Chapter 34 The Investor's Dinner

• The ballroom shimmered like a glass of chilled champagne — gold lights gliding across crystal chandeliers, the air scented with truffles and ambition. Every guest was someone worth knowing, every handshake a transaction, every smile a strategy.
• And at the far end of the hall, Élise Dubois stood behind a sleek marble counter, her chef’s whites spotless, her expression unreadable.
• It had been three weeks since she returned to La Lumière. She was no longer “Antoine Moreau’s discovery.” She was the sous-chef who kept her distance, whose knife never wavered, whose silence cut cleaner than any blade.