There was a pause.
Then Camila answered.
“That's a different question.”
Elena nodded.
“I know.”
The professor continued.
“You should make that decision based on your financial needs, your academic workload, and whether the working conditions are acceptable. Not simply because you're angry today.”
Elena took a breath.
“Okay.”
Then Camila added something that made her smile.
“And if you decide to leave, do it because you've chosen a better opportunity. Not because Antoine Delcourt made you feel unwelcome in a room you had every right to enter.”
Elena laughed quietly.
“I'll remember that.”
But before Elena could make a decision, Antoine Delcourt's office contacted her again.
This time, the message was very different.
It came from his personal legal representative, Marianne Vasseur.
The email acknowledged that Antoine had made the wager and indicated that he wished to arrange payment through a properly documented process.
It also stated that the prior legal communication concerning alleged unauthorized disclosure was being reviewed and should not be treated as establishing wrongdoing.
Elena read it twice.
Then sent it to the university lawyer and the adviser assisting her with the employment dispute.
For the first time, the man who'd tried to turn her into entertainment was being forced to consider how his words looked when written down.
And somewhere inside the Delcourt Group, the financial review was becoming far more serious than Antoine had expected.
Luc Moreau had been removed from the preparation of the disputed financing materials.
Independent specialists were preserving electronic records and comparing versions of the project model.
The commercial team was asked to provide the underlying agreements for every major revenue assumption.
And the investors were no longer willing to accept broad promises that the details would be resolved later.
The deeper the reviewers looked, the more complicated the project became.
Some agreements were sound.
Some projections were reasonable.
But others had been presented more confidently than the evidence allowed.
There were also unexplained adjustments to cost assumptions and a proposed commercial arrangement involving an intermediary whose financial interests hadn't been fully disclosed.
No single discovery automatically proved a criminal offense.
But the pattern was serious enough to require further review.
Antoine began receiving difficult questions from people who had previously treated him as untouchable.
His own lawyers wanted explanations.
The board wanted documents.
Investors wanted revised forecasts.
And several junior analysts described earlier concerns that hadn't reached the people responsible for approving the final presentation.