BEATRICE'S POV
It's colder the next morning.
My alarm buzzes thirty minutes late — and somehow that's how I find myself sprinting through the streets of Manhattan with toast between my teeth, bag bouncing off my shoulder, and that white scarf looped hastily around my neck.
I hadn't thought much when I grabbed it. My mind was already preoccupied with whether Angel would find something to say about me being late again. Whatever happened yesterday with Theodore feels strangely distant beneath the restless, overwhelming energy of this city in the morning.
My hair is slightly windswept by the time I push through the building entrance, heart still racing from the run. I exchange quick nods with familiar faces in the lobby, step into the elevator, and almost convince myself today might actually be straightforward.
Then I push open the door to Adrien's office — and the moment our eyes meet, a chill moves through me that has nothing to do with the temperature outside.
He's wearing a white shirt, the first three buttons undone, a faint shadow beneath his gaze that makes the cool air of the room feel sharper somehow. But what he's looking at isn't my face.
It's the scarf.
Silence fills the space between us as I cross toward his desk — too loud, too loaded.
"Good morning, Vice Chairman." I keep my voice steady.
He blinks slowly and leans back. "Good morning, Beatrice. You seem cold."
My eyes flutter toward him before I can stop them. What does that mean? Does he know about Theodore? No — he'd have to have cameras on me to know that. I force a calm smile. "It's a bit colder today."
His jaw tightens — just slightly, just briefly — before it releases. A strange doubt surfaces at the back of my mind and I shove it down immediately. If he knew what happened yesterday, he wouldn't have kept me around. Not with Theodore Schweitzer's interest involved.
Adrien closes his laptop slowly. Stands. Holds eye contact in a way that makes me very aware that silence, in his hands, is its own kind of language.
"You handled the Al-Barak project well yesterday — but there are people with questions about that."
I look up at him as he steps close enough that the faint cedar and woody musk of his cologne reaches me, settling somewhere at the back of my thoughts uninvited.
"What kind of people?" I keep my tone professional. Completely unmesmerized. Absolutely fine.
He tilts his head slightly downward. I resist the instinct to step back. "Board members. Naturally."
He says it the way someone might comment on the weather. I frown. "And explaining yourself to them is your responsibility. Not mine."
Adrien's expression sharpens. His jaw tightens as he draws in a slow breath. "So you're suggesting I defend myself to those men because of a decision you influenced."
"You walked away with a better deal because of that decision."
He holds my gaze. I hold it back. The truth doesn't move just because powerful people find it inconvenient — and we both know I'm right.
He turns away without another word, moving back behind his desk and rolling up his sleeves. Which is when I make the mistake of looking.
The veins along his forearms. The lean, defined muscle underneath perfectly tailored fabric that had, until this moment, kept the situation manageable.
I look away. Immediately. Before he can notice. I am a woman with entirely reasonable taste in the human form and I will not be apologizing for that — but I will absolutely be pretending it didn't happen.
"You're going to be a handful, aren't you." He glances back — not quite a question.
"That's what you hired an advisor for, Vice Chairman."
He looks at me the way a man looks at something he simultaneously finds useful and deeply irritating. Then a slow smirk crosses his face — deliberate, just slightly dangerous — and my practiced smile wavers by exactly one degree.
"You're right. You are my advisor." He lets the word sit there with quiet emphasis. "Which means you'll be joining me to explain to the board exactly why my new advisor isn't a liability."
My eyes widen. "I'm not — I haven't even been here a week, I'm not qualified to —"
He's already sliding into his grey suit jacket and walking past me. I swallow my protest and follow.
What is wrong with him today? Is he actually annoyed about something? Why is he making this difficult?
We ride the elevator in silence. His shoulders are wide enough to make the space feel significantly smaller than it is. I tap my fingers against my bag strap and watch the floor numbers climb.
"Did you get home safely yesterday?" he asks suddenly, breaking the quiet.
I look at him. "Yes. I did."
Silence again.
I feel the restlessness building under my skin — this particular kind of tension that comes from too much going unsaid in too small a space. "Did you sleep well?"
He glances down at me. "Yes. I did."
Same three words back. I give him an awkward smile and face forward again, screaming internally.
WHY DO I HAVE SUCH A BAD FEELING ABOUT THIS.
As it turns out — I had every reason to.
The executive meeting room on the tenth floor is vast, floor-to-ceiling glass looking out over Manhattan on all sides. A round table, twenty chairs, and ten board members whose combined net worth likely exceeds several small nations.
Tom Ford suits. Watches that cost more than my annual rent. Eyes carrying the particular sharpness of men who have spent decades deciding what — and who — has value.
