Chapter 35 Bitter Wine

• Morning light slanted across the restaurant’s glass walls, tinting La Lumière in soft gold. The air was alive again — knives flashing, pans sizzling, Camille’s voice slicing through the clatter of the kitchen like a bell.
• Three weeks had passed since the Investor’s Dinner. And yet, the city’s food columns were still buzzing about it, not the success of the event, but about the “unmistakable tension between Chef Antoine Moreau and his former protégé, Élise Dubois. Camille slapped down a tray of vegetables beside Élise. “Congratulations. You and Antoine just got declared ‘culinary dynamite.’ Not sure if they meant your food or your tension.”
• Élise smirked faintly, slicing into a tomato with surgical precision. “Both, probably.”