Chapter 1 The Last Night

Elena’s POV

The champagne bubbles tasted like lies.

I tipped the glass back, letting the fizzy bitterness burn down my throat.

Around me, laughter swelled—bright, carefree, and completely alien.

Everyone was celebrating. Caps tossed in the air, hugs, tears of joy… all while I stood trapped in a silent glass box, smiling on the outside, screaming on the inside.

For me, graduation wasn’t a beginning. It was the end of a temporary refuge.

University had been my escape, my four-year shield against a house that was never home. Now, the shield was splintering.

“If you can’t support yourself, don’t come crawling back,” my stepmother’s voice, sharp as shattered glass, had hissed just this morning. “We’ve done our duty. You’re on your own now.”

The memory knotted cold in my stomach. I was truly alone. My father? A ghost in his own home, long surrendered to his new wife and her “real” children. My mother… a faint, warm memory I clung to in the dark.

So I drank. Not to celebrate, but to numb the terror of it. Each sip of champagne was a small rebellion against the despair threatening to swallow me whole.

Nearby, girls squealed over their graduation photos, comparing angles and filters.

I recognized them from my economics class—we’d worked on a group project once.

They hadn’t invited me tonight. Not that I expected them to. I’d always been too busy working to make friends. Too tired to go out. Too different.

Then I felt it—a gaze, sharp and unwavering, cutting through the crowd like a spotlight.

I turned.

Leaning against a marble pillar beneath the crystal chandeliers, he was watching me.

Dark hair swept back, a face that belonged on magazine covers, sharp charcoal suit that probably cost more than my entire tuition, eyes that didn’t smile even as his friends laughed around him.

Our eyes locked for a heartbeat. Then he looked away, pretending to sip his drink.

My cheeks flushed. Was he…? No. Men like him didn’t stare at women like me. Not for long.

I was the scholarship girl in a borrowed dress, the one who worked three part-time jobs just to afford textbooks.

But every time I glanced up, his eyes found me again.

He spoke to his friends—men in equally expensive suits who looked like they summered in the Hamptons and wintered in Aspen.

One nudged him, grinning like they were in on some private joke. He shook his head, ran a hand through his hair. Trapped. Out of place.

Just like me.

My phone buzzed. Another text from Viviana.

"If you're not back in an hour, the locks will be changed."

Something inside me snapped. The careful, obedient Elena—the one who had spent years scrubbing floors, working double shifts, bending herself to their whims—was done. Tired of being afraid. Tired of being small.

A reckless, wild courage surged inside me. Maybe it was the wine. Maybe it was the loneliness carved into my bones. Maybe it was knowing that tomorrow, I’d go back to being invisible.

But tonight? Tonight I could be someone else.

I grabbed a fresh bottle of champagne from the bar and started walking.

His eyes widened. His friends melted away, smirking and tossing glances over their shoulders. One whistled low, amused.

I stopped before him. Heart hammering so loud I was sure he could hear it. Up close, he was devastating. Tall enough that I tilted my head back, a jaw sharp enough to cut glass, eyes dark and intense, fixed entirely on me.

The world blurred at the edges, champagne softening everything. Liquid courage, they called it. I understood now.

“You keep staring at me,” I said, voice steadier than I felt, lifting the bottle. “Do you like me, or what?”

He froze. Then, a slow, dangerous smile curved his lips.

“I do,” he said, low and rough, with an edge that sent shivers down my spine. “More than I should.”

His fingers brushed mine as he took the bottle, and the touch sparked through me like fire.

He said something—his name, maybe—but the words dissolved into the champagne haze filling my head.

Nothing stuck except the heat in his eyes and the way he was looking at me, as if I were the only person in the room.

“Elena,” I managed, when he seemed to wait.

“Elena,” he repeated. The way he said it made my chest ache, like the name itself was precious.

“Well, Elena,” he said, eyes never leaving mine, “what exactly did you have in mind with that bottle?”

The champagne made me reckless. Made me brave. Made me forget my place, my caution.

I should have walked away. Made a joke. Gone home like a good girl.

Instead, I smiled—wild, real, and free.

“I have a terrible idea,” I whispered.

His eyes darkened. “Those are my favorite kind.”

The night dissolved into fragments. His hand on my waist. The elevator ride. His lips on mine. Words whispered I couldn’t quite hear but felt in every nerve.

And then I made the worst—or best—decision of my life.

---

I woke to sunlight streaming through unfamiliar curtains and an empty bed beside me.

My head pounded. My dress lay on the floor. I couldn’t remember his name.

I didn’t stay to piece it together.

I didn’t know that nine months later, I’d be holding his son in my arms.

And I didn’t know the stranger whose face I barely recalled would walk back into my life—as my worst nightmare.