Chapter 5 Elena Marchetti
They signed the formal engagement paperwork within the hour.
It was a strange, sterile ceremony in Reyes’s office.
There were no flowers.
No music.
No rings.
No champagne waiting on a table.
There wasn’t even a photographer.
Just a notary, several documents, two pens, and the quiet hum of the air conditioner.
Alex sat beside Elena at the long conference table while Reyes stood across from them, reviewing every page one last time.
Alex had never imagined his engagement would look like this.
Then again, he had never imagined he would be engaged to a woman he had met less than two hours ago.
He signed his name.
Elena signed hers.
The notary checked both signatures before stamping the final page.
That was it.
No applause.
No congratulations.
Just a soft click as the notary closed his briefcase.
And yet those two signatures were enough to change both their lives.
Alex stared at his name on the document.
It looked exactly the same as it always had.
Alex Tailor.
The same name he had written on school forms, job applications, rent agreements, and countless pieces of paperwork.
But somehow, it felt different now.
His name was attached to something enormous.
Something he still didn’t fully understand.
Reyes collected the documents.
“Everything is now legally recorded,” he said.
Alex nodded.
He wasn’t sure what response was expected from him.
Congratulations?
Thank you?
Good luck?
Instead, he simply stood.
Elena did the same.
They walked out of the office together.
Alex barely had time to process what he had done before his phone started buzzing.
Once.
Then again.
And again.
He reached into his pocket.
His battery was at twenty percent, but that wasn’t what caught his attention.
The notifications were multiplying.
Forty.
Then sixty.
Eighty.
More than a hundred.
Alex stopped walking.
“What is that?”
Elena, who had been walking beside him, glanced at his screen.
Her expression changed almost immediately.
She sighed.
She didn’t look surprised.
“Someone leaked the engagement filing to the press.”
Alex stared at her.
“We signed the paperwork twenty minutes ago.”
“I know.”
“How could anyone even know?”
Elena gave him a tired look.
“It happens fast in this world.”
She started walking again.
Alex followed.
“Faster than you’d believe.”
He unlocked his phone.
The screen filled with notifications.
News alerts.
Social media mentions.
Messages from numbers he didn’t recognize.
People asking for comments.
People congratulating him.
People insulting him.
People who apparently knew more about his new life than he did.
Alex swallowed.
“This can’t be happening.”
“It is.”
Elena’s voice was flat.
Alex looked at her.
She seemed almost bored by the chaos.
Not because she didn’t care.
Because she’d seen it before.
“Welcome to the family,” she said.
This time, there was no warmth in it.
Only tired resignation.
They reached the elevator.
Elena pressed the button.
“Nothing that happens inside that building stays inside for long. Someone on Richard’s staff, probably. Or someone paid by someone on Richard’s staff.”
The elevator doors opened.
They stepped inside.
Elena shrugged.
“You’ll learn to stop being surprised.”
Alex looked down at his phone again.
He wasn’t sure he wanted to.
The elevator reached the ground floor.
A black town car was already waiting outside.
The driver opened the rear door.
Elena climbed in first.
Alex followed.
The moment the door closed, the outside noise disappeared.
For a few seconds, neither of them spoke.
Alex started scrolling.
His name was everywhere.
Sometimes it was spelled correctly.
Sometimes it wasn’t.
One article called him a mystery heir.
Another described him as a man who had gone from poverty to unimaginable wealth overnight.
A third used a phrase that made him pause.
RAGS TO RICHES: THE UNKNOWN MAN WHO INHERITED A BILLION-DOLLAR EMPIRE.
He kept scrolling.
Then he saw another headline.
He stopped.
WAREHOUSE WORKER INHERITS THE WORLD.
His stomach dropped.
He opened the article.
There was a photograph of him.
Not one he had taken recently.
Not one from the press conference.
It was an old photograph.
Someone had pulled it from an abandoned social media account he had forgotten existed.
He was younger in the picture.
His clothes were ordinary.
His smile was unguarded.
It was a version of himself from before he had any idea that Julian Voss existed.
Beside it was a photograph of Elena at some gala he had never heard of.
She looked completely different in the picture.
Elegant.
Confident.
Surrounded by people who looked like they had never worried about the price of anything.
Alex stared at the two photographs side by side.
“This can’t be real.”
“It is.”
He looked at Elena.
“They found my old account already?”
“They find everything.”
“That was private.”
Elena raised an eyebrow.
“Private doesn’t mean invisible.”
Alex locked his phone.
His hands felt strangely cold.
He suddenly thought about Ruiz.
His old supervisor.
The warehouse.
The people he had worked beside every day.
