CHAPTER 6: Morning After the Masquerade

Adeline's POV

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Sunlight cuts through my cheap blinds and straight into my eyes.

I bring my hand up against the glare. My feet protest the moment I try to stretch, those borrowed heels still extracting their toll. Mascara probably decorates my pillow, whatever, I'll wash it when I'm dead.

The blue slip I changed into at 4 AM has twisted around my legs holding a grudge. I kick the sheets off. In this shoebox nothing travels far, my bed meeting my kitchenette, my kitchenette meeting my closet, my closet door hanging open because there's nowhere else to put it. Real estate agents would call this "efficient use of space," I call it "one wrong turn from disaster."

And hanging right there, the dress.

It sways faintly, daring me to pretend last night didn't happen. Afternoon sun catches the silk and for a moment my whole apartment contracts around it.

My screen vibrates on the bedside table, going since midnight. Seventeen missed calls. Forty-three texts. Apparently I'm popular now, in the worst possible way. I silence it before reading any of them.

I roll over, pressing my face into the pillow that smells of drugstore detergent and the terrible decisions I made yesterday.

His hand at my waist. That keeps cycling back. Warm, his thumb moving slightly, and I couldn't convince myself it was the champagne or the chandelier light or the weight of everyone watching us.

Booktok has clearly done irreversible things to my brain. But those words.

‘Follow my lead.’ His voice low, breath close.

I pull the sheet over my head, give myself exactly three seconds of mortified delight, then drag it back off and stare at the water stain on the ceiling. It looks vaguely like Ohio.

My apartment feels smaller than it did yesterday morning. Reality presses down with the weight of poor construction and decades-old pipes.

I want to file last night away as a weird fever dream, one night, a job, a strange, overlit performance that's already finished.

Except I'm lying here with my pulse running uneven because of how he looked at me. 

And I don't know what to do with that, because I also don't know who sent that warning text, don't know whose black car vanished before I could blink, and don't know why anyone would waste their time on a girl with a negative savings account.

Unless they already know something I don't.

My brain takes that and runs. What if there's a secret lineage? A lost fortune sitting in Europe with my face on the paperwork? What if Albert was sent to find me? What if the gala was a test?

I sit up straight, then I look at the ramen cup on my counter. Tuesday's. Still there, crusty and judging me.

Right. A hidden heiress who hasn't dealt with her trash, very regal.

I lie back down.

I'm a twenty-four-year-old from Queens with a Costco membership and forty-three unread texts. There is no lineage. Someone ran the wrong background check and is now tracking me for no reason at all.

The ceiling does not confirm or deny.

The door bangs open. Clara never knocks.

"You're everywhere." She thrusts her phone directly at my face, nearly taking out my left eye. "Adeline. Look."

Photos, dozens of them. Albert and me on the dance floor. His hand at my waist. My face turned up toward his. The moment I laughed at something Mrs. Ashford said without meaning to.

Headlines in full caps.

MYSTERY WOMAN CAPTURES ROSSI'S ATTENTION

WHO IS ALBERT ROSSI'S NEW COMPANION?

Every picture looks worse than the last. The comments run underneath in an endless scroll.

Gold digger alert.

Social climber spotted.

Give it a month before he trades up for a model.

My fingers go numb against the screen. The radiator clanks. My neighbor yells something muffled through the wall.

I shove the phone back. "Stop. My self-esteem can't take internet commentary before coffee."

Clara settles onto my bed, the mattress dipping between us. I can smell her vanilla perfume and see the worry she's not quite hiding in her eyes.

"Are you okay? Because you don't look okay."

Am I? Last night I felt capable, like I'd earned a place in that room full of crystal and people who speak three languages before breakfast.

This morning I'm back in my studio where the toilet runs, the radiator clanks, and the walls are cardboard.

I am the same person I was two days ago.

Except now strangers have opinions about me, have already decided who I am, what I want and what I deserve.

So this is the cost. One night at a fancy gala and suddenly strangers think they know my whole personality.

"I'm fine."

Her expression says she isn't buying it.

