Chapter 7: The Transfer

The guests left slowly, like smoke clearing. A few kisses on both cheeks. A murmured promise of Basel or Venice. Alexandre walked me to the edge of the garden.

Neither of us said much. There was no need.

We paused beneath the old olive trees, far enough from the house that the wine and the stories felt like echoes. He held the wooden box again.

“It doesn’t feel like it belongs to me,” he said. “I’ve always felt like I was holding someone else’s shadow.”

I looked at the box, then at him.

“Then why keep it?”

He ran a hand through his hair, sighing faintly.

“Because people like me, we’re raised to hold things. Even if we don’t know what they are.”

He opened the lid, gazed at the RM again, not sentimentally, but as if it were a painting he could never quite read.

“I wore it once. For maybe an hour. It made me feel like I was impersonating a memory I hadn’t earned.”

He closed the box and held it out to me.

“But maybe it knows its way home, if someone’s willing to wear it like it was always theirs.”

I didn’t reach for it right away.

“Are you sure?”

He smiled, faintly.

“Do I seem like someone who’s ever sure of anything?”

I took it. Gently. Not with certainty, but with care. The weight felt different than mine. Cooler. Older. A mirror, maybe.

---

Back at the hotel, the concierge gave me a quiet nod. Like he’d seen a hundred versions of me already tonight.

I stepped into the lobby and stopped.

Elise was there.

Seated near the bar, one leg crossed elegantly over the other. Dark dress. Hair swept back. A glass of wine at her side.

As if she had always been there.

I approached quietly, and she looked up.

“Madrid suits you,” she said. “More composed than you were in Geneva.”

I sat across from her.

“I didn’t expect to see you.”

“Good,” she said. “You’re learning.”

She glanced at the wooden box in my lap. No comment.

I opened it halfway, just enough for her to see.

She studied it for a long moment. Not for the watch, but for what it meant.

“He gave it to you.”

“He did.”

“And you took it.”

I closed the lid.

“Would you have?”

She smiled faintly.

“That’s not the question.”

“Then what is?”

She leaned in slightly, and for the first time, there was something warmer in her voice.

“Do you know why he gave it to you? Was it because he saw something real, or because you’ve worn the part so well he mistook the mask for a man?”

I looked at her for a moment. Not blinking. “Which do you think it is?”

“That’s why I’m still here,” she said quietly. “I haven’t decided yet.”

Then, softly, almost as if it surprised her, she reached across the table and rested her fingers against my wrist. A simple gesture. Nothing more, but not nothing.

“Be careful who you become. The world already wants too much from men like you.”

And then she stood.

Not rushed. Not cold.

Just reluctant.

And disappeared again, leaving behind nothing but the shape of where she had been.

I stayed seated for a while. Madrid breathing softly outside. Two watches beside me now, one earned through charm, the other still choosing me.

The line between roles and reality was thinning.

And the next time I crossed it, I might not be able to come back.