//CLARA//
"A weekend in Mykonos, Clara! White sand, cerulean water, and the photos for the collab would be perfection!"
Lola, my best friend and business partner, was practically vibrating through the phone speaker when I told her that I canceled our plans for the weekend.
"It's a tax write-off with a tan! That's what you're trading!"
I bit my lips and stared out the tinted window of my car, noting the imposing, gothic outline of the Vanderbilt manor here in Newport while listening to Lola ranting off my ears.
"I know, but I have to be here."
"But why is the question?!"
"Because I lost a stupid bet against my mother," I sigh dejectedly, thinking how I lost my supposed-to-be-marvelous trip to Mykonos to the one person on earth I couldn't bribe, blackmail, or ignore.
"You lost?" Lola's voice chipped.
"Unfortunately, yes. Now I'm overseeing the archival clearing. It's in the contract. She had lawyers draw up a contract to make sure I go through with it. Can you believe that?"
Lola became silent for a moment before I heard her dramatically let out a loud breath, followed by a teasing tone.
"So you're really choosing dust mites over the possibility of seeing Dionysus?"
"I don't have a choice, okay?" I hissed irately, sinking low into the leather seat of my car.
"She was guilt-tripping me, used my inheritance as her leverage, and a speech followed by emotional blackmail with a notary's seal."
My mother doesn't play fair. She plays with legacy layers on the guilt, and of course, wields a weapon she knows I can't turn my back on. The threat of cutting me off the trust fund that fuels my entire existence before fame caught up to me is just not it.
I can only trust money in this world, so you better believe I'm not risking my inheritance just for a weekend trip.
That's old money talking, bitch.
An hour later, I stood in the grand foyer, a silk Fendi mask over my nose, lavender latex gloves ready on my hands, and a sense of injustice deep in my heart seeking vengeance.
"Uhm, excuse me…" I held up my hand, seeing one of the movers, Dave, as it states on the name band stitched on his chest.
He stopped, his hand midair, in taking the massive portrait leaning against the wall.
"That painting seemed to be the only thing in this dump worth anything. Please handle it with care." I instructed, and Dave only nodded in response.
Having nothing left to do, I went to check the attic and then regretted it immediately.
"Seriously, universe? Is this really the vibe we're going for today?"
The attic wasn't just dusty. It was a personal insult to my skincare routine. My flashlight beam cut a pathetic swath through the gloom, doing little more than proving that yes, there were definitely shapes in the dark. Shapes that looked suspiciously like sheet-draped furniture, but my brain, a very much imaginative friend, immediately registered them as a silent council of very judgmental ghosts.
A full-body shiver waved down my spine.
"Nope. Absolutely not," I announced to the empty air, shaking my head as cowardice took place in my body and too many things flashed into my mind, images of every possibility that could happen.
"This is not my cup of tea. This looks exactly like the part where the overly confident friend dies in a horror before the opening credits. I'm gonna have to hard pass on this."
I let out a long, suffering sigh that probably cost me more energy than the actual climb up here.
I take a derisive steps towards the stairs and was about to flee, already mapping my way out of this place towards the nearest Starbucks, or at least somewhere with a decent 5G signal when a loose floorboard caught the sole of my limited-edition Golden Goose sneakers.
"My shoes!" A theatrical gasp tore through my throat as if I'd been struck by lightning.
"I swear if there is a single scuff on my shoes, I am literally suing this entire county!"
I dropped to my knees, frantic to inspect if there was even a microscopic mark on my newly bought set. But as I leaned in, my eyes caught a glint of something tucked beneath the wood.
My brain battled over whether or not I should ignore it, but the light on my flashlight caught a leather-bound book. The edges were charred as if someone tried to burn it but failed.
Curiosity, somehow my most expensive trait, took over.
I pried it open.
"Oh, will you look at that, my great-grandmother's youthful angst," I muttered, but my heart did a strange, clumsy thump.
While flipping through the page, the handwriting was elegant and looping, but in the places it raced ahead, the ink turned into a splattering panic.
'Dearest Secret,
It is a sin to write this. It is an even greater sin to feel it. But I can't hold it to myself any longer. His name is Casimir. He is my step-uncle. My ruin.'
Her what?
My eyebrow curved upward. Now I'm hooked.
I sank onto the first step on the stairs, the world narrowing to the beam of my flashlight and the frantic diary in my hand.
