Claire's POV
Arnaud Petit was not what I expected.
I had built a picture from the project files — coordinator, month one, trusted completely by Alexandre — and the picture had been of someone older. More institutional. The kind of person who had been doing the same careful methodical work for twenty years and wore it visibly.
Arnaud was thirty-one. Slight, serious, with the focused energy of someone who cared about his work in the specific way of people who had chosen it rather than fallen into it. He arrived at the Laurent Group offices at three p.m. with a project binder under his arm that he had clearly brought without being asked and set on the conference room table with the instinct of someone who understood that this conversation was going to need documentation.
I liked him immed
