Read Chapter 8: The Fake Metric

The email arrived at 7:14 AM, while Camille was still in bed, staring at the ceiling and calculating how many hours of sleep she'd lost in the past month. Her phone buzzed on the nightstand, and she reached for it automatically, still half-trapped in a dream about drowning in spreadsheets.

The subject line read: *Exclusive opportunity*.

From: Julien Perrot, tech correspondent, Le Monde Numérique.

She sat up. The name was familiar—he'd written a scathing exposé on a fintech startup last year that had led to SEC-style investigations in three countries.

The body of the email was three paragraphs. The first was polite. The second was businesslike. The third made her stomach drop into the floor.

*I've obtained internal AlgoSens communications from Q3 of last year that suggest certain user engagement metrics reported in your government grant application may not align with the raw data. I'd like to give you the opportunity to comment before I publish.*

He attached a screenshot. A single email. From her own account. Dated four months ago.

The text read: *Numbers adjusted for the grant. Keep these out of the formal channel—too many eyes. Camille.*

She read it three times. Then she read it again.

She didn't remember writing it. Not the exact words, at least. But she remembered making that call. Desperate quarter. The grant was worth €2 million in government funding, and the application required proof of engagement metrics above a certain threshold. Her actual numbers were good—just not good enough. So she'd nudged them. Rounded up. Massaged the methodology in the appendix.

She'd told herself it was standard practice. Everyone did it. The grant committee was looking for reasons to fund, not excuses to audit.

Now someone had the receipts.

Camille threw off the covers and paced the apartment barefoot, the cold parquet biting into her heels. The email was timestamped 2:47 AM. Julien Perrot had sent this at 2:47 in the morning. That wasn't the behavior of a journalist waiting for a response. That was the behavior of a journalist who already knew what story he was writing.

She checked the screenshot again. The email account was a secondary one—the old domain she'd used before AlgoSens migrated to its current server. She'd been told those archives were deleted.

They weren't.

Her phone buzzed again. Then again. Three messages in quick succession from the office channel.

She ignored them and called Antoine.

He picked up on the second ring, his voice already alert. "It's seven in the morning, Camille."

"I know. I need to tell you something."

"Can it wait until—"

"No. It can't."

Silence. She could hear him moving, the rustle of sheets, footsteps. Then a door closing. "Okay. I'm listening."

She told him. All of it. The grant application. The inflated metrics. The email she hadn't remembered writing but clearly had. She didn't leave anything out, didn't soften it. The words came out flat and fast, like she was reciting a list of inventory numbers.

When she finished, there was a long pause. She could picture him standing in his kitchen, phone pressed to his ear, jaw tight.

"You're telling me," he said slowly, "that the user engagement data we used to secure our government contract—the entire foundation of our public credibility—was fabricated."

"I adjusted it. It wasn't—"

"Adjusted. Fabricated. Doesn't matter what word you use. It was false."

"I know."

"And now a journalist has proof."

"I know."

"Camille, do you understand what this does? If he publishes that, we don't just lose the grant. We lose everything. Every partner. Every investor. Delphine will shut us down by noon." His voice was rising, the controlled veneer cracking. "I thought we were done with lies. I thought the truce meant—"

"It did. It does. That's why I'm telling you."

The words hung between them. She could hear him breathing, working through the anger to something else.

"Okay," he said finally. "Okay. We confess to the board. We spin it as an internal audit error—discrepancy between reporting systems. We position it as a discovery from our own due diligence."

"That won't work."

"It's the only option that doesn't end with us in legal proceedings."

"Antoine, if I confess, Delphine will fire me. And then she'll dig deeper into the other numbers. And when she finds the fabricated metrics aren't an isolated incident—"

"There's more?"

The question was sharp, a blade.

"No. Not like that. But once they start looking, they'll find other things. Small things. Things I smoothed over during the last quarter. And if they look closely enough, they might connect the framing attempt on you to me."

"You didn't frame me."

"No, but they won't find that out until they've already decided I'm guilty. I'll be sacrificed to protect the company's narrative. You know how this works."

Another long silence. She could hear him exhale slowly, and when he spoke again, his voice had shifted. Less furious. More calculating.

"What does the journalist want?"

"A comment. He says he wants to give us the opportunity to respond before he publishes."

