Perfectly Incompatible

SOONER THAN EXPECTED

“The board moved everything up,” Philippe Beaumont said.

Sebastian recognized the crisis before his father finished the sentence. It always began the same way: a closed door, reports spread across a desk, and a voice trying too hard to sound controlled.

Philippe stood in front of the windows of his Manhattan office. Sales reports, printed emails, and a document stamped with the seal of Maison Beaumont France covered the desk behind him.

Sebastian did not sit.

He had learned that sitting across from Philippe during bad news could turn a business conversation into a confession. Standing let Sebastian think in decisions instead.

Flights.

Meetings.

People.

Dates.

It kept emotion somewhere it could not interfere.

Philippe knew him well enough to notice.

“You’re allowed to be angry,” he said.

“I’m not angry.”

“That means you are.”

Sebastian held his father’s gaze. He did not want to fight with a man who already looked exhausted. He also did not want to say that he had spent years preparing to inherit a company, but not the consequences of every one of Philippe’s crises.

“You told me two weeks.”

“The board moved the meeting.”

“Why?”

Philippe took too long to answer.

Two days earlier, Isabelle Beaumont had asked Sebastian not to push his father. She had used a phrase that irritated him more than he had admitted.

He’s doing what he can.

Sebastian knew that was true.

He also knew that when a family business carried your surname, the lines between illness, guilt, and work blurred until they became dangerous.

The European board had first flagged minor irregularities, then delays, then a string of erratic decisions from Philippe that had fed rumors. Nothing was beyond repair yet. But Sebastian had seen his father go from brilliant certainty to an entire night without sleep and then walk into work the next morning as though both states were equally sustainable.

“I don’t need you protecting me from information,” Sebastian said.

Philippe braced both hands on the desk.

“I’m not protecting you.”

“Then tell me what I don’t know.”

His father listed two resignations, one frozen negotiation, and the possibility that the board would demand a visible temporary change in leadership.

Sebastian listened without interrupting.

The worse the information became, the calmer he looked.

People admired that about him.

Lately, he had begun to suspect it was not always a virtue.

“They want certainty,” Philippe said.

“About the company or about you?”

His father turned.

For years, Philippe had been the kind of man who could walk into a room and make everyone believe any problem could be solved. In recent months, that energy arrived less often. He slept too little. Worked too much. Made mistakes he had never made before.

“Both,” he admitted.

Sebastian looked at the documents.

He did not need to read them to understand the stakes. Maison Beaumont was still powerful, but the European division was restructuring and two major investors were threatening to pull out. The press knew only fragments of the story.

“You want me there sooner.”

“I need you there sooner.”

The distinction mattered.

Sebastian rested one hand on the back of a chair.

“How long?”

“I don’t know.”

“Give me an estimate.”

“Months. Maybe longer.”

Serena entered his mind without permission.

The greenhouse.

The necklace.

The way she had said what? when she realized he was looking at her.

Sebastian’s jaw tightened.

“All right.”

Philippe studied him.

“I don’t want you canceling everything you had here.”

Sebastian thought of Serena immediately.

“I’m not canceling everything.”

“Good. A company can ask for everything and never realize when it has asked too much. People have limits.”

Sebastian almost asked when Philippe had learned that particular lesson.

He decided now was not the time.

His father waited a moment before continuing.

“You don’t have to answer tonight.”

“I already did.”

“Sebastian.”

“What changes if I wait until tomorrow?”

Nothing.

That was the problem.

Philippe stepped closer.

“I never wanted this to land on you this early.”

Sebastian almost smiled.

“Then you should have had a plan that didn’t depend on me.”

Philippe looked down.

The guilt that crossed his face made Sebastian regret the sentence.

He did not take it back.

When he left the office, Julian Hayes was leaning against the wall with a coffee he had probably stolen from someone else’s desk.

“You look like a funeral,” Julian said.

“What are you doing here?”

“Your sister asked me to drive her to a sound check, then decided she’d rather take the subway because, quote, ‘real people use public transportation.’ So I came to bother you instead.”

