The mansion was quiet again after the gala. Too quiet.
Sometimes silence felt like peace. That night, it felt like waiting for thunder.
Moonlight fell across the parquet floors as I sat on the balcony with a cup of tea that had long gone cold. Down below, the gardens shimmered, neat and perfect…the kind of perfection that only wealthy families could maintain, the kind that hid its cracks under trimmed hedges.
I should have been happy. I had my name back, my family back… even a niece who’d hugged me for the first time that morning.
Little Emma, Julian’s daughter…had thrown herself into my arms like I’d been there her whole life. She’d called me Aunt Evie with a shy smile that still replayed in my head. For once, someone in the next generation didn’t see me as a scandal or a secret. She