The cheap lunch place around the corner.
The tiny apartment he had complained about because the pipes made strange noises at night.
His normal life.
The life he had been living yesterday.
“I have to call Priya.”
Elena turned toward him.
“Who’s Priya?”
“My best friend.”
He hesitated.
“She works with me.”
Then he corrected himself.
“Worked with me.”
The past tense caught him off guard.
Alex looked out the window.
He hadn’t quit yet.
He hadn’t even given Ruiz notice.
He hadn’t collected his things from the warehouse.
He hadn’t told anyone he was leaving.
But somehow, the life he had had yesterday already felt like it belonged to someone else.
That realization hurt more than he expected.
It wasn’t the money.
It wasn’t the estate.
It wasn’t even the engagement.
It was the feeling that the old version of his life had disappeared without asking his permission.
A hundred and twenty strangers were reading headlines about him during their lunch breaks.
They were discussing his childhood.
His job.
His inheritance.
His new fiancée.
And they had already decided who he was.
Alex rubbed his forehead.
“This is insane.”
Elena watched him quietly.
For several seconds, she said nothing.
Then she spoke.
“Call her.”
Alex looked at her.
“Priya?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because she knew you before all of this.”
Her voice softened.
“Whatever else this becomes, don’t let it take the people who knew you before.”
Alex stared at her.
There was something in her expression he couldn’t quite place.
Recognition, maybe.
Or old grief.
“You’re speaking from experience.”
Elena looked out the window.
“Yes.”
The city moved past them in a blur of buildings, traffic, and people who had no idea who they were sitting beside.
“My mother worked for this family for years,” Elena said.
Alex remained silent.
“I grew up half inside it and half outside it.”
She folded her hands in her lap.
“I knew what it felt like to have access to everything and still feel like you didn’t belong anywhere.”
Alex looked at her.
She didn’t sound bitter.
That almost made it sadder.
“My mother taught me early that powerful families don’t always notice what they take from people.”
She paused.
“Sometimes they don’t even realize they’ve taken it.”
Alex wasn’t sure what to say.
“And I can tell you from experience,” she continued, “the inside swallows people whole if you let it.”
She finally looked at him.
“Don’t let it.”
Alex wanted to ask more.
About her mother.
About what she’d lost.
About what “half inside and half outside” really meant.
But something told him not to.
He was learning that about Elena.
When to push.
When to wait.
She had spent years around people who asked questions because they wanted information, not because they cared about the answers.
Alex didn’t want to become one of them.
So he nodded.
Then he called Priya.
She answered on the first ring.
“Alex, what the hell is going on?”
He almost laughed.
Almost.
Her voice was exactly what he needed.
Familiar.
Annoyed.
Completely unimpressed by the millions of dollars suddenly attached to his name.
“I was going to call you.”
“You’re on the news.”
“I know.”
“You’re everywhere.”
“I know.”
“You’re apparently engaged.”
Alex closed his eyes.
“Yes.”
There was a long silence.
“Alex.”
“I know.”
“To Elena Marchetti?”
“Yes.”
“The Elena Marchetti?”
“I don’t know how many Elena Marchettis there are.”
“Alex!”
He finally laughed.
It was small, but real.
For the next twenty minutes, he tried to explain.
Priya interrupted him several times.
She was shocked.
Confused.
Angry that she had found out from the news instead of from him.
She asked questions he couldn’t answer.
Why him?
Why had Julian chosen him?
Why was there a contract?
Why was he engaged?
What happened to his job?
Where was he going?
Alex answered what he could.
When he didn’t know, he admitted it.
And Priya listened.
She didn’t care about the inheritance.
She didn’t care about the headlines.
She cared that her friend had disappeared for one day and somehow returned as one of the richest men in the country.
“You’re still Alex, right?” she asked eventually.
He looked out the window.
“Yes.”
“Good.”
Her voice softened.
“Then don’t forget that.”
Alex swallowed.
“I won’t.”
The call continued as the car left the busy city streets.
Outside the window, the buildings slowly became larger, quieter, and farther apart.
The city gradually disappeared behind them.
Ahead was an estate Alex had never seen and couldn’t yet imagine.
He knew there would be gates.
Security.
Servants.
Rooms larger than his entire apartment.
A life he had never planned for.
But inside the car, he kept talking to the one person who knew him before any of this happened.
For those twenty minutes, he didn’t feel like an heir.
He didn’t feel like a fiancé.
He wasn’t the mystery man from the headlines.
He wasn’t Julian Voss’s chosen successor.
He wasn’t the stranger everyone suddenly wanted to know.
He was just Alex.
And for now, that was enough.
