Chapter 2

“You need to attend the party tonight, Mr. Mercado.”

Elise’s voice filled the car before I could even say hello.

Not greeted. Not asked. Ordered.

“You must,” she continued. “You don’t have a choice. This is a very good opportunity for a Mercado to be seen inside the Gonzalez mansion. They are opening the old house to guests for one night only. One night, Sandro. Do you understand what that means?”

“It means rich people are bored again.”

“It means history is being sold as entertainment, and you are going to stand in the middle of it looking expensive.”

I leaned back against the driver’s seat and looked at the gates of my own family estate through the windshield. Morning light sat cold on the bronze. The place looked less haunted in daylight, but not less guilty.

“Elise,” I said, “if you want me to become decoration, at least tell me what wall I’m being placed against.”

She ignored me. Elise had a talent for ignoring anything that did not make her money.

“The Gonzalez mansion has not been properly opened to the public in years. Historians will be there. Politicians. Old families. Sponsors. Reporters. Everyone will want a photo of Ferdinand Alexander Mercado II entering the home of Antonio Nataniel Gonzalez.”

The name made me pause.

Antonio Nataniel Gonzalez.

My great-grandfather’s archenemy, according to every history book that had been kind enough to choose our side. A traitor in some versions. A martyr in others. A wealthy politician whose influence had almost swallowed the revolution whole before my heroic great-grandfather, Ferdinand Mercado, rose like a clean blade through the rot.

That was the story I had been given.

Mercados were always given the clean version first.

“He had no direct descendants,” Elise said. “His only child, a daughter, disappeared during the great revolution. Historians claim she died. Some claim she was hidden. Some claim worse things, which is why people still pay to whisper about it.”

“And you want me there for history?” I asked.

“I want you there because every camera in the country will want your face beside that mansion. Don’t be stupid on purpose.”

“So there is no real reason.”

“The real reason is visibility.”

“Your favorite religion.”

“My only religion. Wear black. It makes you look expensive and grieving. Very suitable for old family tragedies.”

“You’re coming with me?”

“I’ll meet you later.”

That meant no.

“Elise.”

“I have old friends visiting the boutique. Important old friends. Smile. Don’t speak too much. And if reporters ask about the Mercado-Gonzalez history, say something graceful about reconciliation and honoring the past.”

“I hate when you prepare my lies without me.”

“You’re welcome, baby boy.”

The call ended.

I stared at the dead screen.

Elise was enjoying this. She enjoyed her power over me in the same way old men enjoyed signing papers that ruined smaller men. Quietly. Efficiently. With the certainty that I would complain and still obey.

The worst part was that she was right.

A Mercado inside the Gonzalez mansion would be a story. I was the most sought-after model in the country, the nation’s prince charming, the golden descendant of the hero whose portrait schoolchildren were forced to admire. Every word I said would be dressed in my ancestry before it reached the public. Every smile would become proof of something. Forgiveness. Victory. Class. Whatever headline they needed.

And Elise had abandoned me to face it alone.

I should have stayed home out of spite.

Instead, by evening, I was dressed in black.

The suit fit too well to be humble. Elise would have approved. My hair was set back from my face. My cufflinks were gold. The Mercado signet rested on my finger, heavy enough to remind me that I never entered a room by myself. My ancestors entered first.

I drove to the Gonzalez mansion as the sky bruised purple over the city.

The old house rose at the end of a long road lined with flame trees. Even from a distance, it looked less like a home than a judgment. Tall iron gates. Wide stone steps. Windows glowing with yellow light. The façade had been cleaned for the event, but age clung to it anyway, dark in the corners, deep in the carvings, under the balconies where shadows collected like old servants who had never been dismissed.

Cars rolled toward the entrance in a shining line.

Politicians stepped out with their wives. Businessmen adjusted their cuffs. Women in gowns lifted their skirts away from the road. Reporters crowded behind velvet ropes, cameras flashing again and again until the front of the mansion looked like a storm had learned to take photographs.

I parked several meters away.

Not because I was nervous.

Because I liked to choose the exact moment people saw me.

Through the windshield, I recognized three senators, two media heirs, and a man who had once offered me a disgusting amount of money to endorse his campaign. I had refused. Politics was a dirty stage, and I already had enough people clapping for me.

Still, the flashes bothered me tonight.

Not because I was unused to them.

Because I was alone.

There was no Elise to step between me and a question. No date whose hand I could hold while pretending chivalry. No friend I trusted enough to borrow their shadow.

I was considering calling Elise again just to hear her ignore me when a scream cut through the noise at the entrance.

Not a polished scream.

Not a laugh pretending to be fear.

A raw, furious sound.

I turned.

Two guards were dragging a woman down the stone steps.

She fought them with the desperation of someone who had already lost too much to care about shame. Her bare feet scraped against the ground. Her hair had fallen loose around her face in tangled waves. The gown hanging from her body had once been gold, but the fabric was torn, stained, and fraying at the hem.

My hands went still on the steering wheel.

Gold dress.

Yellow ribbon.

The girl at the gate.

“I need to go inside!” she shouted, twisting against the guards’ grip. “Let me through. I am the—”

“The what?” one guard mocked. He was smiling for the watching guests now, performing cruelty because there was an audience for it. “Tell us, miss. Who are you?”

She opened her mouth.

No sound came.

The second guard laughed. “You are not allowed here. Look at yourself. This is not a place for madwomen.”

A few guests glanced over, then looked away.

That was the talent of the wealthy. They could stop seeing whatever made the room less beautiful.

The guards pushed her past the line of cars and released her near the road as if dumping something spoiled. She stumbled, caught herself, and stood there breathing hard.

No one helped her.

I did not move either.

Not immediately.

A woman should have been treated with some dignity. Even a stranger. Even a mad one. But dignity was rarely given to people who arrived without proof that they deserved it. No name. No invitation. No shoes. No money visible enough to frighten the staff.

That was how the world worked.

I knew because my family had helped build it.

She walked unsteadily toward the parked cars, one hand pressed to her side. The closer she came, the colder the air inside my car seemed to become.

Her face was half-hidden by her hair.

But I knew her.

