Chapter 11 The Strange Man

• Antoine had faced critics with sharpened knives, investors who wanted to gut his vision, and even the kind of disasters in the kitchen that could ruin reputations overnight. None of it unnerved him the way a single name glowing on Élise’s phone did.
• The screen went dark before he could commit the letters to memory, but the image burned in his mind. Not family;he knew the names of her parents, her siblings. Not a friend;her circle was small and private. Whoever it was, it didn’t belong.
• His chest tightened.