Grace sat cross-legged on her velvet sofa, her laptop perched on the coffee table, surrounded by open folders, annotated PDFs, and half-drunk coffee cups. The apartment was dimly lit, the only illumination a warm table lamp casting soft shadows against the dusky walls. Outside her floor-to-ceiling windows, the city flickered like embers under twilight, neon signs humming like sirens in the distance. Her head pounded with too many tabs open, both in her browser and her brain.
She rubbed her temples, about to dive back into brand projections for a campaign when her phone buzzed, loud in the quiet.
It was a Facetime call.
Lara Dalton.
A smile curved onto Grace's lips, soft and unexpected. She swiped to answer.
"About time, Dalton. I thought you'd left the continent."
Lara appeared onscreen in oversized glasses and a dripping face mask, looking absolutely unbothered and dramatically indulgent. "Only mentally," she drawled. "My skin's thriving, my love life's dying. Hello to you too, Eva."
"Hey, bitch," Eva's voice echoed as she joined the call from her bedroom, bundled in plaid pajamas, hair twisted into a lazy top bun. "Still hiding from commitment and men with podcasts?"
"Absolutely," Lara grinned. "And still wondering why you two haven't burned the world down yet."
Grace laughed. "We're working on it. Slow roast."
"So... what's new?" Lara asked, her voice playful but perceptive.
Eva turned to the camera. "Grace is emotionally compromised."
"I am not—"
"She's in deep with a man named Silas. Tall, cinematic, broody. Think: thunderstorm with cheekbones."
Lara gasped. "You fell for a Byronic hero? Grace Laurent, I expected more."
"You expected dead inside."
"I expected functional emotional walls. What happened to ice queen energy?"
Grace tried not to smile. "He melted it. A little. Maybe. Shut up."
The girls dissolved into laughter, the kind that warmed the ribs and echoed of easier years. The screen split in three, but their energy was one. There was something so sacred about old friends, the ones who knew your scars before they were pretty.
"Remember that rooftop in Florence?" Lara said suddenly.
"Where we almost got arrested?" Grace asked.
"Yes! Worth it. Still the best wine of my life."
"I'm still convinced the bartender drugged us," Eva muttered.
"He flirted with all three of us," Lara added. "Peak bisexual crisis."
Grace chuckled, leaning back into her couch cushions. "God, we were chaos."
"We still are," Eva said. "We're just better dressed now."
There was a pause. A quiet that felt like comfort.
"Do you ever miss it?" Lara asked. "The freedom before all this?"
Grace's eyes flicked to the papers scattered across her table. Her mind wandered to Silas's eyes. To Eva's careful silences. To things unsaid.
"Sometimes," Grace whispered.
Eva didn't say anything. But her eyes softened in agreement.
"Anyway," Lara said, snapping back into humor like it was armor. "If one of you doesn't get married rich and throw a scandalous European wedding, I'm cutting ties."
"Can't it be both scandalous and cursed?" Eva said, sipping from her wine glass.
"Only if there's a sword fight," Lara added.
Grace smiled, and for a moment, she wasn't Grace Laurent, the empire builder, the woman caught between shadows and stares. She was just a girl on a call with her best friends, laughing too loudly, feeling too much, and remembering who she used to be.
Their conversation meandered for another hour, from career chaos to their dream vacation plans, to Eva swearing off men for the fifth time this year.
But behind the smiles, something stirred beneath.
The girls didn't ask about the cameras in Grace's apartment.
Didn't mention the stalker.
Didn't speak of Julian.
Some truths lived in silence.