Or I knew the shape of the mystery she had become in my mind.

She stopped in front of my car, close enough that the headlights touched the torn edge of her dress. She did not notice me behind the tinted glass. Her eyes were fixed on the mansion behind her, bright with something worse than fear.

Confusion.

Grief.

Rage that had nowhere to go.

“Everything is wrong,” she whispered.

I stilled.

She turned slightly, catching her reflection in my side mirror. For a moment, she looked at herself as if the glass had shown her a stranger.

“Everything is new,” she said. “How can the world change this much? How long did it take me to escape from there?”

My pulse slowed.

There it was again.

Escape.

Then she said, very softly, “No one recognizes Yvette Veronica. No one recognizes the daughter of the most prominent politician in the country.”

The words settled over me like dust disturbed in a locked room.

Antonio Nataniel Gonzalez had one daughter.

A missing daughter.

A dead daughter, if the historians were to be believed.

I looked at the girl outside my car.

Barefoot.

Breathing.

Wearing a ruined gold dress as if she had crawled out of a portrait and found the world waiting to call her insane.

A reasonable man would have opened the door and called the police.

A decent man would have taken her to a hospital.

I rolled down the window.

“Do you need some help, my fairy?”

She turned so quickly that her hair shifted away from her face.

There she was.

Yvette Veronica.

The girl from my gate.

For one long second, she only stared at me. Then she smiled.

It should have been beautiful.

It almost was.

But there was something wrong with it. The smile sat on her face like a borrowed thing. Too bright. Too deliberate. A smile learned from watching other people survive rooms they hated.

“Would you mind helping this damsel in distress?” she asked.

Her voice was sweet enough to make my skin tighten.

“No,” I said, then corrected myself because her smile had made a fool of me. “Yes. I mean, yes. I can help you.” I looked at her mouth again. “But don’t smile like that.”

Her expression did not change. “Like what?”

“Like you are deciding where to hide my body.”

For the first time since I saw her thrown out, something real flickered in her eyes.

Amusement.

Small. Sharp. Gone too quickly.

I stepped out and opened the passenger door. “Get in.”

She looked at the car as if I had offered her entry into a beast.

“What is this?”

“A car.”

“I know it is a car.”

“Then why did you ask?”

“Cars did not look like this.”

I watched her.

She watched the car.

Neither of us said the obvious thing growing between us.

Finally, she gathered what remained of her dress and lowered herself into the passenger seat. Her movements were stiff, careful, and proud enough to be foolish. She sat like a woman trying to remember she had once been obeyed.

“I need to go back there,” she said, pointing toward the mansion.

Her hand trembled.

“No.” I shut her door and walked around to the driver’s side. “You need shoes. A dress that doesn’t look like evidence. And possibly a story that won’t get you thrown out again.”

“I told them my name.”

“That was the problem.”

Her eyes cut toward me.

I started the engine. She flinched at the sound, fingers digging into the leather seat.

Interesting.

“You’re safe,” I said.

She looked at me as if safety were a language she no longer spoke.

“No one knows me,” she said quietly. “No one knows my father. No one knows my house. They laughed at me.”

The mansion glittered ahead of us, full of people drinking champagne beneath chandeliers paid for by dead men.

“They know your house,” I said. “They just don’t believe it belongs to you.”

She turned to me slowly.

I smiled.

“We can fix that.”

“Why would you help me?”

A good question.

The answer should have been kindness.

The truth was not that clean.

Because you appeared at my gate like a secret.

Because you said escape.

Because you looked at me like I was not worth fearing until I proved otherwise.

Because if you are who I think you are, then you are worth more than every camera waiting outside that mansion.

Aloud, I said, “Because I was bored.”

She did not believe me.

Good.

I drove away from the Gonzalez mansion and called Elise.

She answered on the fourth ring. “If you are calling to complain, do it quickly.”

“I need your boutique.”

“No.”

“I’m bringing someone.”

“No.”

“She needs a dress.”

“Elise Atelier is not a charity shelter for girls you collect from roadsides.”

I glanced at Yvette. She was staring out the window, eyes wide as the city lights slid across her face. Every billboard, every passing motorcycle, every electric sign seemed to strike her silent.

“She is not charity,” I said. “She is my date.”

A pause.

Then Elise said, “What did you do?”

“Prepare something beautiful.”

“Sandro.”

“And shoes.”

“Sandro.”

“And do not ask questions in front of her.”

“You are lucky I enjoy emergencies.”

The line went dead.

Yvette was still watching the city.

“What are those lights?” she asked.

“Advertisements.”

“For what?”

“Everything.”

She looked almost sick. “The world became very loud.”

“It was always loud. Some people just didn’t have to hear it.”

Her gaze moved to me. “You speak as if you know old worlds.”

“I come from one.”

“What family?”

I looked at the road. “Mercado.”

She went very still.

Not the stillness of surprise.

The stillness of a knife drawn under a table.

“Mercado,” she repeated.

“You have heard of us.”

“Yes.”

The single word held too many years.

I wanted to ask what a girl like her knew of my family. I wanted to ask why she had been inside our estate, why she spoke as if the past had misplaced her, why the missing daughter of Antonio Nataniel Gonzalez might be sitting in my passenger seat with bare feet and dirt on her hem.

Instead, I said, “Ferdinand Alexander Alfonzo Mercado II.”

Her mouth tightened.

“Of course,” she said.

“Of course?”

“Men from your family always introduce themselves as if the world should stand.”

I laughed.

She did not.

Elise’s boutique sat between a private gallery and a restaurant where people paid too much money to be seen pretending not to eat. The front lights were still on. Mannequins in silk gowns stood behind the glass, pale and perfect, headless beneath the spotlights.

Yvette stared at them as we entered.

“What are they?”

“Mannequins.”

“Why do they have no heads?”

“Elise says faces distract from clothes.”

“That is a terrible thing to say.”

“She says many terrible things.”

Elise appeared from behind a curtain wearing black trousers, red lipstick, and the expression of a woman already preparing to enjoy my suffering. Her eyes moved from me to Yvette, then down to Yvette’s torn dress, bare feet, scratched knee, and tangled hair.