My screen flashes. Mom's photo pop up, her wide smile from last Christmas, when I brought cookies from her favorite bakery.

I almost let it go to voicemail, but guilt is a faster motivator than common sense.

"Hi, Mom."

"Adeline." Her voice is careful. Underneath the careful, something else. "I saw the photos."

"It's not what it looks like."

"What does it look like?"

I leave that open. She fills it.

"Is he good to you? Are you safe?"

Safe. I don't know about that.

"Do I need to call your cousin Vinny?"

"Mom, Vinny is an accountant. And yes, I'm safe. He's been respectful. Professional."

"Professional." She repeats. "The photos don't look professional, sweetheart."

They don't. We looked like a couple who had somewhere to be together after.

Silence. Then she says the thing I was dreading. "Could this be real? Could he actually care about you?"

That thread of hope in her voice kills me. She's thinking about the mortgage, the medical bills from Dad's years that still surface in collections letters, the life she rebuilt alone after he died, with me at the center of it.

"Mom, don't. Don't build a castle out of this."

"Why not? You're beautiful and kind and brilliant. Why couldn't a man like him fall for you?"

Because men like Albert Rossi don't fall. They calculate. They sign contracts, dress people up, and send them back when the event is over.

And someone was tracking me before he ever chose me and I don't know if those two facts are connected.

I don't say either of those things.

"I have to go. I'll visit soon. I promise."

"Adeline…"

"I love you."

I end the call before she can say anything that makes me want what I shouldn't.

A knock at the door stops the impending mental breakdown. Not Clara's entrance, which is usually a declaration of war. This one is polite.

Clara and I exchange a look.

I open the door in my rumpled slip dress, sporting yesterday's mascara.

A delivery guy stands there. He looks nineteen, entirely unfazed by my appearance, holding a package wrapped in heavy brown paper tied with twine.

"Adeline Carter?"

"Depends on who's asking."

"Yes, she's the one," Clara cuts in.

He hands it over and leaves without waiting. No return address. Just my name in an elegant handwriting.

I stand there longer than I should, turning it over, feeling the weight of it. My first thought is Albert which is concerning.

Clara appears at my shoulder. "What is it?"

I close the door and sit on the bed. The twine comes undone easily. The paper peels back.

It’s a leather journal, small enough for a bag. Real Italian leather from the smell of it, which makes me wince when I calculate its price relative to my rent. Beneath it is a note on heavy cream cardstock. Same cursive handwriting.

‘You handled last night better than most people who've lived in that world their whole lives. Don't let them make you doubt that. — A.’

I read it once. Twice.

He noticed. Not the dress or the performance, but the work it took to stand in that room and pretend I wasn't a total fraud.

Clara leans over, squinting. "What does it say?”

I fold the note inside the journal's cover. "Nothing important."

"Liar. Your face just did that thing."

"What thing?"

"The one where you pretend you don't care but you absolutely do."

"I'm evicting you," I tell her.

Clara rolls her eyes, tossing a clean dishtowel at my head. "Fine. Keep your mysterious brooding secrets. But you are eating actual food today, not crunchy noodles, and you are texting your mother back so she doesn't get worried." 

She grabs her purse, sliding her sunglasses into place with a click. "Bye! Love you!”

The door clicks shut, taking her vanilla perfume with it.

I carry the journal out to my fire escape, rusted metal, view of the brick wall across the alley, the one outdoor inch I own and defend fiercely against pigeons. Afternoon sun warms my shoulders. Traffic rises from the street below.

I open the journal to the first page. Stare at all that blank space.

Maybe I didn't only fake it last night. Maybe some part of me belonged there.

I hold that thought until it feels solid enough to write.

‘I'm not who they think I am. But I'm not who I thought I was, either.’

The journal stays open in my lap, the ink not yet dry on the one line I managed to write. I close it slowly, running my thumb along the leather edge before setting it down beside me.

Across the room, the dress still hangs on the back of my door, midnight blue catching what's left of the light.

I have absolutely no idea what I'm doing.