After talking with Elias, Mira moved back into the swirling current of guests, her green dress a quiet defiance against the glittering tide.
She smiled politely. She laughed at the right moments. She tilted her head and listened with just enough interest to be polite.
But Elias could see it now — clear as a hairline crack through flawless marble.
The difference. The refusal.
The way she floated above it all, untouched, unclaimed, as if her soul wore a different gravity.
She wasn't of this world. And she had no desire to belong to it.
The gala still spun around him in a polished, hollowed-out ballet. The chandeliers glittered overhead — not like stars, not like dreams — but like cold knives hung in a frozen sky, waiting to fall. The auction paddles still bobbed up and down, desperate little flags in the tide of greed. The smiles sharpened, bared white and gleaming like the teeth of something carnivorous. The champagne flowed like molten gold, glistening, lulling, numbing.
Everything glittered. Everything lied.
Nothing had changed.
Except him.
He slipped through the crowd like a ghost slipping through walls, unseen, untouched, but feeling everything.
The laughter felt wrong now — brittle, strained, threatening to crack open into screams if someone pressed too hard. The conversations blurred into meaningless buzz: art collections, hedge funds, destination weddings, private foundations — empty echoes bouncing off marble and glass. The faces around him, too perfect and too polished, began to resemble masks frozen mid-smirk.
Masks that hid... nothing. Masks that were all there was.
They would shatter, Elias thought.
If they ever let themselves feel anything real, anything raw, they would shatter like spun sugar under a hammer.
He didn't want another handshake sheathed in velvet and sharpened steel. He didn't want another compliment shaped like a golden noose.
He didn't want—
He didn't even know what he wanted anymore.
Only that it wasn't here. Not in these walls. Not in this skin he wore like a costume. Not in this life.
A pair of businessmen drifted past, their conversation slipping into his ears like a dirty current. Their glasses clinked together in a parody of celebration. Their voices low, slick with false sympathy.
"You know," one said, his lips curled into a polite sneer, "it's inspiring, really. These poor souls. Making the best of it."
The other laughed lightly, glancing down at his Rolex with the boredom of a man who measured tragedy in seconds and stock prices.
"Tragic," he murmured. "But good for optics."
They chuckled. The way hyenas chuckle over a carcass. The way men chuckle when they think pain is a costume worn for their entertainment. When they believe real suffering is just another decorative detail at their gala.
Elias stopped moving.
He stood there, stiff as stone, as the world blurred past him. The champagne glass in his hand trembled slightly. The taste of bile rose in the back of his throat.
Disgust flooded him — cold and suffocating.
At them. At himself.
For standing here. For belonging here.
For wearing their mask so perfectly, so effortlessly, that he had almost forgotten he was wearing it at all.
Was this what he had become?
A polished ghost in a room full of corpses pretending to be kings?
The chandelier light sliced across the marble floor, catching the edges of tailored suits, bare shoulders, hollowed-out dreams.
It glittered, yes. But it didn't shine. It blinded. It blinded everyone who still believed this was life.
The mask cracked inside him.
He could feel it — hairline fractures spider-webbing through the false self he had built.
The noise pressed in on him: music thudding against the walls, glasses clinking, laughter slicing through the air like broken glass.
He couldn't breathe. He didn't want to breathe this air anymore.
Before he could think better of it, he moved. He pushed past a knot of socialites comparing vacation homes.
Past a senator laughing too loudly at a joke he didn't understand. Past a photographer angling for a perfect, meaningless shot.
His body moved without permission. Instinct pulling him forward. Forward and away.
Somewhere behind him, the auctioneer's voice climbed in volume, calling for bids on a rare yacht experience. A woman cheered drunkenly as the number climbed. A man with diamond cufflinks winked at her like they shared some grand joke.
It was all noise. White noise. Dead noise.
Elias kept moving.
Through the glitter. Through the glass. Through the lies. Through the beautiful, suffocating, dying dream. Toward something — he didn't know what.
Only that it wasn't this.