Sebastian kept walking.

Julian fell into step beside him.

“Paris,” Sebastian said.

Julian stopped joking.

“When?”

“I don’t know yet. Soon. Sooner than I wanted.”

“Shit.”

“Yes.”

“Does Serena know?”

Sebastian looked at him.

“Why would she need to?”

Julian took a drink of coffee.

“So we’re pretending.”

“We’re not pretending anything.”

“Last night you almost burned a hole through Kingsley when he made that comment about her age.”

“I did nothing.”

“Exactly. Your specialty.”

Sebastian stopped.

“She’s twenty.”

“Thank you for the legal update.”

“Julian.”

“What? You want me to say she’s still Oliver’s little sister? Because last night, you stopped believing that yourself.”

Sebastian said nothing.

Julian exhaled.

“I’m not telling you to blow up your life for her.”

“Good.”

“I’m telling you not to confuse self-control with honesty.”

The sentence hung between them.

Sebastian hated the rare moments when Julian stopped performing as a charming i***t and said something useful.

“I’m not starting something when I don’t even know how long I have left in New York,” Sebastian said.

“That can be reasonable.”

“Thank you.”

“But if she walks away thinking nothing happened because you decide silence is easier, that’s different.”

Sebastian pulled out his phone.

A message from Serena was waiting.

Are you going to keep pretending nothing happened last night?

Julian caught the change in his expression.

“Ah,” he said. “Life solved the argument for us.”

Sebastian pocketed the phone.

Before returning to the elevators, he passed through Maison Beaumont’s design floor. People were still working despite the hour. Fabric swatches, campaign boards, packaging prototypes, and half-finished presentations covered the tables.

Sebastian had grown up in that world and, for years, had assumed knowing it meant loving it.

At eighteen, he learned those were different things.

He did love strategy. He loved taking an old brand and forcing it to move forward without stripping away the thing that made it recognizable. He loved understanding markets, artists, and the quiet negotiations between heritage and relevance.

He also knew what a surname could demand.

Philippe had built Maison Beaumont into an extension of himself. When he was well, everything felt possible. When he stopped being well, the whole system began to shake.

Sebastian did not want to repeat that pattern.

So he built rules.

Never promise what you cannot deliver.

Never improvise with other people’s money.

Never make a personal choice that forces hundreds of people to absorb the cost.

Serena did not fit into any of those rules.

Margot was waiting by the elevator with a guitar case slung over one shoulder.

“Julian says you’re leaving sooner than expected.”

Sebastian pressed the call button.

“Julian talks too much.”

“We know. Did you want to leave this soon?”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“That answer means no.”

“It means the schedule changed.”

Margot folded her arms.

“You know you can be worried about Dad and still be furious with him, right?”

Sebastian looked at her.

“What does that have to do with anything?”

“You always turn two emotions into one task.”

The elevator arrived.

“Did you study therapy this week too?”

“No. I just grew up with you.”

She stepped inside. Before the doors closed, she added, “And if the other problem is named Serena, try talking to her before you decide for both of you what this means.”

“I’m not deciding anything for her.”

“Then ask her.”

Sebastian said nothing.

When he was alone again, he looked at Serena’s message.

Her question sat there, waiting for an answer he could not delegate.

He could type something simple.

Nothing happened.

A lie.

He could tell her she had read too much into the moment.

Another lie.

Or he could tell her the truth.

That when he saw her beside that necklace in a dark dress, focused and self-possessed, something he had kept carefully filed away for years had stopped obeying him.

That he had spent too long telling himself she was too young, too close, too connected to Oliver, too complicated.

And that none of those excuses worked anymore.

But soon, he would be on a plane.

Sooner than he wanted to admit.

Sebastian knew too well what happened when a person acted on desire and left everyone else to manage the consequences. He had spent his adolescence watching his father do that.

He had promised himself he would never become that man.

He typed:

We need to talk.

Serena replied almost immediately.

That sounds promising.