Adrien sits at the head of the table, relaxed, one elbow on the armrest, a cigarette burning slowly between his fingers. I stand behind him.
I was never supposed to be in a room like this. Not everyone is Mr. Jonathan — not everyone looks at someone like me and sees something worth seeing.
The CFO of Laurent Energy, Mr. Shawn — grey-haired, deeply lined, the kind of cold that comes from decades of calculated decisions — speaks first.
"Are we to understand that based on the advice of a girl you've known for two days, you moved forward with a deal of this magnitude, Aurélien?"
Adrien says nothing. The silence redirects the question toward me like a current finding the path of least resistance.
"Do you have any idea what you did?" Mr. Shawn's voice drops to something harder. "Schweitzer Bank is the largest private institution in the West. What you staged yesterday looked like a direct move against them."
I keep my hands still at my sides. The pressure builds quietly at the back of my head.
This is exactly why I didn't want to be here.
If it had been someone from their world making the same call — someone with the right name, the right family, the right address — they'd be discussing what a brilliant strategic mind had just joined the inner circle. Instead I stand here and absorb it.
"Aurélien, you need to be more careful about who you allow into an advisory role. This girl will create problems."
"I agree. Who is she, exactly? We have far more qualified people within the company."
"Replace her. This week."
More voices layering over each other, each one a little louder, each gaze landing on me a little harder. My chin stays level. My hands stay still.
Not because I'm not hurt.
But because what's moving through me isn't pain — it's the specific, white-hot rage that only comes when someone attacks your dignity, your credibility, your right to stand in a room — based on nothing more than where you came from and what your surname isn't. I know this feeling. I've carried it my whole life.
I look at Adrien.
He takes a slow drag of his cigarette. Says nothing.
"Who knows how a girl like her caught Aurélien's attention — women like her usually don't have much shame. Unlike our daughters."
The room goes quieter in a different way. A few stifled sounds behind water glasses. I find the woman who said it — late forties, expression twisted with the particular contempt of someone who has decided I am beneath acknowledgment.
My skin crawls. My breathing stays even. Control. You cannot lose it here. Not here.
"From accountant to personal advisor in two days." The man across the table looks at me in a way that makes me feel like I'm standing in significantly less clothing than I am. "Must be quite the hidden talent."
The smirk on his face dies the moment I meet his eyes.
One more word. One more word and I will not be responsible.
I tell myself to hold. I tell myself to breathe.
But underneath all of it — underneath the rage and the control and the practiced stillness — what I feel most is a sharp, quiet disappointment directed at the man sitting three feet in front of me.
You brought me here. You put me in this room. And you haven't said a single word.
They're looking at me like I'm something to be consumed. And the man who is supposed to be in my corner is sitting there watching it happen with all the urgency of someone observing mild weather.
Tears sting the back of my eyes — not from sadness. From the effort of containing everything else.
Then Adrien speaks.
He doesn't raise his voice. He doesn't move quickly. He simply straightens in his chair and says, with complete calm — "Angel. Did you get all of that?"
The side door opens.
Angel walks out. Camera in hand. Expression neutral.
Every face at the table drains of color simultaneously.
"Everything has been recorded." Her voice is as smooth and even as ever.
Adrien takes one last drag of his cigarette and sets it down. His blue-green eyes move across the table slowly — unhurried, precise, the way a predator looks at something it's already decided about.
"Each of you will be receiving a court notice. Coordinated action against a Laurent Corporation officer." A pause. "Verbal assault." Another pause — quieter, heavier. "And slander."
Mr. Shawn is on his feet. "Aurélien — what is the meaning of —"
"You're all dismissed from your positions." His voice carries no heat. No drama. Just the flat certainty of a man who has already decided and is simply informing the room. "Laurent Corporation will see you in court."
The room breaks. Voices overlapping, chairs scraping, faces moving through panic and disbelief.
The arrogance from ten minutes ago evaporates completely — replaced by the frantic energy of people realising they have made a catastrophic miscalculation.
I stand completely still.
Processing.
He was never going to let it go further than he needed it to. The silence wasn't abandonment — it was documentation. Every word they said, every look they gave me, every snicker behind a water glass — recorded. Preserved. Turned into a legal instrument.
He let them build the case against themselves.
Adrien stands, straightening his jacket. He glances at me — just briefly — with a small, controlled expression at the corner of his mouth.
"Let's go, little terrorist. You have a full afternoon ahead of you."
I follow him out, the chaos of the room fading behind us.
My chest is still tight. My hands are still slightly unsteady.
But somewhere underneath all of it — beneath the residue of that room and the lingering sting of standing alone in it, even briefly —
Something has shifted within me.