Park watched her face dissolve behind an ad for luxury perfume — something in a frosted bottle, probably smelling of regret and old money.

Normally he might’ve wondered what new evidence had surfaced. Who’d leaked it. Whether the royal family intended to bury the story or throw somebody under it.

Today he had his own royal-grade crisis.

Seraphina could keep her secret acting career, her forbidden kiss, and her palace-sized headache;

Park had an angry sister.

The elevator chimed.

Park stepped out fast, shoes clicking against the polished floor as he crossed toward the inner entrance. The valet area was already half-empty. Emmeline’s bronze Aston was gone from the waiting bay.

"She left," he said.

Quinn spoke quietly to one of the staff members, her voice clipped and efficient. "Remain here until every purchase has been finalised, packaged, and registered for delivery. Confirm the tailoring schedules and ensure nothing is sent without checking the estate manifest."

The woman nodded. "Yes, ma’am."

The second staff member glanced toward Park’s mountain of purchases somewhere overhead — racks of clothes, boxes of accessories, enough new wardrobe to outfit a small army. "And the items requiring collection?"

"Have the tower send them through the Bennett service route."

"Yes, ma’am."

Quinn turned toward Park. The movement was crisp and military with nothing warm about it.

"The car is ready, Sir."

Park followed her through the private doors and into the afternoon heat.

The armoured Mercedes sat beneath the black-and-gold canopy, gleaming like it had been polished by people whose only job was polishing.

Park climbed into the rear.

Minutes later, the Maybach left the Imperial Park Royale grounds and merged into Aurora’s descending traffic system. The city swallowed them in layers — elevated ramps, tunnels lined with soft blue light, bridges that curved between towers like the whole place had been designed by someone who hated straight lines.

The drive home was quiet.

Quinn sat behind the wheel with both hands placed properly at ten and two, eyes fixed on the road, jaw still set. She navigated the layered highways with the same liquid control she’d shown earlier in the day — smooth lane changes, perfect braking distance, the kind of driving that made you forget anyone was driving at all. But she didn’t speak unless physics required it.

Park sat alone in the back and watched Aurora scroll past beyond the tinted windows. Tower after tower. Screen after screen. The city moving on like it hadn’t noticed his afternoon imploding.

He replayed Emmeline’s words.

I can’t believe you.

Not What are you doing? Not Stop flirting. Not even You idiot — which would’ve been familiar, almost comfortable, the same thing she’d thrown at him a dozen times before and meant nothing by.

No. She’d said she couldn’t believe him:

There’d been betrayal in the way her voice cracked on you — a tiny fracture in the last syllable that told him this wasn’t about the kiss.

The kiss was just the visible part. The damage was underneath, in the history he didn’t have.

Which meant, in Emmeline’s mind, Park had broken a rule he should already have understood.

A line he should’ve known was there and a boundary that had been drawn long before he woke up in this body with half the past missing from his head.

That was the real problem, wasn’t it?

He was supposed to know who Kalypso was.

The old Park probably had known. Must have known. The history was there, buried somewhere in the borrowed memories that sat behind his thoughts like books on a shelf he hadn’t been given the ladder for.

Yet when Park searched — really searched, the way you dig through a drawer looking for something you’re not even sure exists — he found nothing.

Kalypso was a blank space like a hole in the record.

And apparently, that hole had history with his sister.

’Bad history.’

Quinn knew it. Emmeline expected him to know it. Kalypso seemed aware that he didn’t.

That last possibility itched the most.

What if she’d approached him precisely because he’d failed to recognise her? What if she’d been testing him — dangling herself in front of his face just to confirm that he had no idea who she was despite being Emmeline’s only male friend? What if the whole encounter had been less about attraction and more about confirmation?

’Less about chemistry and more about data?’

Then there was the strange thing she’d whispered after he left, though Park hadn’t been there to hear it.

She’d looked at him like she knew more than she should; like she was holding a card he hadn’t seen yet.

Park rubbed one hand over his face, pressing his fingers into his eyes until he saw stars.

’What a headache, genuinely.’

This morning, his biggest problem had been whether he could survive Emmeline’s shopping rampage without his broke, second-hand soul leaving his body from sheer wallet-dread.

Now he had a mystery woman with a hidden history, an angry sister, an offended guard whose warmth had iced over in under a minute, an agency audition tomorrow morning, and enough new clothes to dress a small, very well-tailored cult.

The rich life was incredibly efficient at producing problems. It didn’t reduce them — it just upgraded the quality.

The Maybach passed another screen showing Seraphina’s scandal. Grainy footage, urgent captions.

The princess’s face frozen mid-exit, looking like she’d aged five years in a week.

Park ignored it.

By the time the city gave way to the quieter roads of the Crown District, the sun had dipped lower — still golden, but softer now, the kind of light that made everything look like a memory. The tree-lined streets opened up, mansions retreating behind walls and hedges, the Aston-sized gaps between shadows stretching into long bands of gold and dark green.

The air through the vents smelled cleaner here; less city and more money.

Park checked his phone.

His new post had already pulled in thousands of likes. The numbers kept ticking — followers climbing, comments stacking and notifications lighting up the screen like a Christmas tree with a caffeine addiction. People were sharing it. Reposting. Tagging friends.

Jessie had messaged him.

Jessie 💚:Home safe. Don’t forget your really, really close friend.

He smiled faintly — a real one — but didn’t answer yet.

He didn’t have the bandwidth for charming right now.

Another notification popped up. @clause.nine had liked his latest and only post. The account sat there in his notifications like a question mark dressed up as a heart icon.

Everything in his career seemed to be going almost suspiciously well, meanwhile, his family life had driven directly into a wall at speed, airbags deployed, smoke curling up from the hood.

The Bennett estate gates opened before them — heavy iron, the family crest worked into the centre, automated and silent.

They stopped near the private entrance and Park climbed out before Quinn could come around to open his door. His shoes hit the gravel and he was up, standing in the golden late-afternoon light, the air thick with the smell of cut grass and something floral drifting from the gardens.

Quinn joined him a moment later. Face still blank. Posture still perfect.

"Quinn."

She paused. One foot forward, then still.

He wanted to ask about Kalypso again — really push — until she gave him something useful, something he could work with, a thread to pull on. But the anger in her face had cooled into something heavier now:

’Not exactly ice but stone.’

And Park had enough experience to know that forcing the issue here, she’d close every door and weld the hinges.

So he nodded toward the house instead.

"We’ll talk later."

Quinn looked at him for a moment. Long enough that he could see the conflict moving behind her eyes — the part that wanted to say something, and the part that had already decided not to.

"Yes, Young Master."

Park entered the mansion and headed upstairs.

The house felt unusually quiet after the noise and impossible scale of the towers. His footsteps echoed on the stone floors. Staff greeted him along the way — a nod here, a murmured "Young Master" there — but he barely registered them. His thoughts stayed fixed on Emmeline, Kalypso, and the missing slice of history everyone in his life seemed to possess except him.

Like showing up to an exam and realizing everybody else got a study guide.

He crossed the third floor; his bedroom door was closed.

Park slowed.

He opened the door and he went straight for his bedroom when he didn’t see her in the living room space.

Surely, Emmeline was inside.

She sat near the foot of his bed, arms folded tight across her chest, one leg crossed over the other, her heel tapping a slow, steady rhythm against the floor. The afternoon light came through the windows behind her, turning her hair into a dark halo and leaving her face in shadow. Her expression was the kind that made it extremely clear she hadn’t come to talk about social-media captions, dinner plans, or how his day had gone after she’d stormed out.

Park stopped in the doorway, one hand still on the handle.

Well.

Fuck.

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