For once, Elise did not immediately make a joke.

“What happened to her?” she asked.

“Good evening to you too.”

“Sandro.”

“I found her outside the Gonzalez mansion.”

Elise looked at me sharply. “Found?”

“Yes.”

“Like a wallet?”

“Like a problem.”

Yvette lifted her chin. “I am not a problem.”

Elise’s eyebrows rose.

There was a beat of silence between them, one woman half-ruined and furious, the other perfectly dressed and calculating whether danger was worth the inconvenience.

Then Elise smiled.

Not kindly.

Professionally.

“No,” Elise said. “You are a scandal waiting for fabric.”

Yvette frowned.

“Elise,” I said.

“I’m helping, aren’t I?” She stepped closer and softened her voice in a way I had only heard her use with nervous actresses before award shows. “Come, darling. Let us make them regret throwing you out.”

Yvette hesitated.

Elise offered her hand.

For a second, I thought Yvette would refuse.

Then she placed her fingers in Elise’s palm.

As Elise led her toward the dressing room, I called after them, “Yvette Veronica is a long name. Can I call you Yvee?”

Yvette looked back at me, distracted by mirrors and silk and lights. “If it comforts you.”

Elise glanced over her shoulder. “Already better at handling you than most.”

The curtain closed.

I was left in the waiting lounge with velvet chairs, fashion magazines, and my own reflection in too many mirrors.

An hour passed.

Then another half.

I was not patient by nature. Patience was for people without keys.

“Elise,” I called, standing near the dressing room door. “If you are sewing her a new identity in there, do it faster. We are late.”

“Beautiful things take time,” Elise said from inside.

“I was born quickly.”

“You remain unfinished.”

I smiled despite myself.

The curtain opened.

Elise stepped out first, looking far too satisfied.

Then Yvette followed.

For a moment, the room became very quiet.

Elise had dressed her in pale pink, almost soft enough to be innocent, with small sequins that caught the light like scattered stars. The gown sat off her shoulders, elegant without begging for attention. Her hair had been cleaned, brushed, and pinned loosely with delicate clips that looked like constellations. Small star-shaped jewels hung at her ears and throat.

She looked less like a girl rescued from the road now.

Less like a ghost.

More like the reason a family might hide a portrait in a windowless room.

Yvette touched the necklace at her throat with uncertain fingers.

“I look wrong,” she said.

“You look expensive,” Elise replied. “That is usually enough.”

I walked closer. “You look like someone they should have recognized.”

Yvette met my eyes in the mirror.

For one second, I saw fear there again.

Then pride covered it.

“Good,” she said.

Elise looked between us. “I hate whatever this is.”

“You’re the best,” I told her, patting her shoulder.

“Do not touch couture with roadside hands.”

“I missed you too.”

Elise caught my wrist before I could turn away. Her voice dropped. “Sandro. Be careful.”

I almost laughed.

Elise, who sent me into rooms full of predators for money, was warning me about a girl in borrowed jewels.

“Of what?” I asked.

Her eyes moved to Yvette.

“I don’t know yet.”

That was the problem with Elise.

Sometimes she was right.

I took Yvette’s hand and led her outside.

She allowed it this time, though her fingers were stiff in mine. In the car, she sat very straight, the gown arranged carefully around her legs. The city moved around us in streaks of light.

“Listen,” I said as we drove back toward the Gonzalez mansion. “When we arrive, everyone will look at us.”

“I know how to be looked at.”

“No. You know how people looked at you before. This is different. There will be cameras. Reporters. People who smile while waiting for you to bleed in public.”

She looked down at her hands.

“What should I do?”

“Smile when necessary. Say nothing unless I ask you to. If anyone questions you, let me answer.”

Her head turned slowly. “You want me silent.”

“I want you safe.”

“You want me useful.”

I smiled. “Both can be true.”

She did not smile back.

For some reason, that pleased me.

The road darkened as we left the brighter part of the city behind. Ahead, the Gonzalez mansion burned with light.

“Is something making you uncomfortable?” I asked.

Yvette looked through the window. “I cannot believe the world changed so much.”

“You really are committed to that.”

“It is not a joke.”

“Are you from some unknown deserted island?”

She faced me sharply. “Can you stop laughing, Mr. Ferdinand Alexander Mercado? It is not funny.”

The way she said my name was careful.

As if it had an old taste.

“Did Elise tell you who I am?”

“She told me enough.”

“Then I deserve the same courtesy.”

“You do not need to know me.”

“I helped you.”

“You chose to help me.”

“And you chose to get in my car.”

Her jaw tightened.

There she was again. The girl at the gate. The one who did not know how to be grateful properly.

I should have found it annoying.

I did.

I also found it difficult to look away.

“Think of it as payment,” I said. “Your full name.”

Outside, the mansion grew larger through the windshield.

Yvette watched it as if it might vanish if she blinked.

“I did not imagine,” she said softly, “that I would ever sit beside a Mercado.”

“It is a pleasure many dream of.”

She gave a small, humorless laugh.

“I’m serious,” I said. “Millions of girls would trade places with you.”

“Then they are fools.”

I laughed.

This time, she did not scold me.

The gates of the Gonzalez mansion came into view.

The reporters were still there.

The guests were still arriving.

The old house waited with all its windows lit, bright and watchful, like it had known she would return.

Yvette drew a slow breath.

“My name is Yvette Veronica Gonzalez.”

I kept my hands steady on the wheel.

Gonzalez.

Not Mendoza Gonzalez.

Not some distant branch name.

Just Gonzalez.

“Do you know Antonio Nataniel Gonzalez?” I asked.

Her eyes stayed on the mansion.

“Of course.”

“Your great-granduncle?”

A pause.

So small most people would have missed it.

But I was not most people.

“Yes,” she said at last, almost a whisper. “My great-granduncle.”

A lie.

Or the nearest truth she was willing to give me.

I smiled as we joined the line of cars.

“Then I’ll call you Yvee from now on.”

She looked at me, unreadable beneath Elise’s careful work.

“Do not get too comfortable with my name, Mr. Mercado.”

The cameras found us before I could answer.

