Chapter 2 PARIS MADE ME A WEAPON

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The first six months in Paris, I wanted to die.

Not in a dramatic way. In a quiet, boring, practical way where you just don't see a point in waking up tomorrow.

Madame Dubois was not my fairy godmother. She was sixty-eight, chain-smoked Gauloises, lived in a 30-square-meter apartment in Le Marais on the 6th floor with no elevator, and she made me pay rent by cleaning her atelier.

Her atelier was not Maison L'Amour yet. It was "Dubois & Filles" - a tiny, dusty shop that smelled like mothballs and old perfume, where rich old French ladies came to alter their Chanel jackets from 1987.

I slept on a mattress on the floor next to the sewing machines. The roof leaked when it rained. In winter, Paris is so cold it gets inside your bones. My $200 lasted exactly four days. After that, I had nothing.

I cleaned toilets. I ripped seams. I pressed shirts for 12 hours straight until my hands blistered and bled. Madame Dubois would look at my bleeding fingers and say in French, "Bon. Now you know what work is. Your father never taught you."

At night, I would wash my white dress - my mother's dress - in the tiny sink. I could never get the chocolate stain out completely. There was always a faint brown shadow on the hem. Like a scar.

I didn't cry anymore. I was too tired to cry. I stopped checking my phone after the first month. No one called. Jake posted a photo on Instagram - him and Chloe at a rooftop party in SoHo, his arm around her, caption: "Finally with my real soulmate." My father liked it. Victoria commented: "My beautiful children."

I deleted Instagram. I deleted everything.

The change started because of a dead woman.

One of Madame Dubois's clients, Madame Lefevre, died. She was 82, very rich, very alone. She left a bag of clothes to the atelier - "For the poor." Inside was a ruined Dior dress from 1960. Silk, hand-stitched, but moth-eaten, stained, the zipper broken. Madame Dubois was going to throw it away.

I took it. I don't know why. Maybe because it looked like me - beautiful once, then thrown away.

For three weeks, I worked on it after midnight, when Madame Dubois was asleep and snoring. I unpicked every seam. I washed the silk with my own shampoo. I redyed the faded parts with tea. I reconstructed it, but not as it was. I made it modern. I took the high neckline and cut it into a sharp, dangerous sweetheart. I took the long sleeves and made them off-shoulder. I added a slit so high it was almost indecent.

When I was done, it was not a repair. It was a new dress. It was angry. It was sexy. It was revenge in fabric.

Madame Dubois found me asleep on the sewing machine at 4 AM, the dress on the mannequin.

She went silent. For a long time. Then she touched the silk and said, "Who taught you to do this?"

"No one," I whispered.

She looked at me - really looked at me for the first time since I arrived. At my dark wavy hair that I had chopped short myself, my freckles, my hollow eyes, my hands that were now calloused.

"Again," she said. "Make another one. And another."

So I did. From trash bags of discarded clothes from the flea market at Clignancourt. I would buy a dress for 2 euros that no one wanted and turn it into something that looked like it cost 2,000.

Word spread in Le Marais. First, it was the art students. Then the girls who worked in galleries. Then one day, a real fashion editor from Vogue France came in because her assistant had bought one of my reconstructed jackets.

She looked at me - this skinny American girl with short hair and bleeding fingers - and said, "What's your name?"

"Isabella," I said.

"No. Not Cole," I said, thinking of my father slamming the door. "Laurent. Isabella Laurent. After my mother. Her maiden name."

That was the day Isabella Cole died and Isabella Laurent was born.

Two years passed like that. I didn't go back to NYU. I worked. Madame Dubois officially made me partner. We renamed the shop. She let me use the window.

I learned French. Perfect, cold, Parisian French. I learned how to walk like a French woman - like you own the street. I learned how to do my makeup so my freckles looked intentional, not childish. I let my hair grow long again, dark, wavy, down to my waist. I started eating again - cheese, bread, wine - and my body changed. I was no longer the skinny, invisible girl. I had curves now. Hips. A waist that men stared at.

