Chapter 2: The Girl Who Had Everything
The sun over Malibu didn't just shine; it glared, reflecting off the hood of Anastasia Wellington's guards-red Porsche 911 with a brilliance that felt like an insult to anyone with a hangover. At twenty-three, Anastasia was the reigning princess of a kingdom built on escrow and oceanfront views. She sat in the driver's seat, the engine idling with a low, expensive purr, while she stared at the construction site before her. It was a jagged scar of red dirt and rebar on a pristine cliffside—her father's latest "project" and her current prison. To the world, she was a Wellington, a name that opened every velvet rope in Los Angeles. To the men in hard hats currently leaning against the foreman's trailer, she was a nuisance in designer sunglasses who hadn't checked a blueprint in three weeks.
She pulled her phone from the center console, ignoring seventeen unread texts from her mother about a charity gala she was supposed to chair. Instead, she swiped through a dating app with the bored detachment of someone browsing a takeout menu. Anastasia didn't do "serious." Serious was for people like her older sister, Genevieve, who wore power suits and spoke in quarterly earnings. Anastasia lived for the "now"—the heat of a dance floor, the temporary thrill of a stranger's laughter, the rush of a car moving too fast on the PCH. She had graduated with honors from USC not because she cared about the curriculum, but because she was terrifyingly smart and bored enough to find the exams easy. It was a brilliance she treated like a party trick, never intended for actual use.
"Ms. Wellington? The concrete sub is asking about the pour for the south retaining wall," a foreman named Miller shouted, wiping sweat from his brow as he approached the car. Anastasia didn't even lower her shades. She just tapped a manicured nail against the steering wheel, her mind already miles away at a rooftop bar in West Hollywood.
"Tell him to follow the specs, Miller. That's what they're for, right?" she said, her voice a sultry mix of gravel and honey. She knew she was being difficult. She knew her father had put her here as a "last resort" to teach her the family business after she'd spent the previous summer drifting through the Mediterranean on a yacht that wasn't hers. She was the black sheep, the one who blew through prestigious internships like they were disposable napkins. Her parents wanted her to have a "serious life," but Anastasia felt that seriousness was just a slow way to die. If she could do anything she pleased, why would she choose to stand in the dust?
She threw the car into reverse, kicking up a cloud of grit that coated the foreman's boots, and sped away toward the canyon roads. The wind whipped her blonde hair into a chaotic halo, and for a moment, the restlessness in her chest subsided. She had everything she could ever desire—wealth, beauty, and a name that carried the weight of an empire—and yet, she felt like a ghost haunting her own life. She hooked up with whoever was attractive, chased the fun until the sun came up, and avoided a second date like it was a contagious disease. Deep down, beneath the "spoilt" exterior, was a girl terrified that if she ever stopped moving, she'd have to face the hollow space where her purpose was supposed to be.
As she pulled up to a boutique hotel in Beverly Hills, tossing the keys to a valet who jumped at the sight of her, she checked her email one last time. There was a memo from Wellington Development: New Senior Architect arriving Monday. Elena Cross. Please ensure all site manifests are prepared for review. Anastasia deleted the email without reading it. She didn't care about a new architect from the countryside. Architects were just people who drew lines; Anastasia was the one who lived outside of them. She headed toward the pool, ready to drown the afternoon in expensive tequila and the easy, empty company of people who never asked her what she wanted to be when she grew up.