Chapter 13 - The Legacy

The next morning came slow.

I sat on the terrace long before the city woke. The black envelope still beside me. The photograph inside it already committed to memory.

Anatole René Courvière. ARC.

It was never a brand. It was a name. His name.

Rivière wasn’t just the man behind the curtain. He was the architect. The origin. The crown.

He didn’t come out to explain it all. Not immediately. That wasn’t his style.

But later, once the sky had softened and the staff were sent away, he poured two glasses, opened the doors wide, and finally spoke.

“There was a time I built things. Quietly. Permanently. I thought I’d build them forever.”

He looked out at the water, the way men look when they’re trying to see a version of themselves that no longer exists.

“ARC created things for the future. Objects meant to outlast noise. Precision, yes. But purpose. I made things that didn’t speak to trends, they answered legacy.”

He didn’t mean watches. He meant everything.

“But legacy doesn’t always survive power. Mine didn’t.”

He told me about the fall, not with bitterness, but finality. Sanctions. Scandals. Frozen accounts. Vanished allies. A slow, deliberate erasure.

“So I disappeared. Not to hide. But to preserve what mattered.”

Then he looked at me, really looked.

“And then... I saw it again. The first one. On you.”

I said nothing.

“It wasn’t random. I had been watching. Always. Waiting for someone who wore it like it belonged to them, not because they wanted it, but because they didn’t need it.”

“You weren’t a mistake. You were the successor.”

I sat still.

“So all of this... was part of your design?”

He shook his head.

“No. I just opened the door. You walked through it.”

He didn’t ask for thanks. He didn’t give permission.

He stood. Left his glass unfinished.

“You know who I am now. The rest is up to you.”

---

That evening, Elise called.

I didn’t plan to tell her. But I did.

Not cleanly. Not confidently. I stumbled, rewound, hedged. I was still trying to hold the image she had of me intact, even though I wasn’t sure what that was anymore.

But she waited. Like she always did.

By then, we had more than a rhythm. There were things we hadn’t said but already lived: the quiet nights with her reading, me typing; the shared looks across rooms filled with louder people; the way she laughed only when she meant it.

She had never asked for more.

But she had given it, quietly, constantly, all the same.

So when I told her everything about Rivière, ARC, the door I had walked through, she didn’t flinch.

She just listened.

When I stopped, she waited a beat, then said:

“Do you want this? Or are you just afraid to let it go?”

The silence that followed wasn’t hesitation.

It was reckoning.

She walked to the window, her voice softer now.

“You’re not him. You didn’t build an empire just to watch it fall. You walked into something broken, and somehow, you’ve held it together, with grace.”

She turned to me fully, closing the distance.

“You didn’t steal this. You didn’t fake it. You stayed who you were, even when it would’ve been easier to forget.”

She reached for my wrist, not the watch, me.

“You didn’t become powerful by pretending. You became powerful because you didn’t forget where you came from.”

I didn’t say anything.

I just pulled her close.

And kissed her.

Not urgently. But fully.

Because I finally understood what she saw.

A week later, another envelope arrived.

Smaller. Heavier.

Inside was a single key, matte black, edges worn.

And a note.

“The third piece was never lost. Just... protected.”

“There is a vault. It requires a name.”

“Mine. Or yours.”

Anatole René Courvière