Not anymore. Never again.
And somewhere beyond the chandeliers and velvet ropes — somewhere waiting in the cold, imperfect dark —
was Mira.
And maybe, if he was brave enough to follow, something called living.
****
At the far end of the hall, near a curtained side lounge reserved for the truly powerful, Elias spotted him.
Richard Albrecht.
His father.
Standing tall and composed, carved from ambition and iron.
A whiskey glass balanced effortlessly between two fingers, catching the light like a small, controlled fire.
He was listening — or pretending to — to some international banking magnate, the conversation a blur of muted hand gestures and forced laughter.
The very image of impervious success. The architect of legacies. The king of a cold, gleaming world. Their eyes met across the glittering expanse of marble and velvet and lies.
Sharp. Calculating. Inevitable.
There was no anger in his father's gaze. No affection either.
Only expectation — steady as gravity, cold as steel.
And something else. Something Elias had never seen before. A thin seam of regret. Or maybe fear.
Richard lifted his glass almost imperceptibly — a summons.
Not a request. A command, dressed in silk but sharp as a blade.
Elias exhaled slowly, jaw clenching so hard it sent a throb of pain up the side of his head.
The chains tightened around his chest. Chains he had worn so long they had become invisible — until tonight.
Until her. Until now.
He crossed the floor. Each step heavier than the last. Dragging invisible shackles that jingled with the weight of expectations and unspoken failures. There was no point pretending he had a choice.
Not when it came to this man. Not yet. Maybe not ever.
When he reached the lounge, Richard dismissed the banker with a cool, clipped handshake — a king waving away a courtier. And then he turned to Elias fully.
The shift was subtle but absolute.
From public icon to private father. From king to architect. From judge to something harder to name — something more dangerous.
For a long moment, they simply looked at each other.
No words.
Just the silent collision of two worlds that had never quite managed to merge.
Father and son. Master and heir. Man and mirror.
Each seeing their own weaknesses reflected back at them. Each despising the recognition.
"You stayed longer than I expected," Richard said, voice low enough to belong only to the shadows gathering around them.
It wasn't criticism. It wasn't praise. It was an observation.
Clinical. Precise.
The way a surgeon notes the slowing pulse before an incision.
Elias shrugged, shoving his hands deep into his pockets to keep them from balling into fists.
"I met someone that I could actually talk to," he said.
The words were tossed out casually, like breadcrumbs.
But the weight behind them was impossible to miss. The ripple beneath the surface. The shift he could no longer deny.
Richard's lips twitched — not quite a smile, but something that almost resembled pride.
Almost.
"Mira," he said.
A statement. Not a question.
As if he had already mapped this road out years ago. As if he had merely been waiting for Elias to find it.
Elias said nothing. Just gave a slight, wary nod.
He didn't trust this moment. He didn't trust himself.
Richard nodded once, slowly.
Like ticking off an item on a list written long ago.
He sipped his whiskey with deliberate slowness, as if measuring the time left between them. And then, without warning, he struck.
"Are you interested in her?" Richard asked, the words sharp and casual all at once.
A knife offered hilt-first. A trap dressed as a question.
Elias stiffened instinctively, the old armor slamming into place.
"Why should I be interested in someone who's not going to live much longer?" he snapped.
The words came out colder than he intended.
Sharper. Crueler.
A defense disguised as disdain.
Richard didn't react.
Not with shock. Not with anger.
Only with a low, rough chuckle.
A sound filled not with scorn — but with sadness. A sound like gravel shifting underfoot at the edge of a cliff.
He looked at Elias. Really looked at him.
And Elias felt it — that unbearable stare.
The one that peeled flesh from bone. The one that left nothing but the raw, shivering truth.
Elias shifted, uncomfortable.
Exposed.
Hating how easily this man could still unmake him.
"You," Richard said quietly, voice cutting the air clean in two, "follow her."
Elias blinked.
Caught off guard by the simplicity of it.
By the gravity.
"What?" he asked, voice cracking just slightly.