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.
