Part One: The Order of Things
Alexandre Delorme had built his mornings into a system.
He arrived at the office at seven forty-five, which was forty-five minutes before the first scheduled meeting and fifteen minutes before his assistant, Marguerite, who arrived at eight and had the coffee ready by eight-oh-five. In those forty-five minutes, he read the overnight reports, reviewed his calendar, and completed whatever thinking he needed to do without interruption. It was the best part of the day — the part that belonged entirely to him.
The tower at 12 Avenue de la Défense was glass and steel and thirty-two floors, and his office occupied a corner of the twenty-eighth, with windows on two sides that looked out over Paris in the way that views from height looked out over cities: with a perspective that reduced everything to pattern and removed the individual human content that made things complicated. From twenty-eight floors up, the city was beautiful and manageable. Alexandre had always appreciated this about the view.
He was forty-one years old. He had run Delorme Capital Management for six years, since his father’s health had required him to step back from the role they had both expected Alexandre to eventually inherit. Eventually had arrived sooner than planned, which was how most things arrived — sooner than planned and without the preparation you had imagined having. Alexandre had managed. He had managed extremely well, by the numbers. The company was larger now than when he had taken it, more profitable, operating in eight markets instead of four.
He was aware that he had become, in the process, someone that people described as cold.
He was not certain this was wrong.
He understood coldness, in a professional context, as a form of clarity — the absence of interference from emotional considerations that had no relevance to the decision at hand. In the context of capital management, in the context of a company with four hundred and twelve employees and clients in seventeen countries, emotional interference was not a luxury he could afford. He made clear decisions. He maintained clear distance. He produced clear results.
This was, he had decided, what leadership required.
On the Monday morning in question — the third Monday of November, with a gray Paris sky pressing low against the tower windows — he had arrived at seven forty-three, read the overnight reports from the Singapore and New York offices, reviewed his calendar, and was in the middle of a decision about a particular fund restructuring when the door to his office opened.
He did not look up immediately. The door should not have opened — Marguerite knew not to interrupt before eight-oh-five — but doors opened sometimes for reasons that were not emergencies, and he had learned to finish his current thought before responding.
He finished the thought.
He looked up.
