He looked toward the signed wager.
Then toward the research assessment.
And realized the woman he'd tried to humiliate might have done him a favor he was too arrogant to recognize.
But his next decision would determine whether he treated that discovery as a reason to correct the truth or as another problem to hide.
Antoine spent the next forty minutes staring at the original spreadsheet.
At sixty-one, he had learned to recognize several kinds of fear.
There was the ordinary fear of losing money, which he believed could usually be managed with planning and patience. There was the fear of public embarrassment, which he'd learned to conceal behind an expensive suit and a carefully practiced smile.
And then there was the fear that arrived when a person discovered that the foundations of his confidence weren't as solid as he'd believed.
That was what he felt now.
He had spent years telling investors that Delcourt Group succeeded because it understood risk better than its competitors.
He wasn't a reckless gambler.
Or so he liked to think.
He commissioned research.
Hired specialists.
Held long meetings.
And expected his executives to tell him when the numbers didn't support an ambitious idea.
But he also remembered several conversations with Luc over the previous six months.
Conversations in which he'd complained that the project wasn't progressing fast enough.
That investors were becoming too cautious.
That competitors might take advantage of delays.
On one occasion, he'd told Luc that he didn't want another presentation filled with uncertainties.
He wanted clear commitments.
Now he wondered whether Luc had understood that as a request for better commercial progress or a demand for more reassuring numbers regardless of what the documents actually said.
The distinction mattered.
But it didn't entirely excuse Antoine.
He was the chairman.
He had chosen the people presenting the information.
And he'd been pleased enough with the favorable forecasts that he'd stopped asking how some of the apparent progress had been achieved.
Luc stood beside the window, waiting.
Finally, Antoine spoke.
“Who else knows about these classifications?”
The financial director hesitated.
“The modeling team.”
“Names.”
Luc looked uncomfortable.
“Several analysts worked on the schedules.”
Antoine folded his arms.
“Did any of them raise concerns?”
Silence.
Antoine stared.
“Luc.”
“One analyst asked whether the classification should remain conditional.”
“And?”
Luc swallowed.