses. Camille drank. The wine was excellent.

“Before we go,” Marchand said, setting his glass down, “I wanted to mention something. A small thing, but it came to my attention.”

Camille’s stomach tightened.

“François Caillou,” Marchand continued, rolling the name out like a card he’d been holding. “I believe he worked with you at your previous firm.”

“He did,” Antoine said, his voice carefully even. “And he currently works at AlgoSens.”

“Yes. I’m aware.” Marchand dabbed his mouth with his napkin. “He’s been at a few industry dinners lately. He has a way of talking—a charming way, I’ll give him that—but he’s mentioned to some mutual acquaintances that you, Antoine, are overly aggressive.” He let the word sit. “That you steamroll consensus to get your way. That Camille is the steady hand, but you’re a liability in the boardroom.”

Camille felt the heat rise to her face. The accusation was so precisely calibrated—it wasn’t about the leak, wasn’t about the documents, wasn’t about anything that would trigger a legal response. It was reputation, whispered into the ears of people who mattered. It was poison in silk gloves.

“That’s false,” she said, before Antoine could speak. Her voice was sharper than she intended. “I’ve worked beside Antoine for two years. He’s the reason AlgoSens has a culture at all. He’s the reason I can be as difficult as I am—because he creates the space for it. François is bitter because he was passed over for a role he wasn’t qualified for, and he’s chosen to manufacture a narrative that makes him feel less small.”

Silence. Marchand’s wife raised an eyebrow. The chief of staff’s pen hovered.

Then Marchand smiled. “I was hoping you’d say that.”

He didn’t elaborate. He didn’t need to. Camille understood, in the stretch of that silence, that the comment about François had been a test—not of their operational competence, but of their loyalty to each other. A co-CEO arrangement only worked if the two people in it would bleed for one another publicly. They had just proved they would.

“We have a policy about internal dissent,” Camille said, recovering her composure. “We address it directly. François will be given the opportunity to course-correct, but if he continues to damage the company externally, we’ll have to make a change.”

Marchand nodded, as if she had answered a question he hadn’t yet asked.

The rest of the dinner passed smoothly. They discussed valuation, timelines, the health client’s revised deployment schedule. By the time they stood to leave, Camille felt the strange lightness that came from having survived something she hadn’t known was a test.

Outside, the November air bit at her bare arms. Antoine shrugged off his jacket and draped it over her shoulders without asking. She didn’t protest.

They walked toward the car, and she felt his hand find hers. It was natural—automatic, even, the way their bodies had begun to move together in recent weeks. She squeezed once, and he squeezed back.

The flash went off before she could pull away.

She blinked, momentarily blind, and saw the photographer—a man in a dark coat, too far for them to catch him—lowering a long-lens camera. He was grinning.

“Shit,” Antoine said.

The headline ran at 7:14 the next morning.

**“AlgoSens Co-CEOs in Love?”**

The photo was clear: their hands interlocked, Antoine’s jacket draped over Camille’s shoulders, her face half-turned toward his, caught mid-laugh. It looked romantic. It looked *committed*. It looked like everything they had agreed not to let the public see until the Series B was signed, sealed, and wired into the company account.

Camille stared at her phone in the back of the taxi, the screen glowing in the gray morning light. Beside her, Antoine was already on his phone; she heard him exhale through his teeth.

“Marchand’s office called,” he said. “They’re asking if there’s anything we need to clarify before Thursday’s signing.”

“Thursday,” Camille repeated. “We have three days.”

“Three days to spin this before the investors get spooked.”

She looked at the photo again. The truth of it was there, in the way her shoulder leaned toward his, in the ease of the gesture. It wasn’t a lie. That was what made it so dangerous.

“We issue a press release,” she said. “Direct. No hedging. We acknowledge the relationship and frame it as exactly what it is—a partnership built on mutual respect that will make us a stronger team.”

Antoine turned to look at her. “You want to announce us before we’ve told the board?”

“I want to control the narrative before the tabloids do.” She met his eyes. “The press release goes out this morning. By the time the board meets, we’re not a rumor. We’re a fact. And facts are easier to price than speculation.”

He was quiet for a moment. Then he nodded, slowly. “You’re right.”

“I usually am.”

He almost smiled. “That’s the most comforting and terrifying thing about you.”

Camille looked back at her phone. The headline was still there, unavoidable. She thought of Marchand’s face at the dinner—of how carefully he had calibrated his goodwill—and wondered if this was just another test, another hidden variable in the algorithm the investors were running on their lives.

“Three days,” she said quietly.

“Three days,” he echoed.

But even as she said it, she felt the shift beneath her feet. The relationship she had guarded so carefully was now public property, and there was no metric, no dashboard, no carefully crafted pivot that could undo the image of their hands intertwined.

The only way forward was through it.