7. Alexander #2
More trouble with the Lumière éternelle collection. Some of the pieces don’t match the records. They need you here before they do anything else.
This may be connected to what’s been happening to S.
I know you’re at dinner. I wouldn’t interrupt if it wasn’t urgent.
I read the messages twice, trying to will them into a smaller disaster. The main vault. The Lumière éternelle files. Two weeks before the gala, someone was moving pieces on a board I couldn’t see, and the one night I’d carved out for my marriage was about to become collateral damage.
“What is it?” Sophia asked. She’d set down her fork, her expression shifting from relaxed to alert.
“A problem at the Maison. The records again.”
“The Lumière éternelle vault?”
“They’re not sure yet. They need me there before they touch anything.”
Sophia was quiet for a moment. Then she folded her napkin and placed it beside her plate. “We should go.”
“Sophia, no. This is our anniversary. They can handle it without me.”
“The collection launches in two weeks. If someone’s gotten to the pieces themselves, they need to know how bad it is now, not tomorrow morning.
” She stood, and her voice was steady even though I could see the disappointment she was trying to hide.
“The cascade necklace is in that vault. My designs. My work. If there’s a problem, I need to know about it too. ”
“I can call from here. Give them verbal authorization.”
“And spend the rest of dinner refreshing your phone every thirty seconds?” She smiled, but it didn’t quite reach her eyes.
“I know you, Alexander. You won’t be able to focus on anything else until you’ve seen the situation yourself.
Let’s just go. We can finish celebrating when the crisis is handled. ”
I wanted to argue. I wanted to tell her that for once, the Maison could burn without me running to put out the flames. But she was right. The collection was hers too, and if someone was targeting her work, she deserved to be there when we found out.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“Don’t be sorry. Be quick.” She picked up her coat from the back of the chair. “The faster we deal with this, the faster we can come back to our anniversary.”
The drive back to Paris took forty minutes with traffic, and I spent most of it on the phone, trying to piece together what had happened and who could have done it. Sophia sat beside me in the passenger seat, her hand resting on my knee, occasionally squeezing when my voice grew tense.
By the time we reached Whitmore Maison, the crisis had metastasized. What started as a handful of mismatched pieces had become a frantic search through everything, turning up more and more that no one could explain. Camille met us in the lobby, already holding the files she wanted us to see.
“I’m sorry,” she said, directing the apology at Sophia rather than me. “I tried to hold them off as long as I could, but once people started whispering, it all got away from me.”
“It’s not your fault,” Sophia said, and her voice was professional, controlled. The warmth from the vineyard had vanished behind the mask she wore at work. “Show us what you’ve found.”
The next few hours blurred together. I gathered the few people I trusted and we went back through all of it, every ruined design, every message sent in her name, trying to find the thread that connected them.
Sophia was there for the first hour, sharp and certain, pointing out exactly which changes were never hers.
But as the night wore on I could see her energy flagging, the strain of the last weeks carved into her face.
“You should go home,” I said, during a brief lull in the chaos. “Get some rest. I’ll finish up here and meet you at the apartment.”
Sophia hesitated. We were standing in the hallway outside my office, and the building was quiet around us, most of the staff long since sent home.
“How much longer?”
“An hour. Maybe two.” I touched her cheek. “I’ll be home before midnight. I promise.”
“It’s still our anniversary, Alexander.”
“I know.” I kissed her, soft and lingering. “I know it is. And when I get home, we’ll open another bottle of wine and finish what we started. This is temporary. One more hour, and then the rest of the night is ours.”
She searched my face for a moment, looking for a lie she wouldn’t find. Then she nodded. “One hour. If you’re not home by midnight, I’m coming back to drag you out myself.”
“I’d expect nothing less.”
I watched her walk toward the elevator, and my chest ached with the knowledge that I’d failed her again. The perfect anniversary, planned down to the candles, and I’d let the Maison steal it anyway.
One hour. I could do this in one hour.
I went back to the security review. Camille was waiting with another stack of reports, another set of questions that needed answers. The clock on my wall ticked toward eleven, and I lost myself in the familiar rhythm of crisis management.
The food arrived around eleven-thirty.
I didn’t order it. Didn’t even realize it had been delivered until Camille appeared in my doorway with containers bearing the vineyard’s logo, explaining that she’d called ahead when we left the restaurant and asked them to pack up what we’d missed.
“You shouldn’t have to lose the whole evening,” she said, setting the containers on my desk. “I thought you might be hungry. The tarte Tatin looked incredible.”
I stared at the containers. The candles from the vineyard were there too, the fig and cedar ones I’d spent two weeks tracking down. Camille had arranged them on my desk and lit them, presumably trying to salvage some fragment of the evening she’d interrupted.
“You didn’t have to do this,” I said.
“I know how much tonight meant to you.” She opened the container with the dessert, and the smell of caramelized apples filled my office. “At least you can still enjoy the food. It would be a shame to let it go to waste.”
The wine was open. Two glasses poured. Camille pulled up a chair across from my desk and started reviewing the next batch of security reports while she ate, and I told myself this was efficient. Practical. We’d been working for hours, and we both needed to eat.
I told myself Sophia would understand.