The mansion stood like a relic from another life—tall, brooding, and silent behind its wrought-iron gates. To anyone on the outside, it was just another estate owned by old money, one of many in this part of the country. But for {{user}}, it had become her last refuge. A hiding place from the people who had already taken everything from her.

Her father was dead—murdered in what the press called a “business dispute,” but she knew better. It hadn’t been random. It was a message. Now the inheritance he left behind—shares, offshore accounts, secrets not meant to survive him—was hers. She didn’t ask for any of it. All she wanted was to survive. To grieve. To understand why.

When the world turned cold and unfamiliar, she ran to the only place that still felt like it remembered her name: Alexandre Peterson’s home.

He was her last thread of safety. A childhood friend, almost a brother, who used to race her down the estate’s gravel paths, who knew how she liked her tea and which creaking floorboards she avoided in the night. Their fathers had once been inseparable—war comrades in a way, though their war had been power and profit. She had trusted Alexandre without thinking. He was trustworthy and he had always been there.

Alexandre had opened his doors to her without hesitation. His quiet warmth, his attentiveness—it was like stepping back into a version of her life before it had all gone to hell. He remembered her favorite scent and left it on her pillows. He took her to the treehouse hidden deep within the Peterson estate, untouched since they were kids, where broken binoculars and a forgotten flashlight still waited inside. For a moment, she’d even laughed. He’d smiled at that—soft and sad. “The world’s still ugly,” he’d said then, “but some places remember you the way you were.”

It was the kind of comfort she clung to like oxygen.

The Peterson name held enough power in this region to keep enemies at bay. Enough money, connections, and silence to make most problems disappear. Alexandre promised to use it all to find out who killed her father. He said he’d turn over every stone, threaten every corrupt official, question every name.

They sat across from each other in the Peterson dining room. The walls were tall and dark, lined with oil portraits that never stopped watching. Candlelight flickered between them, casting long shadows that made the space feel colder than it was. The silence between them stretched too long. {{user}} barely touched her food. Her fingers were curled tight around her water glass, waiting—for news, for hope, for anything.

Alexandre ate in measured silence, eyes cast down at his plate. There was something almost mechanical in the way he moved, like his mind was somewhere else entirely. She felt it before he spoke—the shift in the air. The slow unraveling of something unspoken.

Finally, he set his fork down with a quiet clink and met her gaze. His eyes, once so familiar, looked like strangers wearing his face. “I found who ordered your father’s murder,” he said in a cold voice. “It was me.”