Chapter 3
Chapter
Three
RACHEL
René Dubois did not invite me to sit down.
He walked back into his office, already talking, already moving, assuming I would follow. I did. The door shut behind us with a soft click that felt louder than it should have.
“Bag,” he said, pointing.
I slid it off my shoulder and set it on the chair he still hadn’t offered me. He circled his desk like it was something to be conquered, not used.
“You are late,” he said.
“I’m not,” I replied before my brain could intervene. “I was told ten.”
He glanced at his watch. Thin smile. A test.
“Hm.”
That was it. No apology. No acknowledgment. Just confirmation that I was, for the moment, still in the room.
“Camera,” he said.
I handed it over.
He weighed it in his hands like he was assessing a weapon. Checked the lens. The settings. Scrolled through the images without asking. His face gave nothing away. Not interest. Not disdain. Just focus.
“Faces,” he said finally. Not a question.
“Yes.”
“Why?”
Because I’m good at them, flashed through my mind. Because they don’t lie the way words do. Because I need to understand people before I can trust them.
None of those felt like answers he’d tolerate.
“They’re honest,” I said. “Even when people try not to be.”
He snorted.
“Romantic nonsense,” he said, flicking through more photos. “Faces lie constantly. That is their job.”
He stopped on an image I’d taken three days earlier. A woman on the métro, head tilted, mouth set in a practiced smile that didn’t reach her eyes.
“This one,” he said. “Why this moment?”
“Because she was pretending,” I said, steady. “And she didn’t realize she’d stopped.”
Silence.
René looked at me over the top of his glasses. Long. Heavy. Like he was trying to decide whether I was observant or just lucky.
“Again,” he said. “But better.”
My pulse kicked.
“She’d just looked at her reflection,” I said. “She checked her lipstick like it mattered. When she looked up, there was nothing left to perform for. That’s when I took it.”
He studied the photo again.
“Hm,” he said.
I was starting to hate that sound.
He handed the camera back like it might bite him if he held it too long.
“You frame too safely,” he said. “You stand where it is comfortable.”
I opened my mouth.
He lifted a finger.
“Do not defend,” he said. “Listen.”
I shut up.
“You have an eye,” he continued. “A good one. Which makes this worse.”
Worse.
“You hesitate,” he said. “You ask permission with your body. The camera sees that. I see that.”
I felt heat creep up my neck. Old, familiar doubt tried to claw its way in. The voice that said maybe I’d fooled everyone up until now. Maybe Paris had been a mistake.
I swallowed it.
“Who is your favorite photographer?” he asked suddenly.
“Vivian Maier,” I said without thinking.
“Why?”
“She didn’t ask to be seen,” I said. “She just looked.”
He tilted his head again. That assessing angle.
“Acceptable answer,” he said. “Lazy delivery.”
I almost laughed. Almost.
He turned away and started rifling through a stack of contact sheets.
“You will assist,” he said. “You will watch. You will carry equipment. You will be silent unless spoken to.”
Fair.
“You will learn faster than you want to,” he added. “And you will hate me a little.”
Also fair.
He finally looked back at me.
“If at any point you decide you are not good enough,” he said calmly, “I will not stop you from leaving.”
There it was. The exit. The trapdoor.
I met his gaze and didn’t blink.
“I’m not leaving,” I said.
A pause.
Not approval. Not warmth.
But something shifted.
“Good,” René said. “Then tomorrow, you come earlier.”
I smiled, small and sharp.
“I will.”
He nodded once, already done with me.
As I stepped back toward the noise of the office, my hands were shaking. My confidence was bruised. My ego was in pieces. But underneath it all, something steadier held. He hadn’t broken me and I wasn’t going to let him.
“Where are you going?”
The question came just as I reached the door.
I turned, mouth already open to answer—and stopped.
René wasn’t looking at me.
Not even a little.
He was stacking papers. Methodical. Precise. Already done with the conversation he hadn’t finished having. The question hadn’t been curiosity. It had been bait.
So I closed my mouth.
I waited.
The silence stretched. Long enough to be uncomfortable. Long enough for my pulse to thud in my ears. Long enough for the part of me that wanted approval to start squirming.
Then—a sound.