Light burst across the windshield.

Again.

Again.

Again.

Yvette flinched once, then lifted her chin.

Good girl, I thought.

Not because she obeyed.

Because she learned quickly.

I stepped out first.

The noise rose immediately.

“Sandro!”

“Mr. Mercado, this way!”

“Who is your date?”

“Is she from the Gonzalez family?”

I rounded the car and opened Yvette’s door.

For half a second, she did not move.

Then she placed her hand in mine.

Cold fingers.

Steady eyes.

A dead man’s name on her tongue and a mansion full of people waiting to deny her.

I helped her out of the car.

The cameras screamed white around us.

Beside me, Yvette Veronica Gonzalez looked up at the house that had thrown her away.

And smiled correctly this time.

“Mr. Mercado!”

The first reporter reached us before Yvette had both feet on the ground.

She was young, sharp-faced, hungry in the way reporters were trained to be hungry. Her microphone lifted toward my mouth. Her eyes, however, were on Yvette.

“Oh,” she said, and the surprise in her voice was already turning into profit. “Are you with someone tonight?”

The others heard her.

That was all it took.

They gathered around us like birds finding blood on stone.

Cameras rose. Flashes burst white against Yvette’s face. One, two, five, too many to count. The reporters pressed close enough for perfume, sweat, and expensive fabric to mix in the air between us. Questions came from every side.

“Mr. Mercado, who is she?”

“Is she the lucky girl?”

“Are you breaking your bachelor image tonight?”

“How did you meet?”

“Is she from the Gonzalez family?”

At that, Yvette’s fingers closed around my arm.

Small hand.

Hard grip.

She did not hide completely, but she shifted closer to me, shoulder nearly touching my sleeve. Her face remained lifted, Elise’s careful work still perfect beneath the flashes, but I felt the tension in her body. She was not afraid of people looking at her.

She was afraid they would see too much.

I placed my hand over hers.

A comforting gesture, if anyone asked.

A warning, if she understood me.

“Good evening,” I said, smiling at the cameras.

The questions sharpened.

“Mr. Mercado, can you tell us your relationship?”

“Is she your girlfriend?”

“Will the Mercado family release a statement?”

“Who designed her dress?”

“Does your grandmother approve?”

I lifted my chin slightly. That was enough to quiet most of them. Men with my family name did not need to raise their voices. We had inherited rooms that went silent before we entered.

“She wishes to remain unknown tonight,” I said. “Please respect that.”

Yvette’s grip tightened.

Respect.

What a useful word. People liked hearing it even when they had no intention of obeying it.

I guided her forward.

The reporters parted, not out of kindness, but because security had begun to notice how close they were standing to me.

Then a woman called from behind us, “We will figure it out on our own, Mr. Mercado. You cannot hide her forever.”

My smile did not change.

Inside, something cold moved.

I had made a mistake.

Not in bringing Yvette. She had been useful already. Every camera had forgotten to ask me about reconciliation, dead heroes, old political enemies. They wanted her now.

That was the mistake.

I had thought of her as a shield.

But shields got struck first.

Yvette glanced at me. “What did she mean?”

“Nothing.”

“She sounded certain.”

“Reporters are always certain. That is how they make ignorance look professional.”

We reached the main doors before she could answer.

The Gonzalez mansion loomed over us, its entrance polished for guests and cameras. Up close, I could see where modern security had been fitted into old stone. A sleek black panel glowed beside the door, ugly and practical against all that carved history.

Yvette grabbed the handle and pulled.

Nothing happened.

She pulled again, harder this time.

The door did not move.

“What is wrong with this door?” she demanded, breathing quickly now. “Why will it not open?”

A laugh rose in my throat before I could stop it.

She turned on me at once.

I lifted my hand. “Calm down. It recognizes invitations.”

“Doors do not recognize people.”

“These do.”

“Are you mocking me again?”

“A little.”

I pressed my index finger to the blue-lit panel. A thin line of light passed beneath my skin. The machine gave a soft beep.

Welcome, Mr. Mercado.

The doors unlocked.

Yvette stared.

Her whole expression opened before she could hide it. Wonder. Suspicion. A flash of delight so pure it looked almost wrong on her face.

“That is magic,” she whispered.

“It is technology.”

“Technology,” she repeated, as if testing a foreign word.

“Have you been living in a cave?”

Her brows lifted. “I thought only witches opened doors like that.”

Then she smiled.

Not the wrong smile from earlier. Not the practiced, frightening one she had used outside my car.

This one was small and unguarded.

For a second, the mansion, the cameras, the reporters, all of it lost its shape around me.

She stepped inside first.

The entrance hall was enormous, bright, and crowded enough to feel staged. Crystal chandeliers hung over marble floors. A string quartet played near the staircase, their music too delicate for the number of people speaking over it. Servants moved through the room with trays of champagne. On the walls, old portraits watched the guests drink beneath them.

Yvette looked around with the hunger of someone returning to a place that had forgotten her.

“I need to find something,” she said.

“What?”

She was already moving toward the staircase.

“Yvette.”

“You can do your own thing,” she called back, lifting her skirt so she could climb faster. “Thank you for letting me inside.”

“No. You are supposed to accompany—”

She disappeared at the landing.

I stared after her.

Ungrateful little ghost.

I had brought her past the reporters, dressed her, protected her name, and she abandoned me the moment the house opened its mouth.

Fine.

If she wanted to haunt the upper floor, let her.

I turned toward the main hall.

The formal beauty lasted exactly thirty steps.

Past the entrance, beyond two velvet ropes and a pair of guards pretending not to know who paid them, the mansion changed.

Music thudded through the walls.

Not strings.

Bass.

The kind that settled in the bones and made conversation unnecessary.

I followed it into a wide ballroom where the chandeliers had been dimmed low and washed in blue and red light. The old murals above the walls watched over a crowd that looked nothing like the guests photographed outside. Men had loosened their ties. Women danced with their hair falling out of expensive pins. Champagne spilled on floors older than most of their family names. Someone laughed too loudly near a marble fireplace.

This was not a historical ball.

This was a private appetite wearing a formal invitation.