The pages unfolded like a poison flower. Eleanor's life. The sudden orphanhood after her mother and stepfather died in the Atlantic, the gilded cage of the Guggenheim mansion on Fifth Avenue, 1879.
And him. Casimir, her guardian, her step-uncle, whom she deeply fell in love with.
It wasn't just a diary. It was a fever dream so detailed it would make Queen Victoria blush for her own journals about Prince Albert, dripping with more scandal than a leaked group chat.
I was breathless. This wasn't dry history. This was a heartbeat, raw and pounding on paper full of sauce and tea.
The entries grew more desperate. An arranged courtship brokered by a vicious aunt. A rival man named Bartholomew. The colossal, crushing pressure to be good, to be silent, to marry a man whose eyes were like cold pennies.
And then, the final pages. The ink was blurred in spots, water-stained. Or tear-stained.
'Forgive me dear Lord, for I cannot bear the winter he condemned me to.
And forgive me, my Casimir, for loving you only in whispers, when I should have loved you in thunder.'
"No," I whispered into the dusty silence. My throat tight, clutching the last page of the diary.
"You absolute idiot. A beautiful, tragic, brilliantly stupid idiot. A man? You ended everything for a man?"
Where's the feminism in this? I can't believe I am one of her direct descendants.
Yet, despite my misgivings on how my great-grandmother's life ended, the aching sadness from her entries hollowed me out. My thumb unconsciously brushed over that final, devastating sentence.
Suddenly, a loud ring pierced through the inside of my ear. The world around me warped, and a sweet, flowery scent rose from the pages. My vision swam, the shadows stretching and melting. The flashlight clattered from my limp hand, its beam cartwheeling down the stairs.
Just then, everything went black.
Had I been drugged? Or did I just faint from dust intoxication? Is that even a thing? What the hell is happening?
My consciousness came in like a sledgehammer through the skull, blunt and unforgiving. Around me, the rhythmic murmur of women's voices faded in and out. Then an overpowering smell of flowers ransacked my nostrils, making me about to sneeze, but it never did, leaving me in a maddening limbo.
My head was pounding. Not a cute, 'I had one too many espresso martinis' throb. This was a full-on, 'someone is using my skull for a timpani solo' situation.
And my body… what was wrong with my body? It felt… structured. Not in a good, Pilates-core way. More like I'd been professionally vacuum-sealed into a human-sized envelope.
Panic immediately sliced through the fog.
Oh, god. Did I finally crack? Is this the part where they roll out the nice men in white coats and the very fashionable straitjacket?
Just as my brain was helpfully supplying images of padded rooms, my ears tuned into the murmuring voices nearby, catching the tail end of a sentence.
"—fainted dead away after the solicitor left, poor lamb. The shock must have…"
"Leave us."
They were unfamiliar voices, especially the last one. Coming from a man with a low, gravelly tone that carried an authority and didn't give a shit about arguments.
My frazzled brain scrolled through the movers I'd hired. Dave from Queens didn't sound like that.
Gathering every ounce of will, I forced my eyes open, bracing for sterile white walls and the buzz of fluorescent lights.
Instead, my vision filled with… opulence. Dark, carved wood. A ceiling lost in shadow. The light was all wrong. A soft, flickering amber glow coming from… were those gas lamps?
Who the hell still uses gas lamps?
The air was thick, still, and smelled of beeswax and old roses. I looked down. No crisp hospital gown.
I was trussed up in a nightgown of fabric so heavy and itchy it could probably stop a bullet. My hair… my god, my hair. It was a massive, intricate, braided thing piled on my head, weighing more than half my body.
I blinked slowly, the panic crystallizing into one stark question.
Okay, where the fuck am I?
The door clicked shut, followed by firm, deliberate footsteps. A man moves into my line of sight.
He's impossibly tall, dressed in a perfectly tailored black suit that seemed to absorb the weak light. I have to crane my neck up to his face. His hair is swept back neatly from his forehead, and his clean-shaven jaw is sharp enough to cut glass.
And his eyes… Storm-gray, penetrating, and currently fixed on me with crushing pressure.
He studies me for a moment with his expression unreadable.
"Eleanor."
My face contorted with confusion? What did he just call me?
Then it clicked. A jolt shot through my system with recognition.
Eleanor. That's my great-grandmother's name!
Why is he calling me that?
Don't tell me he's supposed to be… Casimir?
What in the fucking rabbit-hole is this?