9. Secrets in the Dark
Secrets in the Dark
RACHEL
The ankle touch still burns against my skin three hours after Connor walked away.
I'm supposed to be sleeping. Instead, I'm standing at the window of my suite watching Paris glitter below like scattered diamonds, replaying the moment his thumb pressed into the arch of my foot and sent heat flooding through every nerve ending I possess.
The way his eyes went dark. The way we both knew exactly what would have happened if Nate hadn't knocked on that door.
The way he chose to leave anyway.
My phone buzzes for the forty-seventh time tonight. Another brand wanting a statement. Another journalist fishing for quotes. I silence it without looking.
Connor left at nine-thirty. Said he had a meeting.
Didn't elaborate. Just appeared in the doorway of my suite looking like sin in a dark suit, touched my shoulder once in a way that felt like a promise, and disappeared into the Paris night with that maddeningly vague "I'll be back soon" that means absolutely nothing.
It's one-seventeen in the morning. He's not back.
The silence is worse than the buzzing phone. Worse than the fear. Worse than the fact that someone broke into this suite four nights ago and spray-painted threats across my wall.
Because the silence means I'm alone with my thoughts, and my thoughts keep circling back to the way Connor looked at me in his war room. Like I was a problem he wanted to solve with his hands and mouth instead of strategy and contracts.
I'm standing at the window of my suite in an old Parsons t-shirt and sleep shorts, watching the city glitter below, when my laptop chimes with a new email notification.
I almost ignore it. Another brand wanting a statement. Another journalist fishing for quotes. Another person who thinks they know me because they've read a headline.
The subject line stops me cold: You should have stayed silent.
Every muscle in my body locks. My hands shake as I click it open.
No text. Just an attachment. A photo from that charity gala last year. The one in Monaco where I wore the red Valentino and felt like I'd finally made it. Where I laughed with the French Vogue editor and drank champagne that cost more than my first month's rent in New York.
In the photo, I'm holding a champagne flute, caught mid-laugh, completely unaware of the man standing three feet behind me.
I don't recognize him. Dark suit. Cold eyes. The kind of face you'd forget five minutes after meeting.
But someone thought I should remember.
I zoom in until the pixels blur. Reverse image search. Hold my breath while the results load.
Viktor Kozlov. Russian financier. Money laundering investigations in three countries. Known associate of Senator Moreau.
The laptop screen swims in front of me. I brace my hands on the desk to keep from swaying.
This was never about me being at the wrong party. Never about knowing the wrong people. This was about manufacturing a connection that didn't exist. About putting me in a frame with Moreau's criminal network and letting the media tear me apart.
I scroll through more search results, my designer brain cataloging details the way it always does when I'm scared. When I need to make sense of chaos by finding patterns in fabric and thread and evidence.
Another photo loads. Moreau at a political fundraiser. And standing beside him, elegant and cold in Givenchy I'd recognize anywhere, is his niece.
Fawn Moreau.
The name hits like a physical blow. Like all the air has been sucked out of the room and I'm left gasping.
Fawn. My design school rival. The girl who plagiarized my thesis and cried in the hearing when she got caught. Who looked at me with pure hatred when I testified against her. Who smiled at me six months ago at a gala like she already knew how this story would end.
My phone is already in my hand. I pull up Instagram with shaking fingers and search for Fawn's meticulously curated profile. She hasn't posted in six days. Unusual for someone who treats social media like a second career. But her tagged photos tell a different story.
There. Five days ago. Paris Fashion Week after-party. Fawn in the background of someone else's shot, talking to a man in an expensive suit I recognize from WWD spreads.
I zoom in until the image grains.
Julian Thorne. Tech billionaire. Corporate raider. Currently attempting to acquire three fashion houses, according to the latest industry gossip.
Including mine.
My hands shake so violently I almost drop the phone.
Fawn didn't just plagiarize my thesis at Parsons. Didn't just try to destroy my reputation when she got caught. She's been planning this. Waiting. Using her uncle's scandal as cover to take everything I've built while I was too busy defending myself to see the real attack coming.
And she has the resources to do it. The connections. The money. A fiancé who specializes in hostile takeovers and a senator uncle who needs a distraction from his own corruption.
I need to tell Connor.