A woman in silver came toward me, unsteady on her heels. She smiled as if we had been intimate for years.

“Sandro,” she said, dragging my name out like a ribbon. “You finally came.”

“I was invited.”

“You should be invited everywhere.” She clung to my arm before I could step away. “Have a drink with me.”

“No.”

She laughed, as if refusal from me were flirtation. “Don’t be cruel.”

“I am very good at it.”

Across the room, a man bent over a table and tipped white powder into a row of glasses. Another man watched the door while he did it. A woman beside them covered her smile with her hand, not out of shame, but excitement.

My body went still.

Now I understood why the politicians had vanished.

There were rooms for public virtue and rooms for private rot. The men in the photographs would be elsewhere in the mansion, shaking hands under portraits, while their children and donors ruined themselves under colored lights. If anyone exposed this, the scandal would not simply touch the hosts.

It would touch everyone seen inside.

Including me.

Elise had sent me into a trap dressed as opportunity.

Or she had not known.

I was not sure which possibility annoyed me more.

A man on a small stage lifted a microphone. “Ladies and gentlemen, the prince of the country has arrived. A toast for Sandro Mercado!”

The crowd cheered.

Several cameras turned.

Not the press outside. Smaller ones. Personal phones. Private recordings. Worse, in some ways. Easier to leak. Harder to control.

I smiled automatically while calculating exits.

The woman in silver pushed a glass toward me.

I did not take it.

“I think I am at the wrong party,” I said.

Her fingers tightened on my sleeve. “No one is ever at the wrong party when they are wanted.”

“I disagree.”

I moved away before she could answer.

The hallway outside the ballroom was cooler, quieter, lined with portraits and closed doors. I could still hear the music behind me, muffled now, like a heart beating behind a wall.

I headed toward the entrance.

A hand caught my arm and pulled.

I turned sharply.

The woman in silver stumbled into me, laughing under her breath. Her lipstick had smeared at one corner.

“You are not leaving yet, Mr. Mercado.”

“I am.”

“Not before I get a kiss.”

Her hands went to my chest.

I caught her wrists.

Gently.

Carefully.

The hallway was empty now, but empty hallways in houses like this were never truly empty. There were cameras, servants, bored guests with phones. One bad angle and I would become the story Elise had tried to avoid.

“Let go,” I said.

She smiled wider. “Make me.”

My patience thinned.

I pushed her back with enough force to separate us but not enough to hurt her. She hit the wall, more surprised than injured, and her expression changed.

Not fear.

Offense.

As if I had broken a game by refusing to play.

Footsteps sounded near the entrance.

Voices.

I did not wait to see who was coming.

I turned and took the opposite hallway, walking fast, then faster, then climbing the long staircase two steps at a time. Behind me, the mansion swallowed the woman’s voice.

By the time I reached the second floor, my breathing had sharpened.

Not fear.

Rage.

There was a difference, no matter how similar they felt in the throat.

“Why are you running like someone is chasing you?”

I looked up.

Yvette stood at the end of the corridor.

For a moment, I forgot to answer.

Elise’s masterpiece had been ruined.

Dust streaked Yvette’s cheek. A cobweb clung to one side of her hair, caught in the constellation clips. The hem of her pink gown was gray in places, as if she had crawled through the mansion’s lungs and brought some of its sickness back with her.

“What happened to you?” I asked. “You look like you fought a ceiling and lost.”

She glanced down at herself, then back at me. “I was looking for old paintings.”

“Inside the floor?”

“Inside a room no one wanted opened.”

That caught me.

“What room?”

Her eyes flickered away.

There it was again. The lie before the words.

“Nothing important.”

I came closer and reached to remove the cobweb from her hair. She stiffened but did not step back. The web clung to my fingers, fine and gray. Beneath it, her hair was soft from Elise’s brushing, warm where my knuckles grazed it.

“You are very bad at disappearing,” I said.

“And you are very bad at minding your own business.”

“I don’t have my own business. I have other people for that.”

She looked at me then, fully, and the corridor seemed to narrow.

Her eyes were not black as I had first thought. They were deep brown, almost warm in the low light, except for the old fear moving beneath them.

My hand lowered from her hair toward her cheek before I decided to allow it.

Yvette caught my wrist.

Then she pulled me sideways into the shadow of a recessed doorway and pressed her hand over my mouth.

I went still.

Her body was close enough that I could feel the quick rise and fall of her breathing. Dust and perfume. Silk and old wood. Her palm was warm against my lips.

Down the corridor, footsteps approached.

Women’s voices.

“She heard us,” one hissed. “She was in the west room.”

“Then find her before she opens her mouth.”

“If she talks, we are finished.”

“Do not be dramatic. No one believes girls who look lost at parties.”

They passed so close I saw the glitter on one woman’s shoe.

Yvette did not move.

Neither did I.

For once, I did not mind being silenced.

When the footsteps faded, she lowered her hand.

“Are they looking for you?” I asked.

She nodded once.

“What did you see?”

“Enough to know this house is still full of thieves.”

Before I could ask more, she took my hand and ran.

Not elegantly.

Not like a princess.

She ran like the house might change its mind and close around her.

We turned down one corridor, then another. Her hair came loose behind her. Pink silk flashed around her legs. I let her pull me for several steps before irritation overtook fascination.

“Can you run faster?” she demanded.

I stopped.

She stumbled and turned back. “Why did you—”

I shifted my grip, taking her hand properly this time, palm to palm.

“If we are running from criminals,” I said, “we will not do it like children.”

Her eyes narrowed.

“Run properly, Yvee.”

Then I pulled her after me.

We reached a balcony overlooking the inner courtyard, where the party below had turned uglier with darkness. Bodies moved under colored light. Glass shattered somewhere near the fountain. Laughter rose too high. From above, the guests looked less like people and more like a fever the mansion had finally sweated out.

Yvette leaned on the stone railing.

Her face had gone pale.

“How can this place become like this?” she whispered.

The question was not for me.

It was for the house.

For the dead.

For whoever had left her behind.

I stood beside her, watching the guests below. “Money changes hands. Families die out. Houses get sold. History becomes decoration. Then people drink under it.”

