The rain in London didn't care about social classes; it soaked the velvet upholstery of Alistair's Bentley just as thoroughly as it drenched Saffron's thin cotton jacket.
Alistair Vance lived a life measured in high-yield bonds and silent hallways. He was the heir to a banking dynasty, a man whose future had been mapped out in mahogany boardrooms before he was even born. Saffron, conversely, lived in the gaps of the city. She was an art student who smelled like linseed oil and cheap espresso, working three jobs just to keep a roof over a studio apartment that leaked when the wind blew from the east.
They met at a gala where she was serving champagne and he was the guest of honor. A clumsy guest had jostled her, sending a flute of Krug splashing onto Alistair's bespoke tuxedo.
"I am so sorry," she whispered, her face pale.
Alistair looked down at the stain, then at her eyes—wide, terrified, and strikingly honest. "It's just wool and water," he said, surprising even himself. "I have plenty of both. Are you okay?"
What followed was a season that felt like a fever dream. Alistair found in Saffron a world that wasn't for sale. She showed him the sunrise from the roof of a tenement building; he showed her the private galleries of the Tate at midnight.
For a few months, the distance between their bank accounts seemed like a triviality. Alistair began to see his wealth not as a pedestal, but as a cage. Saffron saw his loneliness—the way he looked at his father with a mixture of duty and dread.
"Come away with me," Alistair whispered one night in August, tucked away in a corner of a dive bar where no one knew his name. "We could go to Florence. I'll buy a villa, you can paint, and the world can forget we exist."
Saffron smiled, but it didn't reach her eyes. "Alistair, you can't buy a life. You can only live one. And yours is already written."
The Weight of the CrownThe fracture began in the autumn. Alistair's father, a man who viewed emotions as liabilities, didn't use threats—he used reality. He reminded Alistair that the Vance Foundation supported thousands of families, and that his "whim" with a waitress was jeopardizing a merger that would secure the firm's future for a generation.
"You are a link in a chain, Alistair," his father said, over a glass of scotch that cost more than Saffron's annual tuition. "Break it, and everything falls."
Alistair tried to fight. He stopped taking his father's calls. He moved into Saffron's cramped apartment for a week. But the world outside wouldn't let them be. The paparazzi caught them—the "Prince and the Pauper"—and the headlines were cruel. They dissected Saffron's past, mocked her art, and painted her as a social climber.
He saw her shrinking. The girl who used to laugh at the rain now flinched when a camera flashed blocks away. She stopped painting. The vibrant colors of her soul were being bleached by the harsh light of his world.