Riley’s fingers trembled against her phone, the screen awash with a single, unfamiliar number: Meet me. Tonight. She’d known this day might come—the day her mother would resurface, all jagged edges and excuses—but the shock still left her breathless. The whir of machines in the atelier fell away, replaced by the slick, anxious pulse in her throat.

She found her mother at a shadowy café—older, thinner, features more haunted than memory allowed. Their eyes met, recognition charged and painful. “You’ve grown bold,” her mother said softly, her lip quirking with pride and regret in equal measure. “They’re all watching you now.” Riley’s jaw tightened. This was no homecoming: just another unfinished seam, a reminder of who she’d had to become to survive.

“Why are you really here?” Riley’s voice cracked before she could stop it. Her mother’s confession was all ragged apologies—she’d run, she’d failed, but she’d watched Riley from afar. Each word pressed fresh stitches into old wounds. Riley tried—desperately—to hate her, but the hurt was threaded through with longing. With trembling hands, Riley slid an envelope of old sketches across the table, the hope of history rewritten, and bit back tears as her mother pressed them to her heart, saying, “You were always meant to outshine me.”

Back in the empty atelier, Vincent lurked, sleepless, raw from rejection and ready to drown his loneliness in distraction. Tessa drifted in without a knock—silken, sly, eyes glinting with need and calculation. Her hands found Vincent’s cheek, her lips devouring his in a hungry, desperate kiss. He let her pin him to the desk, fingernails raking his shirt away, their bodies entangled in frantic motion—neither of them caring who or what they hurt in the aftermath. The air turned wild and bitter, pleasure burning with old resentment.

The door creaked. Luca froze on the threshold, the world shattering in slow motion. He saw Tessa astride Vincent, his idol exposed as just another man ruled by appetite. Tessa’s gaze flicked to Luca, triumphant and merciless. Vincent tried to speak, but Luca’s voice rose, dynamite in a whisper: “I’ll ruin you, Leclair. I’ll tell them all how fake you are.” Vincent’s silence was all the confirmation he needed.

Riley wandered the corridors, numb, until she found Delaney alone in the atelier’s heart. The two women eyed each other warily—enemies by necessity, allies by shared wounds. Delaney poured whiskey into a chipped mug, sliding it across the table in a silent truce. “You look like hell,” Delaney offered, something like sympathy glinting in her eyes.

Riley sipped. “That obvious?” The confession spilled out—her mother, the ache of belonging, the confusion, the hunger to matter. Delaney listened, walls crumbling, and admitted, voice raw, that loving Vincent had nearly destroyed her, too. For the first time, Riley didn’t feel like she was auditioning for her place here. She just was.

A ping shattered the silence—Luca’s message flaring on Riley’s screen: You want the truth about Leclair Atelier? Here it is... A tabloid headline blazed in the attachment. Delaney’s face went cold, realization coursing between them. The past, the future—none of it would survive the night.

Riley’s breath hitched as the atelier lights flickered, sensing the end of everything she’d worked for. In that crackling, charged silence, the betrayals were laid bare—there would be no going back.

To be continued...