The heavy red wine hit her blood almost instantly, spreading a dangerous, reckless warmth from her chest straight to her fingertips.
The tight grip Marceline usually held over her filter completely dissolved under the weight of the alcohol and days of suffocating frustration.
She slumped back against the woven bistro chair, running a hand through her dark hair and letting out a ragged, unrefined laugh.
“I really don’t know, Kate,” Marceline groaned, her voice dropping into a raspy, furious murmur.
“That smug connard actually had the nerve to tell me to beg.
Beg.
Can you even comprehend the absolute, unadulterated nightmare of that man?”
Kate’s eyes widened to the size of saucers, her lips parting in absolute, stunned silence.
“And the worst part?” Marceline continued, slamming her palm lightly against the marble table, her grey eyes flashing with lethal intensity.
“Now he’s walking around boardrooms and marina docks acting like he’s entirely above all of it!
Like he didn’t lose his absolute mind in that room!
He wears those tailored suits, smokes those stupid cigarettes, and glares at me with those cold blue eyes like I’m the only one unraveling.”
She grabbed the bottle of Saint-Émilion herself and refilled her glass halfway, her hand shaking slightly with sheer irritation.
“He acts like he’s in complete control,” she whispered bitterly, staring into the dark red liquid.
“And I want to rip that pristine, arrogant mask off his face with my bare hands.”
Kate slowly reached across the table, gently taking the wine bottle out of Marceline’s hand before she could pour another full glass, a slow, wicked smirk creeping back onto her face.
“But was it actually that good, though?” Kate pressed, resting her chin on her hands with a maddeningly innocent flutter of her eyelashes.
Marceline stared at her half-empty glass, the deep red of the Saint-Émilion blurring slightly at the edges.
She wanted to lie.
She wanted to say it was entirely forgettable, a mechanical error in judgment that barely registered on her radar.
She wanted to strip Claude Auclair of his power.
Instead, the alcohol completely dissolved her final layer of defense.
“…Yes,” Marceline whispered, her voice barely carrying over the gentle jazz drifting from the café speakers.
She squeezed her eyes shut, the humiliating truth slipping out before she could bite it back.
“It was.”
Kate let out a soft, victorious hum, but before she could even formulate her next teasing remark, Marceline’s brief vulnerability violently erupted into raw, blistering rage.
“Which makes it infinitely worse!” Marceline hissed, her eyes snapping open as she gripped the edge of the marble table.
“That damn, charming, cold-blooded playboy!
He walks into any room and women literally trip over themselves just to breathe his air.
He’s always surrounded by them, Kate.
Actresses, heiresses, models—it doesn’t matter.”
She aggressively smoothed a non-existent wrinkle from her immaculate cream trousers, her breathing shallow, her face flushed with a toxic cocktail of fury and unacknowledged jealousy.
“He probably does this countless times,” she continued, her voice rising just enough to turn the head of a waiter passing by with a tray of espressos.
“He probably throws out lines like ‘beg’ to every single socialite he corners in a dimly lit room.
It’s a routine.
A pathetic, polished, infuriating routine to stroke his own massive ego, and I was just utterly, hopelessly stupid enough to fall for it.”
Kate simply watched her unravel, taking a very slow, deliberate sip of her iced matcha.
“You know, Celine,” Kate noted gently, a dangerous, knowing glint dancing in her dark eyes.
“For someone who claims to absolutely loathe the man’s existence, you are remarkably preoccupied with who else he might be sleeping with.”
Marceline froze, her mouth slightly open.
The devastating accuracy of the observation hit her like a physical blow to the chest, leaving her staring at Kate in horrified, absolute silence.
Marceline let out a sharp, entirely unamused laugh, scoffing into her wine as she tried to sweep the humiliating observation off the table.
“Don’t be ridiculous, Kate,” Marceline said flatly, her posture instantly snapping back into a rigid, defensive straight line.
“It doesn’t matter.
I already told him it meant absolutely nothing, and he agreed.”
