Thad’s voice dropped. “If you used your position to pressure her—”
“You should be careful with your words.”
I rose from my chair slowly. Thad was tall, broad-shouldered, conventionally attractive in the way wealthy young men often were when raised with trainers and leisure, but he had nevertruly been forced to occupy a room with someone who did not need his approval. It showed.
“Are you threatening me?” he asked.
“No. I’m advising you not to make accusations you cannot support.”
“My family has supported this university for years.”
“So has mine.”
That stopped him.
The Moreau name had a way of doing that in rooms built by old money. It wasn’t just the fact that my name was more respectable than Rodriguez’s. Bellamont knew my family in its bones. Their name was on donor walls, research buildings, endowed chairs, and old correspondence in archives no one read unless they wanted to know who had owned what. I had earned my position as the youngest professor in the department through grants that dwarfed anything the Rodriguez vineyards had ever funnelled into this place. Thad knew it too. I saw him remember.
His expression hardened to cover the calculation.
“You think that protects you?”
“No,” I said. “I think it complicates your fantasy of yourself as the first rich man in Blackwater to assert your influence.”
His mouth tightened. For the first time, I saw something in him that might have been useful if he had been better trained. Anger, pride, possessiveness, and beneath all of it, something very close to genuine hurt.
He had loved her, perhaps. In his way.
The thought irritated me more than expected. Not because it threatened me. It didn’t. Whatever Thad had felt for Céline existed inside a structure too shallow to survive knowing her fully. But there was still something unpleasant about the idea that he had touched even the version of her he understood badly.
“She was fine before you,” he said.
I laughed. “No, she was not.”
“You don’t get to decide that.”
He stared at me. I let the silence hold. Céline had not been fine before me. She had stood beside him at dinners, worn his bracelet, accepted his family’s approval, and let him imagine that steadiness was intimacy. He had not noticed that she was starving for more.
Thad looked toward the window, jaw tight, and for a brief moment, he seemed younger again.
Then his expression closed. “If you hurt her,” he said, “I’ll make sure everyone knows exactly what kind of man you are.”
I smiled faintly. “That would require you to know.”
He stared at me for one long second. Then he turned and opened the door.
Céline stood on the other side.
She stood in the corridor with her bag over one shoulder, still damp from the rain, wearing a cream coat over a black blouse and skirt. Her face displayed shock.
Thad looked at her, and whatever remained of his pride failed him for half a second. “Céline.”
She looked between us. “What are you doing here?”
The question was directed at him, but her eyes returned to me before he answered. His face tightened again. “I wanted to understand what happened.”
Her mouth softened with something like guilt, but only briefly.
“Thad…”
