The party was being held in a private rooftop lounge suspended high above the 8th arrondissement—the sort of dimly lit, velvet-draped sanctuary where nobody seemed to know who technically owned the building, and nobody dared to ask.
The warm summer air smelled of expensive amber perfume, expensive leather, and cigarette smoke drifting off the balcony edge.
Deep house music thudded in a low, bass-heavy rhythm beneath the clinking of crystal, the shutter clicks of Leica cameras, and the sharp, bright laughter of Paris’s social elite.
Marceline was surrounded by her usual entourage of influencers, models, fashion editors, and nameless heiresses who had somehow become permanent fixtures in her orbit.
And Marceline Laurent, who normally treated vintage champagne as a primary food group, was sitting on the edge of a deep emerald sofa, nursing a crystal tumbler of sparkling water with a slice of lime.
André noticed immediately.
Adjusting his silk scarf, he leaned toward Kate, his eyes locked onto Marceline’s sofa like a radar dish.
“Something is deeply, fundamentally wrong.”
Kate, carefully touching up her gloss in a gold compact, glanced over.
“She’s drinking…
water?”
“Precisely.” André looked genuinely horrified.
“She once told me at the Dior show that sparkling water was just champagne that had given up on its dreams.”
Kate let out a rich laugh.
“She did say that.”
Across the room, bathed in the amber glow of the low-hanging brass lights, Marceline took another painfully deliberate sip.
André narrowed his eyes.
“She’s actively avoiding alcohol.”
“Maybe she’s doing a detox,” Kate offered, snapping her compact shut.
“Being healthy.”
André gave her a deadpan stare.
“Celine?
Healthy?”
“…Fair point.”
André studied her.
She looked stunning as ever—draped in sharp black silk, nodding at the right moments, dropping razor-sharp retorts into group conversations, playing the part of the untouchable Laurent heiress to perfection.
Except she wasn’t drinking.
And every single time a waiter carrying a silver tray of coupe glasses floated near her, her rejection was cold, fast, and immediate.
“No, thank you.”
“I’m fine with this.”
“Not tonight.”
“She’s hiding something,” André whispered, a dangerous glint in his eye.
Kate smiled into her glass.
“You know, as her best friend, you could just ask her.”
“She’ll lie to my face without blinking.”
“Also fair.”
André kept his gaze pinned on Marceline.
Beyond the non-alcoholic beverage, there was a rigid tension in her posture—a quiet, feline hyper-vigilance.
She wasn’t checking her phone.
She wasn’t scanning the crowd for press.
In fact, she was very carefully, very deliberately avoiding looking toward one specific corner of the lounge.
André followed her line of sight, tracking the space near the private elevator doors.
The brass doors slid open with a quiet chime.
The quiet hum of the room momentarily dipped as a tall, imposing figure stepped out into the low lighting, shedding his dark suit jacket to hand it to the valet with effortless authority.
Claude Auclair.
The exact instant his shoes hit the parquet floor, Marceline’s spine locked completely straight.
She immediately dropped her gaze back into her tumbler of water, her jaw clenching so hard her cheekbones could have cut glass.
André’s eyebrows shot straight into his hairline.
“Oh.”
Kate looked at him, instantly catching the sudden shift in his energy.
“What?”
A slow, wicked smile spread across André’s face as he took a leisurely sip of his own champagne.
“I know exactly what’s wrong.”
Kate followed his gaze across the room to Claude, then snapped her eyes back to Marceline’s forced composure.
Her mouth opened slightly in disbelief.
“You are kidding me.”
“Not in a million years.” André lifted his glass in a silent, solitary toast toward the sofa, his eyes dancing with dark amusement.
“This season is going to be absolutely delicious.”
Marceline had spent the entire afternoon convincing herself she was perfectly fine.
She was not fine.
She had slept with Claude Auclair.
The enemy.
The golden-haired, blue-eyed corporate titan whose very breath she was supposed to loathe.
She had told herself it meant nothing.
She had slipped out of his suite before dawn like a thief in the night.
And now, she was apparently expected to function normally while he occupied the very same square footage of Paris.
So she had instituted one strict, non-negotiable rule for the evening.
No alcohol.
Because the last time she’d indulged, she had made a catastrophic, ruinous mistake.
She was not about to make another.
She took another painfully deliberate sip of her sparkling water, letting the cold liquid settle her nerves.
Then Claude crossed the threshold of the lounge.
Her stomach plummeted straight through the floorboards.
Absolutely not.
Marceline immediately dropped her eyes to her tumbler, staring down the single lime wedge as if it held the secrets to the universe.
She would not look at him.
She would not think about his hands on her hips, or the absolute carnage of last night.
She would definitely not wonder whether those sharp blue eyes were currently tracking her across the room.
A few excruciating seconds ticked by.
She couldn’t help it.
She darted a quick glance up through her lashes.
Claude was standing near the marble bar, casually leaning in to speak with a board director, looking unbothered, effortlessly polished, and completely unconcerned with her presence.
He wasn’t looking at her at all.
For some infuriating, absurd reason, a hot prickle of irritation spiked right through her chest.
She snapped her gaze back to her glass, her jaw tight.
“Ridiculous,” she muttered into the fizzing water.
Across the velvet-draped lounge, André took a slow sip of his champagne, a wicked grin blooming across his face.
“She’s doomed,” he murmured.
Kate shot him a wary side-eye.
“She’s going to murder you in your sleep if you say that to her face.”
“I’m not suicidal,” André replied smoothly, adjusting his cuffs.
“I won’t say a word.
But I am absolutely going to buy front-row seats to watch this absolute disaster unfold.”
At that exact moment, Claude turned, cutting through the crowd toward the terrace—passing within five feet of their sofa.
His broad shoulders brushed past, smelling faintly of sandalwood and crisp sea salt.
He didn’t glance at her.
He didn’t slow down.
He didn’t even acknowledge that she shared the same atmosphere.
Marceline’s knuckles turned bone-white around her glass, the crystal threatening to shatter under the pressure of her grip.
André took another sip, his laugh muffled behind his glass.
“Oh,” he whispered, delighted.
“This is going to be exquisite.”