Married To My Enemy

Chapter 2: The Man Across the Table

Camille’s POV

Three weeks after the ball, my father is gone.

It happens fast. A heart attack in his sleep, no warning, no last conversation, nothing I can point to and say I should have seen it coming. One week he is still walking into the office every morning, tired but too stubborn to slow down no matter how many times I ask him to. The next week I am standing at his funeral in the same city where I once wore a mask and forgot, for a single night, that any of this was falling apart.

Grief does not leave much room for numbers. The numbers don’t matter. I’m back at the office three days after we bury him because the board won’t wait any longer, and I’m the only Laurent left to sit behind his desk.

Two point three million euros doesn’t shrink just because I’m the one holding it now.

Our largest lender pulled out the day news of his death hit the papers. A dead founder and a shaky balance sheet is exactly the story that makes people move their money fast, and word always gets out. I’ve called every bank in Paris that still returns my calls, and only one name keeps coming back from every direction.

Marchetti Group.

I hate the sound of it. My father used to flinch every time it was said in this house, a reaction that has lasted twenty years. It comes from a business war I only partly understand, something about a hostile takeover, a betrayal, and a rivalry that never truly ended, even after both sides stopped speaking about it.

But Marchetti Group is the only firm still willing to talk.

“They want a meeting,” I tell Elodie. “Tomorrow. Milan.”

“Are you sure you are ready for that? It has barely been three weeks.”

“I don’t have the luxury of waiting until I am ready.”

I fly to Milan the next morning with a folder of numbers I already know by heart and a headache that has refused to leave me since the funeral. The Marchetti Group building rises out of the skyline like it exists specifically to remind you how small you are,glass and steel stretching so high into the sky that I have to lean back just to see where it ends.

The lobby is marble and quiet and expensive in a way that does not need to draw attention to itself. A woman at the front desk checks my name on a list and leads me directly to a private elevator.

“Mr Marchetti is expecting you,” she says.

Mr Marchetti. I know the version of him the newspapers have created. Cold, precise and exceptionally good at taking control of companies that are already falling apart. He is the son of my father’s old rival, now running the empire his father built with the same reputation but none of the mercy people once claimed his father had.

The elevator opens onto a private floor, glass walled offices looking out over the city, and a man is already waiting near the window with his back to me.

“Miss Laurent” he says, without turning. “Thank you for coming.”

“You did not give me much choice.”

He turns.

The floor tilts under me.

I know that jaw. I know that mouth. I know the exact shade of grey his eyes turn when they are studying something they intend to win.

It’s him.

No mask this time, and it doesn’t matter, because I’d know him with or without one, standing there in a dark suit with an expression that tells me he recognized me exactly as fast as I recognized.

“You,” I say, before I can stop myself.

Something flickers behind his eyes. Not shock, quite.

Closer to a man doing very fast math.

“Miss Laurent,” he says again, slower, like the name’s a warning he’s giving himself as much as me.

“You knew,” I say. “This whole time?”

“No.”Flat, controlled, but there’s something moving underneath it that wasn’t there a second ago. “I didn’t.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“I do not particularly care whether you do.”

It stings more than it should, considering three weeks ago this man had his hands in my hair and my name meant nothing to either of us on purpose.

“This is insane.I can’t do business with you.”

“You flew to Milan to do exactly that.”

“That was before I knew Marchetti Group belonged to you.”

“It’s always belonged to me,” he says. “You simply never asked whose name was on the building before you needed something from it.”

This one lands,mostly because it’s true.

I straighten, forcing my voice steady even though nothing in me feels steady at all.

“Nico Marchetti,” I say, testing the name out loud for the first time.

“Camille Laurent,”he says back, and for a moment something almost human crosses his face. “I didn’t expect this.”

“Neither did I.”

“I assume the mask wasn’t purely for the aesthetic.”

“I assume you had your own reasons.”

He studies me for a long moment, the same way he did on that terrace, like he’s reading something I haven’t said yet.

“Sit,” he says finally, gesturing to the chair across from his desk. “We have business, regardless of the rest of it.”

I sit because I don’t have another option. My father’s company doesn’t survive on pride alone.

“Laurent Ateliers needs its loan restructured within the month,” I say, sliding the folder across.“Reasonable terms. Nothing more.”

He doesn’t open it.

“I know your numbers, Miss Laurent. I’ve known them for weeks.”

Cold runs through my chest.

“You’ve been watching my company.”

“I watch every company that might actually need me.”

“That is not an answer.”

“It’s the only one you’re getting.”

I press my palms flat against my knees to keep my hands from shaking. This isn’t the man from the terrace. This is someone colder, sharper, someone who speaks like every word has already been weighed for advantage before it leaves his mouth.

“Will you help us or not?” I say.

He leans back, studying me.

“There may be a solution,” he says. Though I suspect you won’t like it.”

“Try me”.

The door opens before he can more. A calm, dark haired man steps in carrying a folder of his own, glancing between us with the practiced blankness of someone used to walking into tense rooms.

“Luca,” Nico says, without looking away from me.

“Miss Laurent’s father’s estate documents. You said there was something worth discussing.”

Luca hesitates, glancing at me with something close to pity.

“You haven’t told her yet,” he says.

My stomach drops.

“Told me what?”

Nico’s jaw tightens, the first real c***k I’ve seen in him since I walked in.

“Your father’s will,” he says slowly, “was filed with a clause neither of us knew existed until this morning.”

“What clause?”

Luca slides a single page across the desk toward me instead of answering.

I read it twice before the words make sense.

Majority control of Laurent Ateliers transfers to the board unless Camille Laurent is legally married before her twenty fifth birthday.

My birthday’s in six weeks.

I look up slowly, my heart pounding in my ears, and find Nico watching me with an expression I can’t read at all.

“There’s a solution to your loan, and a solution to this,” he says quietly. “They happen to be the same one.”

I already know what he’s about to say. Every part of me wants to stand up and walk out of this office and never come back.

I don’t move.