Chapter 2: An Invitation to Geneva
I followed Elise’s invitation to Geneva. It wasn’t what I expected.
I almost didn’t go.
After London, the card, the party, the Frenchman something inside me felt… frayed.
But Geneva felt different.
It wasn’t anonymous. It wasn’t vague.
It was Elise.
Still, I hesitated when I packed.
The RM stayed behind.
No armour. No performance.
If this was about me, I wanted to see if anything real was still left.
Maybe I needed to know if I could still walk into a room without hiding.
Rue des Moulins 14 wasn’t a fortress.
It was a narrow townhouse, tucked between a tailor’s and a gallery, easy to miss if you weren’t looking.
A simple brass bell. A heavy oak door.
I rang it once.
And she opened it—Elise.
No polished glamour.
A soft grey jumper. Slacks.
She looked lighter here, almost younger, like London had been a costume she could finally take off.
She smiled, not a performance, not a mask and said simply:
“Come in.”
Her home was warm with firelight.
The air smelled faintly of cedar and something sharper, maybe citrus.
Books stacked along the walls in unsteady towers.
Music low and crackling from an old record player.
No assistants. No guards.
Just her, and the life she’d chosen to live.
She poured two glasses of something dark and familiar and led me to a pair of chairs angled toward the hearth not opposite each other, but close enough that the fire caught both our faces.
We didn’t talk about watches.
Or wealth.
Or power.
We talked about life.
About loneliness.
About the kind of ambition that builds empires… and what it costs to keep them standing.
At one point, she told me a story.
There had been a man once, she said.
A man who built something vast and glittering so vast he couldn’t see where it ended anymore.
Every piece of it cost him something invisible, piece by piece, until one day he realised he had nothing left to give.
“You’ll have choices,” she said quietly, not quite looking at me.
“But most of the time, you won’t realise when you’re making them.”
She didn’t preach.
She didn’t warn.
She just spoke like someone who had watched it happen before, maybe more than once.
We spent the next day and a half like that.
Beautiful mornings at hidden cafés.
Quiet afternoons wandering old bookstores.
Sunset walks along the lake where the water burned gold at the edges.
There were moments sitting across from her over black coffee, or standing by the window while she told me about a painting she’d once loved and lost where I forgot the weight I carried.
For the first time since London, for the first time in a long time, I didn’t feel like I was pretending.
I felt like maybe… maybe there was a version of me that belonged here.
Not because I bluffed well.
Not because I dressed the part.
But because I was still real.
Sunday evening came too soon.
I packed my bag slowly, half-hoping I might find an excuse to stay.
She walked me to the door herself.
The street outside was dark, the lamps glowing soft against the stone.
She hugged me lightly, but warmly, the kind of hug you give someone when you hope the world doesn’t grind them down.
And as she pulled back, she smiled something tired and proud in her eyes and said:
“Not many men your age carry themselves so gracefully. Don’t lose that. They’ll try to take it from you. If you ever need a door opened, truly opened, you’ll know where to find me.”
Leaving me with the same cream card, with nothing but her name on it.
She didn’t say goodbye.
She didn’t need to.
She just smiled once more beautifully and closed the door.
I stood there for a long time, the card heavy in my jacket, the firelight still burning in the back of my mind.
I hadn’t earned Geneva because of what I wore, or what I pretended to be.
I earned it because somehow some part of me was still real.
Still intact.
And Elise had seen it.
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