"He wants an exclusive story about our struggles and then he'll bury the fabrication in the narrative. One big scoop. That's what he wants."

"I need to meet him. Find out what he actually has. Maybe he's bluffing about the scope."

"Or maybe he's not." Antoine paused. "I'll come with you."

"No. He said he wants to talk to me. Alone."

"Camille, that's a terrible idea."

"I know. But if I show up with you, he'll know I told you. Which means he'll know we're scrambling. Which means he'll push harder."

She could hear the frustration in his voice. "When?"

"Today. He wants to meet this afternoon."

"I don't like it."

"I don't either. But I'd rather face him and know what I'm dealing with than wait for him to publish."

The apartment in the 11th felt smaller than she remembered, the walls closing in as the morning light crept across the floor. Camille showered, dressed, and tried to think through what she would say. Julien Perrot was a professional. He'd been doing this for fifteen years. He wouldn't be swayed by charm or sob stories or appeals to his better nature.

The only leverage she had was making him believe the story wasn't as clean as he thought. That the metrics discrepancy was one small part of a larger picture he didn't understand. That if he published without context, he'd be exposing himself to defamation.

It was thin. Pitifully thin. But it was all she had.

She arrived at the café in the Marais at 3:47, ten minutes early. Julien Perrot was already there, seated at a corner table with a notebook and a demitasse of espresso. He was younger than she'd expected—early forties, sharp featured, with the restless energy of a man who'd built his career on other people's mistakes.

"Camille Laurent," he said, standing. "Thank you for coming."

"You didn't give me much choice."

He smiled, a thin expression that didn't reach his eyes. "I prefer urgency. It makes conversations more honest."

She sat. He sat. The waiter appeared, and she ordered a café crème she didn't want.

"You know why I'm here," he said.

"I know what you claim. I can't verify the screenshot you sent me was authentic."

"It was sent from your account."

"I had multiple accounts. That one was compromised during our server migration. We documented the incident."

It was the first lie she'd told in this conversation, and she could tell he didn't believe it. His expression didn't change. He just waited.

"That's your story?" he asked.

"It's the truth. And if you publish anything based on an email you can't authenticate, you'll be opening yourself up to a defamation suit that AlgoSens has the legal budget to pursue aggressively."

"Defamation requires falsehood. I have a screenshot of an email you wrote."

"You have a screenshot of an email that appears to be from me. You can't verify the server logs. You can't verify the domain history. You have a piece of text and no provenance."

He studied her for a long moment, tapping his pen against the edge of the notebook. Then he reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a recording device, setting it on the table between them.

"I have more than the email," he said. "I have financial projections that don't match your public statements. I have evidence that your company is burning through cash at a rate that suggests you'll be insolvent within two months. I have a source who's given me detail about a potential liquidation vote. And I have documentation that suggests the metrics discrepancy wasn't an isolated incident."

Camille kept her face still, her hands steady around her cup.

"Your source," she said. "Who is it?"

"You know I won't tell you that."

"Then you understand I won't confirm or deny anything that might identify them."

The conversation went in circles for another twenty minutes. She gave him nothing concrete. He gave her nothing she could use. They parted with the understanding that he would give her forty-eight hours before he published, not as a courtesy but as a deadline.

She walked back to the office in a daze, replaying every word, searching for something she'd missed. The fact that he had a source inside the company was the most terrifying detail. Someone was feeding him information. Someone who knew about the metrics. Someone who knew about the financial situation.

Someone who knew about her.

That night, she couldn't sleep. She lay in bed, staring at the ceiling, running scenarios through her head until they blurred into one another. At 2 AM, she finally got up and made tea, which she let go cold on the counter.

Her phone buzzed on the kitchen table.

A single message. No sender name visible. Just an image.

She opened it.

It was a photograph of her red scarf. The one she'd lost at the Tech Mixer. The one Lucas Moreau had returned to her with a cryptic message.

The scarf was draped over a chair in an office she didn't recognize. On the wall behind it, partially visible, was a press badge with a familiar name.

Julien Perrot.

The photo was timestamped two minutes ago.

Then, beneath the image, a text:

*Don't worry about the journalist. I've handled it.*

The number was unlisted. And the scarf—her scarf—was in the office of the man who'd threatened to destroy her.