A half-snort. Sharp. Amused despite himself.
“Good,” René said. “Already learning.”
He grabbed his bag, a folder of prints, and a camera case that looked older than me and twice as mean.
“Come,” he said, already moving.
So we had somewhere to be.
He cut through the office like a force of nature, and I hurried to keep up. As we passed desks and workstations, he dropped images onto surfaces without breaking stride.
“Crop tighter.”
“Kill this one.”
“Run it above the fold.”
“Ask her again. She’s lying.”
No one argued. No one questioned. People nodded, scribbled notes, pivoted instantly. This was controlled chaos.
Then a door opened.
The man who stepped out was older than René, taller too, with hair that had gone gray but stayed thick out of sheer stubbornness. His eyes were bright, an almost startling blue, and his smile was already in place—easy, knowing, dangerous in its own way.
The plaque on his door read: Jean-Luc Fournier — Rédacteur en Chef
Editor-in-chief.
“René,” he said, tone cheerful and wicked. “Tu terrorises encore les stagiaires?”
Are you terrorizing the interns again?
René didn’t slow.
“Seulement ceux qui ont du potentiel,” he shot back in French.
Only the promising ones.
Jean-Luc’s gaze flicked to me. Curious. Appraising. Kinder than René’s, but no less sharp.
“Elle a l’air jeune,” Jean-Luc said.
She looks young.
“Elle l’est,” René replied.
She is and that would pass. Or at least that’s what his tone said.
Jean-Luc laughed. “Essaie de ne pas la briser avant le déjeuner.” Try not to break her before lunch.
René stopped then. Just long enough to turn his head. “T'inquiète,” he said, almost dismissively. “Si elle brise, c'est qu'elle sert à rien.”
Do not worry. If she breaks, she was useless. It took everything I had to not flinch at that particular description. I also tried to not read much more into that, like, if I survived, then I belonged here.
Jean-Luc lifted a brow. “Tu ne vas pas la présenter?”
“No.”
And with that, René walked away. No pause. No glance back. No checking to see if I followed.
I pivoted instantly and went after him. Because whatever this was—this test, this pace, this refusal to soften—I understood one thing perfectly. René Dubois did not wait for people who needed permission. I wasn’t about to give him a reason to leave me behind.
René didn’t slow once we hit the sidewalk.
He cut left, then right, already pulling his phone from his pocket, thumbs moving with ruthless efficiency. Emails. Messages. Probably dismantling someone’s confidence before noon. I stayed half a step behind him, matching his pace without crowding his space.
We descended into the métro without a word.
The air changed immediately—warm, metallic, layered with perfume and old stone and motion. René stood near the platform edge, still working, body angled slightly away from me. A test. Always a test.
I didn’t take out my phone.
Didn’t check the time. Didn’t pretend this was casual.
When the train arrived, I followed him on, found a place to stand without touching him, without drifting. He never looked up. Never acknowledged me. But he didn’t shake me either.
We surfaced in Le Marais.
The light was different here—sharper, playful. The streets felt curated but not precious. People wore clothes like they were making arguments with their bodies. Oversized silhouettes. Sharp tailoring softened by scuffed boots. Vintage jackets paired with surgical precision.
I wanted to photograph everything. But I didn’t. It almost physically pained me.
René finally put his phone away and slowed, his pace shifting from destination-driven to something looser.
Observational. He strolled like a man browsing with no particular goal or destination in mind.
That was bullshit and I wasn’t buying it, but for now, I just followed him and let the neighborhood show itself.
Rue Vieille-du-Temple unfolded around us like a private runway.
Independent boutiques pressed close to one another, windows styled with intention rather than budget. Vintage shops that felt closer to the Marché aux Puces than to fashion houses. Concept stores where nothing made sense until it suddenly did.
I kept my eyes moving. On people. On silhouettes. On the way fabric fell. On René. I refused to lose him in the noise.
We stopped in front of a narrow storefront halfway down the street. No sign screaming for attention. Just a simple window and a sense that if you knew, you knew.
René stepped inside without hesitation. The woman behind the counter looked up and immediately frowned.
“René,” she said in French, arms crossed. “It’s too early.”
He smiled.
It wasn’t warm. It wasn’t polite.
But it worked.
