The silver clink of utensils and quiet pour of wine filled the cavernous dining hall. Dishes too exquisite to name were laid before her, untouched. Luna sat stiff in her high-backed chair, trying not to sink into it or vanish entirely beneath the weight of the chandelier's cold glow.
Across from her, Emmerich Arklight ate with the same effortless poise that seemed embedded in his DNA. Every motion was exact. Controlled. Like he was carved from a colder, more precise world than hers.
She picked at her food, barely tasting it. Her fingers trembled slightly in her lap. When she finally dared to speak, her voice was thin.
"This is insane. I suddenly have a billionaire father..."
Emmerich set his knife down gently, folding his hands. "I know it's hard to take it all in, but it's the truth."
"No, it's—no. I only have Mom. Well, until she disappeared. So I scraped by for years. I worked three jobs through college. Had to drop out because I got sick and paid my medical fees with the little savings I have... And now, I live in a shoebox with water stains on the ceiling. Then now you're telling me I'm heir to—what, billions?"
He didn't flinch. "Yes."
She laughed—bitter, sharp. "You think you can just say that and I'll what? Start calling you Dad?"
"I don't expect anything," he replied. "Except that you listen."
She did. If only because there was nowhere else to run.
Emmerich exhaled, eyes distant for the first time. "Your mother was the brightest mind I've ever known. Lin. She was the one who designed the first prototype for our self-repairing solar panels. She wasn't just a genius—she was a visionary. She made the company what it is now. But she was never meant for this world."
His gaze swept over the room—not with pride, but with a kind of heavy emptiness.
"She hated the suits. The media. The gala masks. I asked her to marry me. She said she couldn't do it. She loved me, but not the world I lived in. And when she found out she was pregnant… she left."
Luna stared, a cold knot forming in her stomach.
"She left you?" she echoed.
"Yes, she left," Emmerich said quietly. "But she didn't cut me off completely. Every few months, I'd get a letter. No return address. Coded—of course. She was paranoid about being found. But each one told me about you. Your first words. Your favorite animal. The way you cried when your goldfish died."
Something tightened behind his eyes.
"And then… nothing. The messages stopped twenty years ago. I thought maybe she moved again. Or… worse. But the trail vanished."
Luna's breath came shallow now. Her hands were clenched beneath the table.
"I searched, but the country's wide. People disappear when they want to. Especially ones as brilliant—and careful—as Lin."
"And all this time I was right here," Luna whispered, shaking her head. "Not even ten miles from this place."
The irony was cruel. Brutal.
"I passed this street once. As a teenager," she murmured. "I thought it looked like a haunted museum. I laughed."
Emmerich didn't respond. He merely watched her, letting the silence say what neither of them could.
She blinked, tears threatening.
"So… all the eviction notices. All the ramen for dinner. The cats I fed before I fed myself—all of that could've been different. If I'd just known."
"It's my fault," Emmerich said, quiet but firm.
She looked up at him—eyes so like hers.
"Yes and no. You could've searched harder and I could've searched as well, but that's all in the past..."
Her voice cracked on the last word.
And still, somewhere deep in her heart, she wished this was a prank. That any second now, someone would burst in and yell surprise—that she'd wake up in her closet room with Milo purring on her chest.
But no one came.
Just her father. Just this impossible truth.
And all the time, she would never get back.
The dining hall had long since emptied of sound, the plates cleared, candles guttering low. The storm outside had eased into a restless wind that curled through the ancient windows, whispering against the stone.
Luna sat with her hands in her lap, the dress too fine for her posture, her expression caught somewhere between exhaustion and resolve. She looked at Emmerich, who had remained perfectly still, as though he were carved into the chair.
"I can't stay here," she said softly.
His brows twitched, almost imperceptibly.
"I appreciate… all of this. The food. The room. The bath," she added with a wry glance. "But this isn't me. I don't belong here. I'm not—your world isn't mine. I'm not a corporate heiress. I don't know how to talk like those people in suits or… glide through gala halls with champagne and small talk."
She paused. Then: "And maybe Mom knew that."
The words dropped like a stone in still water. She saw it then—the faintest tremor in Emmerich's fingers as he folded his hands more tightly.
"You're not her," he said, quieter than before. "You don't have to become her. Or me. You're yourself. That's enough."
"I just want to go home," Luna murmured, half to herself. "Back to the cats. Back to the mess. It's not much, but it's mine."
Emmerich's throat bobbed, a flicker of rawness behind his steel-grey eyes.
"I thought I had steeled myself for this," he admitted. "Prepared to meet you, even lose you again, if it came to that. But—"
He stopped, gaze lowering to the untouched glass of wine before him.
"But when I saw you at the door," he continued, voice slightly unsteady, "you looked at this place like it was a fairytale turned graveyard. And I realized how much I wanted to bring life back into it. Through you."
Luna blinked, stunned by the sudden honesty—the nakedness in his voice. It sounded nothing like the man who had welcomed her with flawless etiquette and unreadable grace. This was someone else. Someone… pleading.
"Just one year," Emmerich said, his voice a little hoarse. "Try it. See what you find. If it doesn't fit—if you can't bear it—I'll let you go. No letters. No more suits. I'll watch from afar."
He looked up at her then. And for the first time, he looked old. Not in body—but in sorrow.
Luna stared at him. At this man she was bound to by blood and fate, but not memory. At this fortress he lived in, all glass and grandeur and grief.
And she sighed.
It wasn't surrender. It was the sound of someone carrying too much who decided, just for a while, to set it down.
"One year," she said.
Emmerich's lips parted, and for a moment, all his polish and wealth and legacy fell away. He simply nodded.
It was a blind nod, almost like a prayer.
"I'll keep my promise," he said.
She didn't know whether to believe him.
But for now, she would stay.