The Billionaire Ex-Wife's Return (Cynthia and Ethan) novel Chapter 52

Cynthia’s POV

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It’s been up to ten hours since I’d landed in Paris, and I hadn’t eaten a proper meal or slept a single minute.

My eyes burned from staring at screens. My back ached from hunching over the security monitors. The coffee I’d been drinking had long since stopped working, now it just made my hands shake and my stomach churn.

But I couldn’t stop. Not until I found something.

The tech room was cramped and stuffy, lit only by the glow of multiple monitors showing different camera angles from throughout the restaurant. Louis sat on my left, another tech guy named Thomas on my right. Both of them looked as exhausted

as I felt.

“Maybe we should take a break, madame,” Louis suggested gently. “We’ve been at this for nine hours…”

“No,” I said flatly, rubbing my eyes. “We keep going.”

But even as I said it, doubt was creeping in. We’d gone through weeks of footage from the backup system. Hours and hours of mundane kitchen activity. Staff coming and going. Deliveries being received. Nothing suspicious. Nothing that explained how rat droppings and expired ingredients had mysteriously appeared in my kitchen.

Maybe I was wrong. Maybe there was no sabotage. Maybe somehow, impossibly, we’d actually failed.

I was about to suggest we take a fifteen–minute break when something on the screen caught my eye.

“Wait,” I said sharply. “Go back.”

Louis rewound the footage. It was from three nights ago, around 2 AM. The kitchen was dark, the restaurant closed.

And someone was moving through the shadows.

“There,” I breathed, leaning forward. “Who is that?”

The figure was careful, staying out of direct light, but the backup cameras had better resolution than I’d expected. As Louis enhanced the image, the face became clearer.

Felicia.

My kitchen store manager. She’d been with Maison Cynclair for two years. Reliable, quiet, good at her job and apparently, sneaking into my restaurant in the middle of the night.

I watched, my heart pounding, as Felicia moved through the dark kitchen with practiced ease. She was carrying a bag something heavy, from the way she moved. She went to the dry storage area first, reaching into the bag and placing something on the shelves. Then she moved to the walk–in refrigerator, doing the same.

She was planting the evidence.

“Mon Dieu,” Louis whispered.

I held up my hand, silencing him. “Keep watching.”

The footage continued. Felicia finished her task and slipped back out the way she’d come. The timestamp showed 2:47 AM.

But then, less than twenty minutes later, she was back.

This time, her movements were different. Frantic. Nervous. She kept looking over her shoulder as she moved through the kitchen, collecting everything she’d just placed.

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Taking it all back.

In under ten minutes, she’d removed every piece of evidence she’d planted and disappeared into the night.

I sat back, my mind reeling.

She’d planted the evidence. And then she’d removed it.

Why?

Did she have a change of heart? Did she panic? Did someone tell her to abort the mission?

“Madame,” Thomas said carefully. “What do you want us to do?”

“Nothing,” I said, my voice quiet but firm. “Say nothing to anyone. Not a word about what we just saw. Understood?”

Both men nodded, their expressions grave.

I stood up slowly, my legs stiff from sitting so long. “I need to think. Stay here. Keep reviewing the footage, see if there are any other incidents we missed. But do not speak to anyone about Felicia.”

“Yes, madame.”

I left the tech room and stepped back into the main restaurant area, where the rest of my staff was working on cleaning and organizing. The protesters had finally dispersed a few hours ago, and everyone was focused on getting Maison Cynclair back in order.

Including Felicia.

She was near the storage area, helping Sophie reorganize supplies. From this distance, she looked normal. Like the reliable employee I’d always thought she was.

But now that I was watching I noticed things I’d missed before.

The way her hands trembled slightly when she reached for items on the shelf.

The way her eyes darted around the room every few seconds.

The way she flinched when someone walked too close to her.

She looked guilty.

I moved closer, pretending to inspect the progress of the cleanup while keeping Felicia in my peripheral vision. She must have sensed my attention because she suddenly went very still, her shoulders tensing.

“Madame Cynclair,” she said, her voice a touch too bright. “The storage area is almost reorganized. We should be back to full capacity by tomorrow.”

“Good,” I said evenly. “Thank you, Felicia.”

She nodded quickly and turned back to her work, but I caught the slight tremor in her hands as she moved boxes.

If she was the saboteur, why remove the evidence? The health inspector had still found something, which meant either she’d missed some of what she’d planted, or someone else had planted additional evidence after her.

I needed answers. But confronting Felicia directly might spook her, might make her run or clam up or warn whoever she was working with.

I needed to be smart about this.

I pulled out my phone and texted Nathaniel: [Found something. One of my staff planted evidence but then removed it. Need to investigate carefully. Will call soon.]

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