And I was angry. That anger was the best fuel.

By year three, we had a waiting list. By year four, an American heiress offered us $2 million to invest. Madame Dubois cried and said yes. We moved to a real atelier on Rue Saint-Honoré. Real clients. Real shows.

Maison L'Amour was born. L'Amour - Love. Because my mother always said, "Love is the only revenge that matters."

On my 24th birthday, Madame Dubois gave me 100% ownership. "It's yours, ma petite. You built this from my trash. Go burn New York down."

That same year, I did my first Paris Fashion Week show. It was called "The White Dress Collection." Every dress was white. But not innocent white. Dirty white. Stained white. Powerful white. The final dress was my mother's dress - the original one from Zara, still with the faint chocolate stain on the hem - but I had embroidered it with real pearls and diamonds around the stain, making the stain the most beautiful part.

Vogue wrote: "Isabella Laurent doesn't design dresses. She designs revenge fantasies for women who were told they were too much."

I became famous. Not Instagram famous. Real famous. The kind where Anna Wintour knows your name. Where billionaires' wives call you at midnight.

I was 25. Multimillionaire. Beautiful in a way that made people stop talking when I entered a room. Untouchable. I had everything.

Except peace. Because every night, I still saw Chloe's smile over her shoulder in my bed.

Five years after that night, the email came.

It was forwarded from our public contact form. Subject: "Wedding Dress Inquiry - URGENT - Cole-Morrison Wedding - $100k Budget"

I opened it on my phone while sitting in my office overlooking the Tuileries.

> _Dear Maison L'Amour Team,_ > > _Hello! This is Chloe Cole! You might remember me, I am a socialite in New York (my father is Richard Cole of Cole Properties!). I am getting MARRIED!!! To my soulmate Jake Morrison! We are having our wedding at The Plaza Hotel in 3 months! It's going to be the wedding of the year! Daddy says I can have any designer I want!_ > > _I LOVED your White Dress Collection in Vogue! I want YOU, Isabella Laurent, to design my wedding dress! I know you are very expensive and booked, but Daddy will pay ANYTHING! My budget is $100,000! I am 5'9", blonde, size 2, perfect skin! I want something virginal, pure, very princess! Like I am innocent! LOL!_ > > _Please say yes! I am such a big fan!_ > > _Love, Chloe xoxo_ > _P.S. My sister Isabella used to love sewing too, but she ran away from home and we haven't seen her in 5 years. Sad!_

There was a photo attached. Chloe, now 24, blonde, posing with Jake. He looked fatter. She looked the same, but with more filler. Around her neck - my mother's pearl necklace. Still. After five years.

My hands didn't shake. That's how I knew I had changed.

I forwarded the email to my assistant, Sophie, with one line: "Reply: Yes. I will design her wedding dress. I will fly to New York personally. Charge $100k + require that her father's company financials are shared for 'family discount verification' - use your best lie."

Then I opened my second email. The one that had come in 10 minutes earlier, from a name I knew only from the Financial Times.

Alexander Knight.

Subject: I saw your show.

> _Ms. Laurent,_ > _I saw your White Dress collection. The last dress with the stain that you turned into diamonds was... interesting._ > _My firm, Knight Capital, owns the mortgage on Cole Properties. Your father is 90 days delinquent. He is about to lose everything._ > _I also own The Plaza Hotel._ > _If you want to destroy your stepsister at her own wedding, I can help._ > _Dinner. Tomorrow. 8pm. At my residence. My driver will pick you up at your hotel. Come alone._ > _ - A. Knight_ > _P.S. Wear black. White is for victims._

I stared at the email. At the name. Alexander Knight. 32 years old. Worth $15 billion. The most feared man on Wall Street. Never photographed with a woman twice. Known for destroying companies for fun. Cold. Possessive. A wolf in a Tom Ford suit.

And he had just offered me my father's company, her wedding venue, and himself, on a silver platter.

I typed back one word:

"Yes."

Then I booked a first-class ticket to JFK for tomorrow morning.

I was going home. Not in my mother's white dress.

In black.

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