We left Anna's apartment riding a high that felt simultaneously like victory and complete delusion.
The deal was done. The alliance formed. Anna Artois—senator's daughter, ice queen, professional manipulator—was now our ally against Henri.
Which was either brilliant strategy or the dumbest fucking decision we'd ever made.
The car ride back to the penthouse was thick with unspoken terror. We had Anna's vote. We had a plan to oust Henri. We had momentum.
We didn't have the serum. We didn't have time. We didn't have a guarantee that any of this would work.
And beneath all that strategic bullshit? We were just two terrified parents watching the clock run out on our daughter's life.
Alan drove in focused silence, jaw tight, fingers drumming against the steering wheel in that unconscious rhythm that meant his brain was running a thousand calculations per second. CEO mode. Problem-solving mode. The mode that let him pretend we weren't completely fucked.
I stared out the window at Paris sliding past—all romance and beauty and completely oblivious to the fact that we were about to go nuclear on one of France's most powerful families. Tourists were taking photos of the Eiffel Tower. Couples were kissing on bridges. Normal people doing normal things while my world burned.
The cognitive dissonance was surreal. Like watching a movie of someone else's life while yours dissolved in the background.
The penthouse felt different when we got back. Colder. Emptier. Like returning to a battleground after negotiating terms of war.
Which, technically, we had. Anna was our nuclear option. Our Hail Mary. Our last desperate play against a man who'd been winning at this game since before we were born.
God, we were so fucked.
Alan shut the heavy door. The sound echoed through marble and silence—that particular kind of expensive quiet that only multi-million-euro real estate can buy. The kind of silence that reminds you money doesn't solve everything. Can't cure genetic disorders. Can't stop tyrants. Can't guarantee your daughter will see her sixth birthday.
I walked straight to the living room windows. Rain had started—typical Paris, always dramatic when you needed it to be—lashing against the glass in sheets. The city lights below blurred into watercolor chaos.
Neon and despair. My new aesthetic.
"She'll betray us," I said. My voice came out raw, stripped of the confidence I'd projected in Anna's apartment. Like the mask had slipped the second we left her designer fortress. "The first chance she gets, Anna will turn on us."
"I know." Alan's voice came from behind me. Close. He hadn't moved to the bar. Hadn't loosened his tie. Just stood there, solid and present and somehow making the vast space feel smaller. Like his gravity pulled the room tighter.
"But we needed her vote."
"And what if it's not enough?" I turned to face him. The words tumbled out faster now, panic rising. "What if Henri's right and we're just... nothing? Two people playing games we don't understand against someone who's been playing them for eighty years? Who wrote the fucking rulebook?"
My breath was coming faster. That spiral I'd been holding back all day threatening to swallow me whole. "We're amateurs. We're delusional. We're—"
He crossed the room in two long strides. Didn't stop until he was right there—close enough that I had to tilt my head back to meet his eyes.
His gaze was dark. Not angry. Something fiercer. More intense. The kind of focus that made everything else disappear.
"He is not right." Each word was deliberate. Final. "He's an old man clinging to legacy and control. You—" His hand came up, fingers gentle against my jaw. "You were the one who broke Anna."
"What?"
"In her apartment." His voice dropped, intimate and raw. "I offered her the deal. The money. The power. But you showed her the consequences. 'Go down with him.' That's when she folded."
His thumb brushed across my cheekbone. I hadn't realized I was crying. "You're a fighter, Élise."
"I'm a mother." My voice broke on the words. "I'm just a mother trying to save her daughter."
"You're her mother," he corrected. His hand cupped my face fully now, thumb still moving in that gentle, devastating rhythm. "And you are magnificent."
The tension that had been building since Anna's apartment—hell, since Geneva, since the hospital, since that first day I'd walked into his office—finally snapped.
He didn't lean in slowly. He crashed down on me like a wave.
The kiss was desperate. Hot. Fueled by adrenaline and fear and weeks of suppressed want. His other arm snaked around my waist, yanking me hard against him, lifting me onto my toes.
I gasped into his mouth. He swallowed the sound, his tongue sweeping inside, claiming, consuming, promising things neither of us could guarantee.
This wasn't Geneva's tender exploration. This was a claiming. A vow made with lips and teeth and the desperate grip of two people about to lose everything.
"We will win," he growled against my mouth. His forehead pressed to mine, breath ragged. "I will not lose you. I will not lose her."
He kissed me again. Harder. His hand tangled in my hair, pulling my head back, angling me exactly where he wanted. It was possession and promise and please wrapped into one devastating moment.
My fingers dug into his shoulders. I let myself believe him. Let myself think that maybe—just maybe—we could actually pull this off.
That we weren't completely insane for thinking two people and one vengeful ex-fiancée could take down a man who'd built empires and crushed competitors for eight decades. That love and desperation and sheer fucking audacity might actually be enough.
For about three seconds, I believed. Really believed. Felt that spark of hope ignite in my chest—dangerous and bright and probably delusional but real.
Three seconds. That's all we got.
Then the phone rang.
Not his cell. Not the regular line. The hospital line. The emergency-only Sofia-specific line that meant something was very, very wrong.
We sprang apart. The moment shattered like glass hitting marble.
Alan grabbed the phone from the console. His face went white—actually white, all color draining in seconds like someone had pulled a plug.
"Sofia. What is it?"
I watched his expression shift. Watched hope die in real-time. His knuckles turned white around the receiver. His entire body went rigid—that particular kind of stillness that happens when you're hearing news so bad your body doesn't know how to process it.
The silence stretched. Ten seconds. Twenty. Each one a small eternity of not knowing but knowing anyway because his face said everything.
"How long?" His voice was choked. Barely audible. The kind of sound you make when your throat has closed around words too terrible to speak.
My heart stopped. Just completely stopped beating because I knew—before he even said it—I knew. That primal parent instinct that can sense disaster before it arrives. The kind of knowing that lives in your bones.
He turned to me. His eyes were dark with a terror that mirrored what I felt clawing up my throat. The Man of Glass completely shattered. Just a father who couldn't save his daughter.
"It's Amélie," he said. The words barely made it out. "The regression is accelerating. Sofia says the protocol... it's not working. The fever's back."
The floor tilted. My vision went spotty around the edges. This was it—the moment we'd been dreading. The moment Henri's checkmate became real.
He took a ragged breath that sounded like it physically hurt. Like every word was glass in his lungs.
"We don't have time for a board meeting. We have forty-eight hours. At most."