“This was not what it was.”

“No,” I said. “I imagine it was worse in quieter ways.”

She looked at me sharply.

I smiled.

“You said you are a Gonzalez,” I said. “Everyone else says the Gonzalez line ended. Antonio Nataniel Gonzalez had no descendants. His daughter disappeared. So what are you?”

Her jaw tightened.

“Some hidden branch?” I continued. “An illegitimate heir? A family rumor someone forgot to kill?”

She pushed away from the railing. “You should study more history, Mr. Mercado.”

“Sandro.”

“What?”

“Call me Sandro. There are many Mercados.” I stepped closer. “I want to know which one you are insulting.”

She tried to move past me.

I blocked her.

Her eyes flashed.

There it was. Not fear this time. Anger. Better. Cleaner.

“Move.”

“Tell me the truth.”

“I do not owe you the truth.”

“You owe me something. I brought you here.”

“You brought me here because you wanted to use me.”

The words struck too close.

I leaned in, lowering my voice. “And you came because you wanted to use me back. Don’t pretend you are innocent. It does not suit you.”

For a moment, neither of us moved.

Below, the party roared.

Above, the portraits watched from the dark hall behind us.

Yvette looked away first.

When she spoke, her voice had softened into something more careful. Too careful.

“I grew up as an orphan,” she said. “Before my foster parents died, they told me I came from the Gonzalez clan. They said I might be connected to Antonio Nataniel Gonzalez. I came here to find my roots. That is all.”

A pretty little story.

Sad enough to be forgiven.

Simple enough to be repeated.

False enough to insult us both.

“You expect me to believe that?” I asked.

“It is the truth I am giving you.”

“Not the truth, then.”

Her eyes returned to mine.

“I do not trust Mercados with truth.”

The words were quiet.

They landed harder because of it.

I thought of the locked house on our estate. The portrait I had carried into the light. The voice I had heard in the trees. Yvette at my gate asking if I would let her escape.

“How did you get into my mansion?” I asked.

She said nothing.

I stepped forward.

She stepped back until the stone railing touched her spine.

“Sandro,” she warned.

I liked the sound of my name in her mouth.

That was dangerous.

For her.

For me, perhaps, though I was less concerned with that.

“How did you get inside the Mercado estate?” I asked again.

Her hand closed around the railing. “Move away.”

“Answer me.”

“You do not command me.”

“No?” I lowered my voice. “Everyone else seems to think I do.”

“I am not everyone else.”

No.

She was not.

That was the problem.

That was why I could not leave her alone.

I braced one hand on the railing beside her, close enough to trap but not touch. The distinction mattered. To whom, I was not sure.

“Now,” I said, “tell me.”

Yvette lifted her chin.

Dust streaked her cheek. Stars glittered at her throat. Behind her, the courtyard flashed red and blue, painting her face in colors that made her look half-alive, half-remembered.

Then the door behind us opened.

Both of us turned.

A man stood in the threshold.

Older. Silver-haired. Dressed in a white suit too formal for the filth downstairs. His eyes moved from me to Yvette, and whatever he saw there drained the blood from his face.

For one second, he looked as if he were seeing a corpse stand up and breathe.

Then he whispered, “Señorita Gonzalez.”

The name struck the balcony harder than any accusation could have.

Señorita Gonzalez.

Yvette’s face changed.

Not much. Not enough for a stranger to notice. But I was already learning the small movements of her, the careful ones she used when a room became dangerous. Her fingers tightened once on the stone railing. Her chin lifted a little. Her eyes stayed on the old man in white.

“Who are you?” I asked.

The man did not answer me.

His attention remained fixed on Yvette as if I were furniture placed badly between them. His face had gone gray beneath the warm balcony lights. He looked rich, but not new-rich. Old tailoring. Old posture. Old fear. The kind of man who had been raised inside rooms where servants knew when to disappear.

“I saw your portrait,” he whispered.

Yvette went still.

My body did the same.

“What portrait?” I asked.

The old man blinked then, as if remembering I existed. His eyes moved to me and sharpened with recognition.

“Mr. Mercado.”

He said my name correctly. Carefully. Men like him always did. They knew which names could hurt them if handled poorly.

I smiled. “You have the advantage.”

His throat moved. “Rafael Cardenas. My family served as caretakers for this house before the transfer of ownership. I was asked to oversee portions of tonight’s exhibit.”

“Then you should be downstairs overseeing the drugged champagne.”

His expression tightened.

Good. He knew.

Yvette stepped forward. “You said portrait.”

The old man looked at her again, and the fear returned. “In the west room. There is a covered portrait. The young mistress of this house. Antonio Nataniel Gonzalez’s daughter.”

Yvette’s lips parted.

“Her name?” I asked.

Rafael did not look at me this time. “Yvette Veronica Gonzalez.”

The night seemed to press closer.

Below us, the party kept moving. Music. Laughter. Glass breaking somewhere in the courtyard. Ordinary ruin. Up here, under the balcony lights, a dead woman’s name had just been spoken over the living girl standing beside me.

Yvette’s breathing changed.

I heard it.

So did Rafael.

He took one step toward her. “Señorita, where have you been?”

Yvette stepped back at once.

“Do not come near me.”

The old man stopped.

I watched them both.

There were too many questions now. Too many locked doors opening without my permission. Yvette at my family’s gate. The hidden house on our estate. The portrait I had found there. Her fear of Mercados. This man calling her by a dead girl’s title as if the years between them had folded like paper.

My skin felt cold beneath my suit.

“What is happening here?” I asked softly.

Neither of them answered quickly enough.

So I stepped between them.

Yvette’s hand caught my sleeve from behind. Not clinging this time. Warning.

Rafael saw it. His eyes lowered to her fingers on my arm, then rose to my face. Something like horror flickered through him.

“No,” he said.

My smile thinned. “No what?”

He took another step back. “You should not be together.”

Yvette’s grip tightened.

I turned my head slightly. “Do you know this man?”

“No.”

Her answer came too quickly.

Rafael’s mouth trembled. “Your father would never allow—”

“My father is dead,” Yvette snapped.

