Nine o'clock on a sunny Friday, and Alex Michell had absolutely nothing on her calendar. It felt almost illegal.
A month of nonstop work — photoshoots for one house, commercial shoots for another, a runway show squeezed in between two red-eye flights — had left her running on caffeine and the sheer stubbornness that had got her this far. She'd earned a day off, and she intended to enjoy every second of it doing absolutely nothing productive.
She fixed herself a breakfast far too large for one person, carried the plate to the couch in her socked feet, and pulled up the drama she'd been saving all week. She'd barely gotten through the opening credits when her phone rang.
She let it go twice before answering. Not because she didn't want to talk — because answering on the first ring always made Fidelia insufferably smug about it.
"Baby girl, we did it!" The words came out in a rush, half-shouted, half-laughed. "We did it, we did it, we did it! Three contracts, Alex. Three! From the biggest companies in Florelia. I am not exaggerating when I say I might cry right now."
Alex sat up so fast her plate nearly slid off her lap. "Wait. Back up. Say that again."
"Contracts. In Florelia. You can finally go back."
Four years. Four years of quiet planning, of turning down jobs that didn't build toward this exact moment, and it all came down to a single phone call on an ordinary Friday morning.
"Which companies?" Alex asked, already on her feet, already reaching for the notepad she kept by the door out of habit more than need.
"Royalstar and Priceless." Fidelia rattled the names off like she'd been waiting all morning to say them. "Modeling, commercials — and a movie role."
Alex went still.
"A movie? Fifi, I've never acted a day in my life. A few commercials that needed some expression on my face, sure, but a movie is different."
"Don't overthink it," Fidelia said, in the particular tone she used whenever she'd already made the decision for both of them. "It's a role that suits you. I wouldn't have even considered it otherwise. We'll go over the details when we land — I have shopping to do. Love you, bye."
The line went dead before Alex could get another word in edgewise. She stared at the phone for a second, more amused than annoyed. Fidelia had been doing exactly what she wanted since they were kids, and nothing about that had changed in the all years.
A text buzzed through a moment later.
From Fifi: leaving in two days!!!
From baby girl: this soon??? okay. shopping tomorrow?
From Fifi: you know me so well.
Two days.
Alex set her phone face-down on the coffee table and let that sink in, and the excitement in her chest curdled faster than she expected into something closer to dread.
She hadn't set foot in Florelia in thirteen years. Not since her mother had packed one suitcase for the both of them and put twelve-year-old Alex on a plane to New Bell without a single look back at the country they were leaving behind. Her father had kept in touch for only three more years after that, birthday calls, mostly, stiff and short, before he stopped calling at all or sending her anything.
She'd promised her mother, in the last months before she died, that she'd finish her degree and never have to depend on a single soul for anything. Alex Porter — the name she'd buried along with that country the day she landed in New Bell — had kept every word of that promise. A degree in Design and Business Management. A modeling career built from nothing, no agency pulling her strings, no family name opening doors. Alex Michell was the name printed on magazine covers. Alex Porter was the one still owed something.
She got up and walked to the window, looking out over a city that had given her everything her first one had taken away. Twenty-five years old, and she'd built all of it without a single person from Florelia watching.
Well. They'd be watching now.
She spent the better part of the afternoon standing in front of her open closet, trying to decide what a woman wears to go back for revenge. It felt like a ridiculous question to be asking herself, and yet there she was, holding a black coat up against her chest in the mirror, turning the thought over like it actually mattered.
Her reflection stared back at her — tired around the eyes, the last month had been really hectic for her. She didn't look twelve anymore. She didn't look like the girl who'd cried into her mother's shoulder on that plane, refusing to look out the window at the country shrinking below them. Good. That girl wouldn't have survived what came next, and Alex needed to walk back into Florelia as someone that country had never had the chance to break one more time.
She packed the way she did everything: methodically, in order of what mattered most. A folder of documents first, because Fidelia would need them the second they landed and would absolutely forget to ask for them until she did. Clothes next, chosen with the eye of a woman who understood that whatever she wore off that plane would be photographed, dissected, and picked apart online within the hour. Then, at the very bottom of the suitcase, wrapped in a scarf so it wouldn't shift or rattle against anything else, the one photograph she still had of her mother.
She didn't look at it. She just made sure it was there, the way she always did before any trip that mattered.
By the time the sun went down, her apartment looked like it belonged to someone leaving for good rather than someone going on a work trip. Suitcases lined up by the door in a neat row. Her breakfast plate, long since cold, still sitting untouched on the coffee table where she'd abandoned it that morning, forgotten the second Fidelia's voice had come through the phone.
She sat down on the edge of her bed and let herself think, just for a minute, about what she actually wanted out of this. Not the contracts. Not the movie role she still wasn't sure she could pull off. She wanted her father to look at her across a room and understand, finally, exactly what he'd thrown away. She wanted the family that had erased her to watch her name trend on every screen in Florelia and know there was nothing they could do about it.
And there was the smaller, more immediate fear she hadn't said out loud to Fidelia: a movie role meant a camera that didn't cut away after three seconds like a photoshoot did. It meant a director watching her face hold an expression far longer than she was used to holding one. She had no idea if she could survive that kind of attention without something in her cracking open on screen for the whole country to see. She'd said yes anyway, the way she said yes to most things that scared her — first, and only later let herself feel the fear catch up.
It wasn't a healthy thing to want, this hunger for her father to finally see what he'd thrown away. She knew that. She'd stopped caring whether it was healthy a long time ago. Wanting something clean and reasonable had never gotten her a plane ticket back to the one place she'd sworn, at twelve, she would return to only when she had enough power that no one there could touch her again.
She had that now. Or close enough to it that the difference didn't matter anymore.
Her phone buzzed one more time before she turned off the lights.
From Fifi: pack something nice for the plane. we're getting picked up at the airport. don't ask me how i know, just trust me.
Alex huffed out something close to a laugh and typed back a single word — fine — before setting the phone down on the nightstand and closing her eyes.
Tomorrow, she'd shop. In two days, she'd fly. And after thirteen years, Florelia would finally have no choice but to look at her.