I wander along a stone path, hands shoved deep in my pockets. The air smells like salt and lemon trees, a natural scent that could be bottled and sold as perfume, costing more than my mother’s old car.
A gardener kneels near a row of rose bushes, trimming them with surgical precision. When I pass, he nods without lookingup. Staff recognize staff. Or at least, they recognize the defeated slouch of someone who can’t afford to quit.
I keep walking until the mansion rises across a long sweep of lawn. It looks different from this angle. More glass, more light, more angles to see everything I’m not supposed to touch.
I should turn around.
I don’t.
Because of her.
The girl standing on the balcony.
She’s leaning forward, elbows propped against the railing, staring out at the ocean, her brows furrowed like she’s trying to memorize the horizon. The wind lifts her hair—light blonde, glossy, long enough to whip across her face. She tucks it behind her ear in a motion so smooth it looks trained.
She wears white.
Not a simple white dress or some casual rich-girl outfit. No, this thing is made of silk that probably costs more than the entire staff earns in a month. It drips off her frame, soft and light, like it was carved out of air.
She looks . . . untouchable.
And bored.
Painfully, devastatingly bored.
Her eyes flick down. Land on me.
For a second—just one—her expression cracks.
Not disdain. Not superiority.
Curiosity.
The dangerous kind.
I immediately look away.
The last thing I need is to get noticed by someone who can ruin our lives with one complaint.
I head back toward the path.
“Hey.”
Her voice drops from above like a coin tossed into a wishing well.
I freeze.
God-fucking-dammit.
I pause but don’t say anything until she repeats herself in that same detached tone.
Finally, I turn. She’s still on the balcony, leaning over the rail more now, studying me the way kids study animals at the zoo. Except she doesn’t have that smug, tight-lipped smile I usually see on rich people. She looks . . . fascinated.
And fascinated is worse.
Fascinated pays attention.
She rests her elbow on the railing and her chin on her open palm to better stare at me. “Who are you?”
