René wasn’t looking at me.
Not even a little.
He was stacking papers. Methodical. Precise. Already done with the conversation he hadn’t finished having. The question hadn’t been curiosity. It had been bait.
So I closed my mouth.
I waited.
The silence stretched. Long enough to be uncomfortable. Long enough for my pulse to thud in my ears. Long enough for the part of me that wanted approval to start squirming.
Then—a sound.
A half-snort. Sharp. Amused despite himself.
“Good,” René said. “Already learning.”
He grabbed his bag, a folder of prints, and a camera case that looked older than me and twice as mean.
“Come,” he said, already moving.
So we had somewhere to be.
He cut through the office like a force of nature, and I hurried to keep up. As we passed desks and workstations, he dropped images onto surfaces without breaking stride.
“Crop tighter.”
“Kill this one.”
“Run it above the fold.”
“Ask her again. She’s lying.”
No one argued. No one questioned. People nodded, scribbled notes, pivoted instantly. This was controlled chaos.
Then a door opened.
The man who stepped out was older than René, taller too, with hair that had gone gray but stayed thick out of sheer stubbornness. His eyes were bright, an almost startling blue, and his smile was already in place—easy, knowing, dangerous in its own way.
The plaque on his door read:Jean-Luc Fournier — Rédacteur en Chef
Editor-in-chief.
“René,” he said, tone cheerful and wicked. “Tu terrorises encore les stagiaires?”
Are you terrorizing the interns again?
René didn’t slow.
“Seulement ceux qui ont du potentiel,” he shot back in French.
Only the promising ones.
Jean-Luc’s gaze flicked to me. Curious. Appraising. Kinder than René’s, but no less sharp.
“Elle a l’air jeune,” Jean-Luc said.
She looks young.
