Alexandre's POV
I had closed nine-figure deals without losing sleep.
I had sat across negotiating tables from men twice my age who had spent careers mastering the art of psychological pressure and felt nothing but cold clarity. I had built a company from borrowed money and nerve and the specific hunger of someone who understood exactly what losing felt like and had decided, at twenty-two, never to feel it again.
I had not, in thirty-three years, been nervous.
I was nervous.
It was Saturday morning, 9:47 a.m., and I was standing in the kitchen of my townhouse in the 16th arrondissement looking at the breakfast I had asked my housekeeper, Sylvie, to prepare — and then sent her home because having staff present felt wrong for this particular morning — and wondering if a two-year-old woul
