Elena's POV
The rain soaked through my jacket, but I didn't move. I couldn't.
Through the tall windows of the Moreau family mansion—my family mansion—golden light spilled onto the wet garden stones. Inside, champagne glasses clinked. Laughter echoed. My sister Céleste twirled in a white dress that probably cost more than my entire month's rent.
The rent I couldn't pay.
I watched Julian slip his arm around her waist, the same way he used to hold me. Six months ago, that was supposed to be our engagement party. Six months ago, I had everything.
Now I had nothing. Not even a place to sleep tonight.
"You shouldn't be here, miss."
I turned to find Marcus, our old gardener, holding an umbrella. His kind eyes were sad. "Your grandmother gave strict orders. If you show up, I'm supposed to call security."
My throat burned. "I know. I'm leaving."
But my feet wouldn't move. I stared at the window, remembering the day everything shattered. Coming home early from a restoration project. Finding them in my bed. My bed. Céleste's fake tears. Julian's pathetic excuses.
"She seduced me, Elena. I'm sorry. Your sister needed me."
The worst part? My family believed them.
"Elena always was cold," my grandmother had said, her voice sharp as broken glass. "Too focused on her dusty old antiques. Céleste needs love. You need to forgive them."
Forgive them. Like I was the problem.
They took everything after that. The business I'd built from nothing. My inheritance. My home. Even my friends chose Céleste's side because she threw better parties and didn't "bore people with history lectures."
"Miss Elena," Marcus whispered urgently. "Please go. Your grandmother's watching."
I looked up. There, in the second-floor window, stood Grandmother Simone. Our eyes met. For a moment—just a heartbeat—I thought I saw regret in her face.
Then she turned away and closed the curtain.
Something inside me broke all over again.
I ran.
Rain hammered down as I stumbled through the streets of Paris. My phone buzzed—another text from my landlord. Final notice. Pay by midnight or your belongings go to the curb.
I had forty-seven euros in my bank account. Rent was eight hundred.
My hands shook as I walked, not knowing where to go. The museum wouldn't pay me until Friday. The restoration job I'd been counting on fell through when the client discovered my family had "disowned" me. Apparently, I wasn't respectable enough anymore.
I pulled out my phone and stared at the last message I'd ignored. From Margot, our old housekeeper who'd been fired for defending me.
Elena, please. My door is always open. Stop being stubborn and come home.
Home. I didn't have one of those anymore.
But I had nowhere else to go.
Twenty minutes later, I stood outside Margot's tiny apartment building in a neighborhood my grandmother would call "unsuitable." My pride screamed at me to turn around. My exhausted body dragged me forward.
I knocked.
The door flew open. Margot took one look at me—soaked, shivering, defeated—and pulled me inside.
"Oh, my girl," she whispered.
That's when I broke.
Six months of holding it together. Six months of pretending I was fine, that I didn't care, that betrayal didn't feel like dying. It all came crashing down.
I sobbed in Margot's arms like a child. She held me tight, murmuring the same words she used to say when I was little and scraped my knees.
"You're stronger than you know, Elena. You're stronger than all of them."
But I didn't feel strong. I felt destroyed.
Later, wrapped in Margot's blanket and holding a bowl of soup I couldn't eat, I stared at the wall.
"I have nothing left," I whispered. "No money. No home. No family. Nothing."
Margot sat beside me, her weathered hand covering mine. "You have yourself. You have your gift. You have your stubborn, beautiful heart that refuses to quit even when it should."
"My gift?" I laughed bitterly. "You mean the weird thing where I touch old objects and see ghosts of the past? That's not a gift, Margot. It's madness."
"It's magic," she said firmly. "Your grandmother knows it. Why do you think she really pushed you out? She's afraid of what you might become."
I wanted to argue, but exhaustion pulled at me. My eyes drifted shut.
Just before sleep took me, Margot's voice came soft in the darkness.
"Tomorrow, go to Château de Verlaine. One last time before they tear it down. Trust me, mon cœur. Something's waiting for you there."
"What?" I mumbled.
"Your future."
I woke before dawn, Margot's words echoing in my head. Château de Verlaine—the abandoned estate I'd been photographing for weeks. They were demolishing it next Saturday.
Something pulled at me, urgent and strange. The same feeling I got when my fingers brushed against ancient objects and their histories whispered through my skin.
I grabbed my camera and caught the first train out of the city.
The château rose from the mist like a ghost. Beautiful. Crumbling. Forgotten.
I stepped inside, and the air changed. Heavier. Charged with something I couldn't name.
In a dusty room on the third floor, I found it.
An antique music box, wood dark with age, inlaid with silver that still gleamed. My fingers tingled as I reached for it.
The moment I touched the lid, the world exploded.
A woman's face, tear-stained and desperate. Her hands trembling as she hid something inside the box. Her whispered words: "Please. Someone. Anyone. Find this. End his suffering."
I gasped and jerked back. My heart hammered.
Carefully, I opened the box. Inside, beneath the mechanism, I found a hidden compartment.
And inside that—a letter.
The handwriting was perfect, elegant, impossible. The paper should have crumbled to dust, but it looked fresh as yesterday.
My hands shook as I read:
"To whoever finds this: I have lived 847 years alone. I have watched empires fall and roses bloom and people I loved turn to dust in my arms. I write this knowing no one will answer. But still, I write. Because for one moment, I am not alone. I am speaking to you, stranger. And that is enough. —A"
Eight hundred forty-seven years.
That was impossible.
I should have left. Should have walked away from the crazy letter and the impossible date and the eerie feeling crawling up my spine.
Instead, I pulled out my notebook.
And I wrote back.