The old man flinched.

For one awful second, none of us moved.

Then footsteps sounded somewhere in the corridor behind him.

Rafael’s fear changed shape. Whatever memories had trapped him loosened, and something practical took their place.

“You need to leave this house,” he said to Yvette. “Now.”

“I need to know what happened here.”

“There are people tonight who would rather burn the whole house down than let old things speak.” His eyes moved toward the dark corridor. “You were seen in the west room. They are looking for you.”

“Who?” I asked.

Rafael looked at me as if deciding whether I was poison or a shield.

Before he could choose, voices drifted from the hall.

Women. Men. Laughter sharpened by panic.

Rafael moved fast for an old man. He opened a narrow side door hidden in the balcony wall. “Go down this passage. It leads behind the music room. From there, you can reach the east stairwell.”

Yvette did not move.

“Why are you helping me?” she asked.

His face softened in a way that made him look suddenly older. “Because my grandmother died regretting that she did not help you the first time.”

Yvette stared at him.

Then the voices grew louder.

I caught her hand. “Move.”

This time, she let me pull her.

We slipped through the side door and into a narrow passage that smelled of dust and shut air. The door closed behind us, cutting the music to a muffled pulse. There was only a thin line of light near the floor. Yvette’s hand remained in mine, cold again.

“Explain,” I said.

“I cannot.”

“You can. You won’t.”

She stopped walking.

I turned.

In the near-dark, her borrowed stars glinted at her throat.

“I was followed by a stranger,” she said, each word tight with irritation. “I ran. I ended up inside your estate. That is all.”

“That is a terrible lie.”

“It is the only one I am giving you.”

“Again with that.”

“Because you keep asking questions you have no right to ask.”

I laughed once, without humor. “No right? You appeared inside my family property, you were recognized by a man who thinks you are a dead politician’s daughter, and half the criminals downstairs are looking for you because you opened a room you should not have found.”

Her eyes flashed even in the dark. “Then maybe you should stop following me.”

“I am the only reason you are not being dragged out by your arms again.”

“You are also the reason every camera outside now knows my face.”

That silenced me.

I hated that.

Yvette took one breath, then another. The anger in her face cracked at the edges, showing exhaustion beneath it.

“Can you let me go now?” she asked. “I need to get out of here. This place is too noisy.”

Too noisy.

Downstairs, bass shook through old walls. Above us, the past was breathing through cracks. Outside, cameras waited to make prey of her face. I understood, suddenly, that noise did not mean sound to her. It meant the whole century pressing its mouth against her ear.

I released her hand.

The shape of my fingers stayed around hers for a second before fading.

“I also want to get out,” I said. “But not through the front. Not yet.”

She looked at me.

I leaned back against the wall of the passage. The rage from downstairs had drained into something heavier. My body remembered the four-hour drive, the reporters, the woman in silver, the running, the old man’s face when he saw us together.

For the first time all night, I felt tired.

“I need a moment,” I said.

“This is not a place to rest.”

“No house is, if you know enough about it.”

She stared at me as if trying to decide whether I was joking.

I slid down the wall and sat on the floor, one knee bent. Dust gathered on my suit. Elise would have mourned the fabric.

“Go if you want,” I said. “The passage continues that way. Be careful.”

Yvette did not move.

I closed my eyes for one second.

Only one.

Then her voice came softly through the dark.

“You take care also.”

I opened my eyes.

She stood a few steps away, pink gown dulled by dust, hair coming loose, face too pale under the weak line of light.

“Sandro,” she added.

My name sounded different when she said it like that.

Less like an insult.

More like something she had decided, against her better judgment, not to throw away.

For once, I had no clever answer.

I only nodded.

“See you when I see you,” I said.

She gave a small smile.

Then she turned and walked into the dark passage.

I watched until I could no longer see her.

Only then did I let my head fall back against the wall.

My eyes closed.

The darkness changed.

I was standing somewhere I did not recognize.

No balcony. No hidden passage. No music bleeding through walls.

Only black.

Thick, endless black beneath my feet and above my head, as if the world had been stripped down to a room without doors.

Then a woman screamed.

“You are not a true Mercado.”

The voice came from everywhere at once.

I turned.

Nothing.

“You cannot be.”

My heart struck hard against my ribs.

“Show yourself,” I said.

My voice sounded wrong. Younger. Smaller.

The darkness answered with laughter.

Not loud.

Worse than loud.

A soft, broken laugh, close to my ear.

“You wear their name like a crown,” the woman said. “But blood remembers what men bury.”

I walked forward.

The ground felt wet beneath my shoes.

“You don’t deserve to be a Mercado.”

I stopped.

Anger rose first. Clean and familiar. The only reasonable response to an insult.

“No one decides that but my family.”

“Your family?”

The darkness shifted.

For a moment, a face appeared ahead of me.

Not clear.

A woman’s face half-lit by a flame I could not see. Dark eyes. Pale dress. One hand folded over the other.

The portrait.

The hidden house.

Then blood ran over her fingers.

I woke with my hand at my throat.

The passage was cold.

For several seconds, I could not remember where I was. The wall behind me. The dust on my suit. The distant bass. The old Gonzalez mansion holding its breath around me.

A dream.

Only a dream.

No one would ever tell me I did not deserve to be a Mercado.

No one living.

I rubbed my eyes hard and stood. My neck ached. My shirt clung damply to my back.

I needed air.

I followed the passage until it opened near a small service landing overlooking the main courtyard. The party below had spread outside. More guests had arrived, or the same ones had multiplied through drink and powder and darkness. Lights flashed over the crowd in violent colors.

Then I saw her.

Yvette stood on a low platform near the fountain.

Alone.

Surrounded.

My hand tightened on the railing.

A circle of guests had formed around her. Some were laughing. Some had their phones out. Two men stood too close, each holding one of her arms. Her hair had come loose completely now, falling over one shoulder. The pink gown Elise had chosen looked almost white beneath the harsh courtyard lights.

A girl in a red dress stood in front of her, face twisted with the eager cruelty of someone performing for an audience.