I dial his number. It rings once. Twice. Three times. Four.
Voicemail.
"Connor." My voice sounds strange. Too high. Too tight. Like I'm trying to hold myself together with words alone. "I found something. About Fawn Moreau. It's bad. Call me back." I pace the suite. Check my phone every thirty seconds. Five minutes crawl by. Then ten.
Connor remains radio-silent. No return call. He disappeared for hours without telling me where he was going. Again. Just like two nights ago when I called him out in his war room. When I told him I didn't want a fixer who makes decisions for me. I wanted a partner who makes them with me.
A partner who makes them with me.
My own words echo back at me, bitter and sharp.
My phone buzzes. Not Connor. A text from an unknown number.
You want answers? Come to Le Jardin. Alone. I'll tell you everything. Midnight terrace.
I stare at the message. Read it three times. My heart hammering against my ribs.
My first instinct is to call Connor.
My second instinct is to remember he's not answering.
My third instinct is the one I listen to.
I pull on black jeans. Black sweater. Black boots. Tie my hair back tight enough to hurt. This isn't fashion. This is armor. This is making myself small enough to disappear into a Paris night while I get the answers no one else will give me.
I write a note on hotel stationery: If something happens, send this to Connor Grey. Leave my laptop open with all the Fawn evidence on screen. Tell the concierge I'm meeting a friend for a drink and ask him to check on me in forty-five minutes if I don't call.
The precautions feel inadequate. Thin as tissue paper. But I'm done waiting for men to save me while making decisions about my life without consulting me first.
I slip out the side entrance and slide into a waiting taxi before I can second-guess myself.
The city blurs past the window. Beautiful and cold and utterly indifferent to my terror.
Le Jardin sits in the Marais like a jewel box wrapped in velvet and warning signs. All gilded fixtures and crimson ropes and doormen who look like they're paid to forget faces.
I push through bodies dressed in Alexander McQueen and Tom Ford and Jacquemus I can identify by cut and fabric even in the dark.
The bass vibrates up through marble floors that probably cost more than my first New York apartment.
Heat presses against my skin from too many people in too small a space.
Champagne and expensive perfume and cigarette smoke that's soaked into vintage wallpaper for decades.
The smell of money and secrets.
I find the bar. Order a martini I won't drink. Scan the crowd for anyone who looks like they're waiting for me.
Everyone looks like they're waiting for something. That's the kind of place this is.
The bartender slides my drink across polished wood. "From the gentleman at the end of the bar."
I don't want to look. Every instinct I have screams danger.
I look anyway.
Connor.
He's leaning against the bar like he owns it, like he owns the whole damn club. Storm-gray eyes locked on me with an expression that makes my stomach flip. Fury and relief and something darker underneath both. Something that looks like fear.
My heart does something complicated. Something I don't have time to analyze.
He crosses the space between us in four strides that part the crowd without him touching anyone.
"What the hell are you doing?" His voice is low. Controlled. The kind of control that costs something.
"My job." I lift my chin even though my hands are shaking around the martini glass. "Getting answers."
"Your job is staying alive."
"My job is saving my company." The words taste like battery acid. Like admitting defeat. "And I got a message. From whoever's been threatening us. They said they'd tell me everything if I came alone."
Something dangerous moves through his expression. Something that looks like barely restrained violence. "And you believed them?"
"I'm not an idiot, Connor. I left instructions with the concierge. Left evidence on my laptop. Told the bartender to call the police if I'm not back in twenty minutes. I took precautions."
"Precautions." He steps closer, and the scent of him hits me like a drug.
Cedar and dark musk and something underneath that's pure Connor.
"You snuck out of a secure hotel. Alone.
At midnight. To meet someone who's been stalking and threatening you for days.
That's not precautions, Rachel. That's suicide. "
"It's necessary." My voice cracks on the word.
Splinters. "Because you disappeared. Again.
For hours. Without telling me where or why or who you were meeting.
Without answering your phone when I needed you.
So don't stand here and lecture me about trust when you won't even give me the same courtesy. "
The words land. I see it in the way his jaw tightens. The way his hand flexes once at his side before he forces it still.
"We're leaving," he says. Not asking. Ordering.
"No."
"Rachel, this is not…"