…Élise sat across from him in the sun-drenched drawing room of her countryside estate, her teacup trembling slightly in her hand. The silence between them was weighty, almost sacred, until she finally spoke:
“Damien,” she said gently, “I didn’t marry you for companionship, or even to scandalize society… I married you because I need your help to find someone.”
He blinked, unsure how to respond. “Find someone?”
She looked down at her hands. “My son.”
Damien leaned forward, confusion flooding his thoughts. “You have a son?”
She nodded. “Had. He was taken from me when he was just a baby. It was 1961. I was seventeen. My family—Catholic, conservative, cruel—shipped me to a convent in Lyon the moment they found out I was pregnant. I gave birth… and within hours, they took him away. I never even held him.”
Her voice cracked — the first time Damien had seen her lose composure.
“For decades,” she continued, “I tried to find him. Discreetly. Quietly. But now… time isn’t on my side. I don’t want your pity, Damien. I want your skills. Your brain. Your determination. Find him. That’s all I ask.”
He was stunned. Of all the things he expected — a staged public appearance, maybe a list of heirs to avoid — this wasn’t it.
“Why me?” he asked softly.
She looked at him with something between sorrow and hope. “Because you know loss. Because I saw it in your eyes. You fight for the people you love. And because… I think you need a purpose greater than survival.”
He sat back, overwhelmed. This wasn’t a marriage — it was a mission. A quiet pact between two broken people, bound not by affection, but by pain and something more powerful: redemption.
And so, Damien began the search.
At first, he hit dead ends. Most records from that time were sealed, falsified, or buried. The convent had long been closed. The midwife listed on the birth certificate had passed away ten years prior. Élise had only fragments of names, whispers from frightened nurses, and a tattered envelope with a hospital logo faded from age.
But Damien was relentless.
What he discovered two months later would unravel everything — not just Élise’s past, but his own.
Because the son Élise lost… wasn’t a stranger to Damien.
Not at all.
