Clause 14
He had her sign fourteen clauses. It was the last one that made her say yes.
Inès Marchal is twenty-nine, types two hundred and twenty words a minute and has no family. A stenographer at the Paris courthouse, she transcribes what people say, exactly, without ever adding a word. Julien Kessler is thirty-six, owns forty-one towers between Boulogne, Lyon and Shenzhen, and is bound by a will that hands the keys of the empire to his uncle if he isn't married before his thirty-seventh birthday.
He offers her an eighteen-month contract, fourteen clauses, a top-floor apartment on the rue de la Faisanderie. The fourteenth forbids any question about the fire at 27, rue Riquet, in February 2011. Inès signs. Not for the money, not for him: because she was on the stairs of 27, rue Riquet that night, and she was thirteen.