THE PADDOCK CONTRACT PRINCESS

CHAPTER 19

The Woman Before Her

The name Camille Laurent stayed with Sofia through the following morning, not because she believed every warning, but because Camille had known Lucien before the contract existed. Sofia had built her life around recognizing danger before it could become dependence, and Camille represented a kind of danger she understood immediately. She was polished, connected, and confident enough to speak about Lucien as though she still had a claim on his history. Sofia could tolerate enemies more easily than women who seemed to know the man beneath the armor.

Lucien noticed her silence during breakfast but did not pressure her to explain it. Instead, he placed a folder beside her coffee and said it contained everything he could legally access about Camille’s former role with Vantari. Sofia opened it and found financial records, old correspondence, and photographs from the years when Lucien had first taken over parts of the family business. The documents showed Camille had been trusted by Henri, but they also showed several transfers into an investment account that had later disappeared.

Sofia pointed to the transactions and asked why Lucien had never mentioned them. He said because the account had been investigated years ago and Camille had been cleared of wrongdoing, although the circumstances had never satisfied him. Sofia studied the dates and noticed that several transfers occurred during the same period when Mateo Reyes was working on Project Sovereign. Lucien immediately understood what she was seeing, and the room seemed to become colder around them.

They spent the morning comparing the records with the fragments Sofia had recovered from Mateo’s notebook. The dates did not prove Camille had been involved, but they established that her investment network had moved money through one of the same shell companies now connected to Sovereign. Lucien said coincidence was possible, while Sofia answered that coincidence became less convincing every time it appeared beside a hidden file. Before they could investigate further, Margaux arrived with news that a journalist had obtained another photograph of Mateo and Elias.

The photograph was older than the one Sofia had found, and this time Mateo was holding a prototype component Sofia recognized from her father’s notes. Elias stood beside him, while Henri watched from the background with an expression that looked almost approving. Lucien admitted he had never seen the photograph, which disturbed Sofia because Henri had kept an extensive archive. Margaux said the image had been sent anonymously to three major F1 publications, suggesting someone wanted Mateo’s connection to Vantari exposed.

Sofia asked whether Camille could have leaked it, and Lucien said he had no evidence. Camille appeared at the paddock later that afternoon as though summoned by the question, and she approached Sofia alone. She said she had no interest in competing with Sofia because Lucien had already made his choice, but she wanted Sofia to understand that Lucien’s greatest weakness had always been his belief that he could protect everyone. Sofia asked whether Camille had ever loved him, and Camille answered that love was not the problem; power was.

Camille explained that Lucien had grown up believing every relationship carried a price, because Henri taught him that affection made people negotiable. She said Lucien had learned to leave first, control the terms, and call the result strength. Sofia listened carefully, then asked why Camille had stayed with him if she knew that. Camille admitted she had believed she could change him, and that belief had nearly destroyed them both.

The conversation left Sofia unsettled because Camille sounded less like a rival and more like a witness. When Sofia returned to the garage, she found Lucien arguing with Elias near the engineering entrance. Elias accused him of allowing Sofia too much access to confidential information, while Lucien said Sofia had earned the right to investigate anything connected to her father. Elias warned that the board would not tolerate another scandal, and Lucien answered that the board could tolerate whatever he decided to defend.

Sofia waited until Elias left before approaching him. Lucien looked angry, but not at her, and he told her the board wanted the engagement reviewed because Sofia’s presence was becoming commercially inconvenient. Sofia asked whether he intended to end the contract, and he said he would never make that decision because someone else threatened him into it. The answer should have reassured her, yet it frightened her because it sounded increasingly like the contract was becoming something neither of them understood.

That night, Sofia found a message waiting on her phone from an unknown number. It contained a photograph of Camille standing outside the old Milan research facility, dated twenty years earlier, with Mateo’s car visible behind her. Beneath the photograph was a sentence saying that Camille was not the woman Sofia needed to fear, because she had once tried to warn Mateo about what was happening inside Vantari. Sofia showed Lucien the message, and for the first time he looked genuinely afraid of the answer they might find.

Lucien enlarged the photograph until the details became blurred, then recognized the vehicle parked behind Camille. It belonged to Mateo, but the license plate showed a registration number Lucien had seen in an old Vantari security report. He said the report concerned an unauthorized entry into the Milan facility during the week Sovereign began. Sofia asked who had entered, and Lucien admitted the report had been sealed by Henri before he was old enough to challenge the decision.

Sofia felt the familiar anger rising, but this time it was mixed with something harder to name. If Camille had tried to warn Mateo, then the story Sofia had inherited was missing another person, another motive, and another betrayal. Lucien reached for her hand, stopped before touching her, and waited until she closed the distance herself. When their fingers finally met, Sofia realized that whatever waited inside the old facility, she no longer wanted to face it without him.

That realization frightened her more than any threat.