“Are you kidding us?” the girl demanded. “Why are you here in the first place? You are not on the guest list. You are telling everyone you came with Sandro Mercado?”

Yvette’s face was still.

Too still.

The girl laughed. “You are a trespasser.”

One of the men holding Yvette’s arm leaned closer to her ear. I could not hear what he said, but I saw the way her shoulders stiffened.

Something hot and black opened in me.

The girl in red raised her hand.

I moved before the slap could land.

Down the stairs. Through the hall. Past a pair of guests who stepped aside when they saw my face. I did not remember crossing the courtyard until my hand closed around the girl’s wrist.

Her palm froze inches from Yvette’s cheek.

The crowd went quiet.

Not completely.

Crowds never went completely quiet.

But the kind of hush that mattered spread outward, one person recognizing me, then another, then another.

I smiled at the girl in red.

She paled.

“She is not a trespasser,” I said.

“Sandro,” she breathed.

“Mr. Mercado,” someone corrected under their breath.

I let go of her wrist and turned to the two men holding Yvette. “Release her.”

They did.

Quickly.

Yvette swayed once but did not fall.

I stepped beside her.

Every phone was raised now.

Good.

If they wanted a show, I would give them one with teeth.

“I know what everyone is doing here,” I said, my voice carrying cleanly across the courtyard. “I know what is being poured into drinks. I know which rooms the politicians have disappeared into. I know enough that if you do not leave us alone, I will call the police and make sure they bring cameras of their own.”

The silence deepened.

A man near the fountain laughed nervously. “Come on, Mr. Prince Charming. No need for drama. We are not doing anything illegal here.”

I looked at the glass in his hand.

Then at the white dust still clinging to the edge of the table behind him.

His smile died.

“This is just a misunderstanding,” he said quickly. He moved to the girl in red and put a hand on her shoulder. “Right, Steffi?”

Steffi’s mouth opened and closed.

Her eyes flicked from me to the phones, to the guests, to Yvette.

“Yes,” she said at last. “A misunderstanding.”

“Apologize,” I said.

Her face reddened.

I waited.

So did every camera.

Steffi swallowed. “I apologize. I didn’t know she was telling the truth.”

“Now you do.”

I took Yvette’s hand and led her away before anyone could decide bravery was fashionable.

She came with me without resistance.

That frightened me more than her anger had.

We reached a corridor near the east side of the mansion, quieter than the rest. The music was distant there. The lights were dimmer. A portrait of Antonio Nataniel Gonzalez hung at the far end, his painted eyes following us with the cold patience of a man who had outlived his enemies by becoming history.

“That was dangerous,” I said, trying to make my voice lighter. “You might have been beaten if I had not arrived. I told you to take care of yourself.”

Yvette said nothing.

“You are lucky to have me, you know. The great Ferdinand Alexander Mercado does not rescue just anyone.”

Still nothing.

I stopped and turned to face her.

Her hand was limp in mine.

“Yvee.”

She stared at me, but not as if she saw me.

The corridor seemed too large around her. Too bright. Too new. Too old. All of it pressing in at once.

“Are you hurt?” I asked.

No answer.

“Tell me if you are hurt.”

Her lips parted.

Nothing came out.

I placed my hands on her shoulders, not shaking her, only holding her enough to make her look at me.

“You are scaring me,” I said before I could make the words prettier. “Do not turn into a ghost again.”

That broke her.

Her face crumpled so suddenly that it felt indecent to witness.

“I don’t know how long I can survive this,” she whispered.

The first tear slid down her cheek.

Then another.

“I am not supposed to exist here.” Her hands rose to cover her mouth, but the words kept coming through her fingers. “I am not supposed to be in this house. I am not supposed to be with a Mercado. But here I am.”

She laughed once, broken and breathless.

“Here I am entrusting my life to a Mercado.”

The way she said my name made it sound like a curse older than both of us.

I should have asked.

What did my family do to yours?

Why do you look at me as if I am wearing the face of someone who hurt you?

Why did an old man see you and call you señorita like the revolution had ended yesterday?

But she was crying so hard her body shook under my hands, and for once my curiosity found a limit.

I pulled her closer.

She resisted for half a second.

Then she folded against me.

Her forehead pressed to my chest. Her hands gripped my jacket like she hated needing anything to hold. I stood there with my arms around her, looking over her head at Antonio Nataniel Gonzalez’s portrait.

The dead man stared back.

“I brought you here,” I said quietly.

She did not answer.

“I should have watched you better.”

A strange confession from me.

Almost an apology.

Not quite.

I did not know how to make one properly.

“You do not have to be scared of me,” I said. “Whatever you think Mercados are, whatever you think I am, I will protect you from now on.”

The promise left my mouth before I could examine it.

Once spoken, it settled in me like law.

Yvette’s sobbing slowed.

I took out my handkerchief and wiped the tears from her cheeks. Her skin was cold again. Too cold.

“I am tired,” she whispered.

Her eyes rolled shut.

For one terrible second, I thought she had died standing in my arms.

Then her body went slack.

I caught her before she hit the floor.

“Yvette.”

No answer.

I lowered her carefully, one arm under her shoulders, the other beneath her knees. Her head fell against my chest. Up close, she looked younger than her pride allowed her to be. Pale. Exhausted. Fragile in a way that angered me because it made every person in this house look guilty.

My phone rang.

The sound cut through the corridor like an alarm.

Elise.

I answered with one hand.

“Where are you?” she demanded. “We are parked in front of the second gate. I heard rumors already. Tell me you are not responsible for whatever is happening inside.”

“I need a doctor.”

Silence.

Then, sharply, “Are you hurt?”

“No.”

“Sandro.”

“Call a doctor and send him straight to the Mercado ancestral mansion.”

“What happened?”

I looked down at Yvette unconscious in my arms.

The girl from the gate.

The dead daughter’s name.

The one person in this rotten house who had looked at me like my crown meant nothing.

“Someone is hurt,” I said.

My voice sounded wrong even to me.

“Do it now.”

I ended the call before Elise could ask more.

Then I carried Yvette toward the servants’ stairs, away from the cameras, away from the old man in white, away from the house that had recognized her and tried to swallow her whole.