Kate didn’t budge.
She raised a single, expertly drawn eyebrow, resting her cheek against her palm.
“Oh, he agreed, did he?” Kate asked, her tone dripping with quiet sarcasm.
“And I suppose that’s why he spent the entire boat trip staring at you like he wanted to burn the river down with his bare eyes?
Because it meant nothing?”
Marceline gripped the stem of her glass so hard her knuckles turned pale, looking away toward the sunlit gardens of the Palais-Royal.
“He agreed because he’s a pragmatist,” Marceline insisted, though the words tasted like ash in her mouth.
“He knows as well as I do that anything between an Auclair and me is toxic.
It was a mistake.
A momentary lapse in sanity brought on by adrenaline and sheer rage.”
“Right.
Purely academic,” Kate murmured, a teasing, dangerous smirk curling her lips.
“So when he looks at you like you’re the only person on the planet, he’s just practicing his corporate strategy.”
Marceline bit the inside of her cheek, the heavy weight of Étienne’s email about Elliot suddenly pressing back against her ribs.
The truth was, she needed it to mean nothing.
If Claude’s touch had been real, if his dangerous intensity wasn’t just a cold corporate tactic, then navigating the deadly web of the Paget files was going to destroy them both.
“He can look however he wants,” Marceline whispered icy, taking another slow sip of her red wine to numb the sudden ache in her chest.
“It changes nothing.”
Kate took a slow, contemplative sip of her drink, leaning back as her eyes locked onto Marceline’s rigid profile.
“Alright, fine.
Let’s set the Auclair disaster aside for a second,” Kate said, resting her elbows on the marble table.
“Why haven’t you had a proper relationship in so long anyway?
When was your last real one?
Like…
two years ago?
What was his name again—Jean-Luc?”
Marceline let out a dry, exasperated breath, rolling her shoulder as if the very memory were a physical burden.
“Jean-Luc was a complete nuisance,” Marceline scoffed, staring into the dark crimson depths of her wine glass.
“He wanted emotional availability, weekend trips to Normandy, and endless text messages about his fragile ego.
It was exhausting.
I simply don’t want a relationship right now.
I don’t have the time, the patience, or the desire to babysit another man.”
Kate leaned in, her eyes glinting with a sudden, wicked curiosity.
“What about Claude?”
Marceline’s head snapped up instantly.
“No,” she shot back, the word cutting through the air like a razor blade—sharp, immediate, and entirely uncompromising.
“Fine, fine,” Kate relented, holding up her hands in mock surrender.
She paused, her eyes shifting slightly over Marceline’s shoulder toward the far end of the terrace.
A sly, slow smile tugged at the corner of Kate’s lips.
“Though speaking of the devil’s bloodline,” Kate murmured quietly, nodding subtly toward the café’s glass entrance, “his sister is here.”
Marceline’s spine straightened instantly.
She turned her head just enough to catch sight of Lilian Auclair walking smoothly onto the patio.
Lilian was effortlessly chic in an ivory linen suit, a pair of dark oversized sunglasses perched on her blond head.
As if sensing their gaze, Lilian flicked her eyes toward their table.
For a brief, suspended second, Marceline and Lilian exchanged a quiet, unblinking glance across the sunlit terrace—a silent acknowledgment between two women who carried the weight of their respective empires.
Lilian offered a minuscule, almost imperceptible nod of her chin before sliding into a private corner booth.
Marceline turned back around, taking a slow sip of her wine.
Kate watched the interaction closely, resting her chin on her hand.
“You know…
you don’t look at her with the same murderous intent you reserve for the rest of them.
You don’t hate her as much as you hate the other Auclairs.”
Marceline set her glass down, her expression cooling back into a distant, composure.
“Because I find her presence tolerable,” Marceline said flatly, tracing the rim of her napkin.
“She’s sharp, she doesn’t pretend to be innocent, and she isn’t actively trying to play games with me.
But make no mistake, Kate—I still deeply dislike her family.”