No one looked up.
That was the part that unsettled me most.
People typed. Phones rang. Someone laughed softly at a desk nearby. The office absorbed the rage like it was background noise. Like this was Tuesday. Like this was weather.
I stopped just outside the door marked “René Dubois – Directeur de la Photographie” and waited, spine straight, face neutral, heartbeat absolutely refusing to cooperate.
“Non. Non, donotsend me revisions,” René snapped. “Go back and learn how tosee. Then we talk.”
Then he slammed his phone so hard against his desk, I half-expected it to shatter.
The door flew open.
René Dubois was… not what I expected.
He was short. Shorter than me. Shorter than Frankie—which my brain didn’t fully register until a beat too late because there was so muchpersonalitypacked into that frame it threw off the math.
He had a compact, slightly stocky build that gave him a grounded, almost cherubic presence, like someone had taken a Renaissance angel and dropped him into modern Paris with a deadline. His face was round and soft, dominated by a high, broad forehead and large, expressive dark brown eyes that missed nothing. They were the kind of eyes that had seen talent bloom and die in the same afternoon.
His hair was thinning and receding, light brown threaded with gray, more volume at the sides than on top. He wore wire-rimmed glasses that sat low on his nose, adding to the distracted professor vibe, and when the light hit him just right I could see the faint shadow of stubble along his jaw—clean-shaven in theory, human in practice.
He was in his early fifties, maybe, dressed like he’d forgotten his clothes were supposed to make an impression. Rumpled jacket. Soft sweater. Button-down that had seen better irons. His posture was slightly stooped, as if his thoughts were heavier than his body.
He didn’t look powerful.
He radiated it.
His gaze snapped to me, sharp and immediate, as he finished glaring at the phone like it might argue back. His head canted slightly to the side—not curious, exactly. Assessing.
We locked eyes.
“Well?” he said, switching to accented English without missing a beat. “Are you coming in or not?”
Chapter
Three
RACHEL
René Dubois did not invite me to sit down.
He walked back into his office, already talking, already moving, assuming I would follow. I did. The door shut behind us with a soft click that felt louder than it should have.
“Bag,” he said, pointing.
I slid it off my shoulder and set it on the chair he still hadn’t offered me. He circled his desk like it was something to be conquered, not used.
“You are late,” he said.
“I’m not,” I replied before my brain could intervene. “I was told ten.”
He glanced at his watch. Thin smile. A test.
“Hm.”
That was it. No apology. No acknowledgment. Just confirmation that I was, for the moment, still in the room.
“Camera,” he said.
