Chương 5
One described unpaid invoices.
Another mentioned a project in Marseille that had collected deposits before permits were secured.
The third said Adrien had a habit of borrowing credibility from wealthy people and presenting introductions as partnerships.
None of it proved assault. None of it proved fraud against Beaumont Hotels.
It changed the atmosphere around him.
Lucien wanted Claire moved to his villa in Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat. Claire returned instead to her apartment in Nice.
Her father arrived twenty minutes later.
He stood in her living room, looking at the small oval dining table, the books stacked on the floor, and the cheap ceramic bowl filled with keys as if he had entered a student residence by mistake.
“You cannot secure this building,” he said.
“It has a door.”
“It has one doorman covering two entrances.”
“He knows everyone’s dog.”
“That is not security.”
Claire lowered herself onto the sofa. “I am not moving into the villa.”
“Why?”
“Because you will turn it into a command center.”
“It should be a command center.”
“It is a house.”
“It has secure communications.”
“It also has six guest rooms and no food except olives.”
Lucien looked offended. “There is food.”
“You have mustard from 2022.”
“The staff shops daily.”
“For themselves, apparently.”
He took off his coat and placed it over the back of a chair. “You are joking because you do not wish to discuss the danger.”
“I am joking because I am tired.”
“Adrien has access to private information.”
“Not to this apartment.”
“You cannot know that.”
“And you cannot solve every uncertainty by putting guards in the hallway.”
“I can reduce risk.”
“You can increase walls.”
Lucien’s expression hardened. “You called me.”
“Yes.”
“You called me because you were afraid.”
“I called you because I knew he would be afraid of you.”
The truth silenced them both.
Claire looked down at her hands.
It was not a noble reason. She had not called her father for comfort or because she trusted him to understand. She had used his name as a weapon because Adrien had believed she would be too ashamed to do it.
Lucien sat in the chair opposite her.
“At least you are honest,” he said.
“Not always.”
“No.”
She looked up.
He rubbed one thumb across the side of his index finger, an old habit from the years when he still smoked. He had quit after her mother died and kept the hand movement.
“I was not a good father when you needed me,” he said.
Claire waited for the rest.
Lucien rarely stopped after admitting fault. He usually followed it with context until the apology became a lecture about logistics.
This time he did not.
The refrigerator hummed in the kitchen.
A scooter passed below the window.
Claire leaned back carefully. “I loved him.”
Lucien looked toward the dark balcony doors.
“I know,” he said.
“No, you knew I was defying you. That isn’t the same thing.”
He accepted that with a small movement of his head.
Claire told him how she had met Adrien during a charity auction at the hotel in Antibes. He had not approached her with a business proposal. He had asked why she was hiding behind a service door with a plate of miniature pastries.
She had told him she was avoiding a man who wanted to explain cryptocurrency.
Adrien had taken one pastry, tasted it, and said, “Too much lavender.”
She had laughed because the pastry chef was famous for using too much lavender and no one in the hotel dared say so.
For weeks afterward, Adrien had seemed to want nothing from her except time. He sent photographs of badly translated menus. He remembered that she hated lilies. He waited outside a dental appointment because she had once admitted, drunkenly, that she was afraid of anesthesia.
When she told him she was Lucien Beaumont’s daughter, he had gone quiet.
She had mistaken the silence for humility.
Later he said he wanted their relationship separate from her name. He refused expensive trips. He insisted on paying for dinners he could barely afford. When Lucien’s investigators began asking questions about his company, Adrien presented himself as the target of a father who could not tolerate losing control.
Some of that had been true.
That was what made the lie durable.
“He showed me an email,” Claire said. “It looked as if it came from your office. It said any bank doing business with him would lose Beaumont accounts.”
Lucien’s eyes narrowed. “I sent no such email.”
“I know that now.”
“Do you have it?”
“On the phone.”
He stood too quickly, then stopped himself.
Claire watched him choose restraint.
“I will have the forensic examiner collect it tomorrow,” she said.
Lucien sat again.
“Thank you,” he said, though gratitude sounded unnatural in his mouth.
The next morning, Claire met with an independent lawyer named Miriam Cole, a British-American attorney who had built a reputation representing executives against their own family companies. She wore flat shoes, carried no visible luxury brands, and began the meeting by asking Lucien to leave.
“This is my apartment,” Claire said.
Miriam glanced around. “Then he can leave your apartment.”
Lucien looked at Claire.
She nodded.
He took his coffee and went to the balcony, closing the glass door behind him with more force than necessary.
Miriam opened a yellow legal pad.
“You have three overlapping problems,” she said. “Possible assault, possible corporate misconduct, and a paternity dispute that may or may not become hostile. Your father would like to treat them as one enemy. We will not.”
“He hasn’t said that.”
“He called me at six fifteen this morning and used the phrase coordinated response four times.”
May you like
Claire rubbed her forehead.
“First,” Miriam continued, “the assault complaint belongs to you. The company does not direct it. Your father does not direct it. Second, the phone may contain corporate evidence. We arrange a forensic copy with a written chain of custody. Third, you need family counsel separate from me.”