“Too early is when the work is honest,” he said. “Too late is when everyone has opinions.”
She snorted despite herself. “You always say that.”
“And I am always right.”
She rolled her eyes, then sighed. “You’re impossible.”
“Yes,” he agreed. “But charming.”
She laughed then, shaking her head as she waved us deeper into the space. “Come. But don’t touch anything.”
The back of the boutique opened into controlled chaos.
Fabric everywhere. Sketches pinned to corkboards. A dress mid-construction, held together with a constellation of pins and intention.
And the model.
I couldn’t look away. Her midnight-black hair fell around a face that seemed to speak without words, and her dark, endless eyes held stories I couldn’t begin to know. Her pale skin caught the light in a way that made everything else fade.
Every line, every subtle movement, every quiet detail felt alive—fragile and fierce all at once, and utterly impossible to forget.
Her skin glowed under the work lights, calm and luminous, like she belonged exactly where she was.
She stood patiently while the designer adjusted the drape of the dress, serene and unbothered.
I was stunned.
Not just by her beauty—though that alone could’ve stopped traffic—but by the way she held herself. Present. Professional. Aware.
Then, just for a heartbeat, her gaze flicked to mine. A single, quick wink.
And just like that, she returned to her patient stance, flawless and unbothered, leaving me with a pulse I hadn’t expected.
I kept my eyes on her just a moment longer than I should have.
That wink—so small, so brief—felt deliberate, like a spark meant only for me.
Or maybe for no one. My pulse picked up, and I felt the familiar heat rise in my chest, the same one I always tried to smother when I was supposed to be observing, not reacting.
René’s voice cut through the quiet hum of the boutique as he leaned over the table, pointing at a sketch. I forced my gaze back to the conversation, but I couldn’t unsee the model’s eyes, the way they had caught mine, the fleeting mischief behind them.
A stab of frustration hit me. Professionalism. Observation. Composure. I had to remember who I was here for—who I was following, learning from. René. This internship. Paris. Not… distractions. Not fleeting smiles from strangers who could undo a fraction of my focus with a glance.
And yet, the pulse lingered. I felt it at the back of my neck, in the subtle tension between my shoulder blades, and even under my fingertips as I clenched them at my sides. I didn’t move. I didn’t breathe differently. I just let it sit there, coiled and impossible to ignore.
The designer—Camille Moreau, it took me a minute to catch her name and match it with the logo on the back wall—moved with the kind of controlled elegance that made every gesture feel intentional.
Compact, athletic, toned, like she could have been a dancer or a sprinter, her presence filled the space without trying.
Her skin glowed warm and golden under the lights, and her sharp cheekbones and expressive eyes gave her a natural authority.
I kept thinking of Halle Berry—sleek, strong, graceful, and impossibly magnetic—even as she pinned and adjusted fabric with calm precision.
I caught René’s sharp glance out of the corner of my eye. He wasn’t looking at me either—of course he wasn’t—but I felt the scrutiny anyway. Every moment in his presence felt like an assessment, and the model’s wink only made the edge of that scrutiny sharper, more aware.
I swallowed and straightened my shoulders. My hands relaxed. I could acknowledge the thrill without giving it away. I could observe without reacting. That was what he’d been teaching me all along. Not just how to see—but how to see without being seen.
I exhaled slowly, quietly, and let myself sink into the rhythm of watching, learning, absorbing.
The model returned fully to her work, flawless, untouchable, and suddenly I realized something.
I was here to survive this world, not to participate in its flirtations, and the line between awe and distraction had to remain mine to hold.
I stayed patient, steady, invisible. And for the first time that morning, I felt a flicker of real confidence. I didn’t lift my camera. I didn’t speak. I watched.
René and the designer talked shop in low, fast French. Cuts. Lines. Movement. How the fabric would photograph versus how it lived. He gestured with his hands, sharp and precise. She argued back, unapologetic. They respected each other. That much was clear.
I stayed quiet, absorbing everything.
This was the lesson.
Not the yelling. Not the tests.
This.
Where taste lived. Where talent breathed. Where seeing mattered more than saying. As I stood there, invisible and wide-eyed, I knew, without doubt, that this was exactly where I was supposed to be, learning.