Marceline forced down another painfully cold sip of sparkling water, desperately trying to settle the chaotic noise in her head.
Then the truly awful realization hit her.
She had wanted him.
That was what horrified her most.
It wasn’t simply the dark, filthy mistake of what had happened between those hotel sheets.
It was the devastating fact that she couldn’t honestly tell herself she had been forced or dragged into it against her will.
In the sober, brutal light of evening, she knew the truth.
She had wanted every single second of it.
Her mind immediately raced into overdrive, scrambling to build a fortress of rationalization.
It had been the champagne.
It was just months of ridiculous, suffocating tension finally snapping.
She had been angry, her judgment clouded by sheer adrenaline.
He had simply been there—a convenient target for a bad decision.
It was meaningless.
A fluke.
A biological impulse.
It had to be meaningless.
Determined to bury the spiraling panic under her signature brand of untouchable glamour, Marceline pulled her phone from her clutch.
She tapped the camera icon, smoothed her expression into a drop-dead gorgeous smile, and pressed Go Live.
Instantly, tens of thousands of viewers flooded the feed, comments cascading down the glass screen like a digital waterfall.
She leaned back against the deep emerald velvet, letting her followers soak in the emerald lighting, the high fashion, and the absolute illusion that she was having the time of her life—all while her heart hammered a frantic, desperate rhythm behind her ribs.
Within a minute, André had expertly propped her phone against the sweating silver of a champagne bucket, the three of them crowding together onto the emerald velvet sofa as the comments began cascading down the screen in a glowing blue waterfall.
CELINE IS LIVE
omg where are you guys
THE DRESS???
Celine marry me
Marceline offered the camera a dazzling, camera-ready smile, her posture dropping into effortless perfection.
The transformation was instant and absolute.
No hyper-ventilating Laurent heiress.
No woman privately unravelling over a broad-shouldered, blonde corporate nightmare.
Just Celine—the polished, untouchable style icon her four million followers adored.
“Bonsoir, mes amours,” she cooed softly.
André leaned into the frame, adjusting his silk scarf with a dramatic flourish.
“She has finally decided to acknowledge the public.
We should all be profoundly honored.”
“I’ve been busy,” Marceline shot back smoothly, rolling her eyes for the camera.
Kate laughed into her glass.
“She’s been actively avoiding everyone all night.”
“I have not!”
The chat exploded into a light-speed blur of emojis and questions.
DO A QUICK Q&A CELINE WHAT LIPSTICK WHO ARE YOU WEARING ARE YOU SINGLE???
Marceline tilted her head, reading the text aloud with practiced ease.
“Who am I wearing?” She looked down at the dark, slinky silk hugging her silhouette.
“This is vintage couture—a nineties piece I managed to source through a private archive in Milan.”
She was doing remarkably well.
Perfectly, flawlessly well.
She rattled off answers about her evening skincare routine, her top picks for Paris Fashion Week, her signature amber perfume, and whether she preferred yellow or white gold.
Anything that required zero emotional depth was welcome.
Anything that kept her thoughts far, far away from a certain hotel room suite.
Then André’s eyes drifted past the camera lens.
Over by the sleek marble terrace bar, the brass elevator chimed quietly.
André watched Claude Auclair step out into the warm rooftop air, impeccably tailored and utterly imposing.
André said absolutely nothing, but a slow, wicked glint sparked in his eyes.
Marceline, completely unaware, kept reading the screen.
“Someone is asking if I’d ever date someone outside my immediate social circle…” She let out a small, breezy laugh.
“Probably.
My standards are high, but not impossible.”
André raised an eyebrow, leaning closer to the phone.
“Probably?
That sounds like a terrifyingly open-ended answer.”
“I’m not dating anyone,” Marceline stated firmly, keeping her chin high.
Kate gave her a slow, suspicious side-eye over her compact mirror.
“Well, that’s technically true.”
Underneath the low glass table, Marceline’s heel came down sharply on Kate’s shoe.
Kate didn’t even flinch—she just smirked.
Then a new comment pinned itself to the top of the chat.
CELINE DO YOU HAVE A SECRET CRUSH??
Marceline’s breath caught in her throat.
She froze for a fraction of a second.
“No.”
The answer flew out of her mouth way too fast.
André’s lips twitched upward.
Kate’s eyes narrowed in deep suspicion.
Desperate to steer the ship away from the impending iceberg, Marceline grabbed the very next comment.
“Someone wants to know my current holy-grail foundation—” She launched into a wildly detailed breakdown with the intense determination of a diplomat explaining international trade tariffs.
Anything to fill the air.
Anything to stay occupied.
And then, cutting straight through the thumping bass of the house music, she heard it.
A familiar voice somewhere just behind the camera setup.
Low.
Deep.
Smooth as silk and heavy with calm, polite authority.
Her eyes flicked upward before her brain could stop her.
Claude was standing less than ten feet away, casually leaning against the bar, speaking with a prominent tech investor.
The golden ambient lights picked up the dark tailored lines of his suit.
He wasn’t looking at her.
He didn’t even acknowledge the live stream.
Marceline’s dazzling smile remained plastered across her face for the four million people watching her phone.
Inside her head, however, a frantic alarm was screaming.
Don’t look.
Do NOT look.
Look at the camera.
Look at the comments.
She looked at him anyway.
He still wasn’t looking back.
Her manicured fingers tightened around her tumbler of sparkling water so hard the glass gave a tiny, threatening creak.
André caught the entire silent breakdown.
Leaning over toward Kate, he whispered softly, keeping his voice just barely under the sensitivity threshold of the phone’s microphone, “This is poetry.
Absolute poetry.”
Kate whispered back under her breath, “If you ruin her illusion, she will throw you off this rooftop.”
Marceline snapped her eyes back to the glowing screen, her smile turning impossibly sweeter, her voice dropping into pure, dangerous velvet.
“Next question.”