Chapter 7
When Your Origin Story Is a Tragic Rom-Com (With Bonus Soundtrack)
For Sebastian, arriving in Paris felt like slipping into a dream he used to have.
Everything was still exactly as he’d remembered it—wrought iron balconies, elegant Hausmann buildings, cafés spilling onto sidewalks with practiced indifference. The same slate-colored sky. The same sharp scent of rain and cigarettes. It should have been comforting.
It wasn’t.
The city hadn’t changed. Sebastian had.
He wasn’t the boy who once begged to stay here over school holidays, back when Paris had meant freedom and indulgence and an uncle who let him order dessert before dinner. He was the man who’d come back for answers, and maybe vengeance.
The car Jér?me sent was black and silent, the driver perfectly professional and blessedly quiet. Sebastian welcomed the stillness, let it settle over him as he watched the rain trail across the window in hesitant streaks. His reflection stared back: pale, tired, overdrawn around the edges.
He pressed his fingers to his temple, trying to stop the spiral before it swallowed him whole. He didn’t even know what he was looking for. Was it closure? Justice? A ghost of something real? Or maybe just proof he hadn’t imagined it all, that once, someone had loved him.
Jér?me’s flat looked almost unchanged, the designer-label version of a bachelor pad— high ceilings, polished floors, floor-to-ceiling windows that overlooked the Seine.
Every surface gleamed with that effortless Parisian disdain, like even the coffee table thought it was too good for fingerprints.
The kind of place that didn’t scream wealth, because it didn’t have to.
After all, the Rousseaus had been bankers since the Bourbons.
Jér?me had simply inherited the family seat at the table of power, and made it even more formidable.
But it wasn’t cold. Not exactly. There were little signs that someone lived here. The open book on the arm of the sofa, a scarf draped carelessly over a chair, the faint smell of bergamot and smoke.
Sebastian dropped into the nearest armchair without asking, his movements instinctive. He’d lived here once, briefly, after his mother died and before Hawthorne decided that boarding school was a better way to stamp out any inconvenient sentimentality.
That arrangement had ended quickly. Charles replaced Paris with rigid English boarding schools, using Jér?me’s “unsettled bachelor lifestyle” and “questionable companions” as the official reasons to keep Sebastian under his own austere supervision.
Unofficially, it was because Charles couldn’t stand the idea of Sebastian feeling like he belonged anywhere else.
He was still staring out the window when his uncle had finally appeared.
Jér?me had aged like a leading man. His salt-and-pepper hair, tailored navy suit, slight five o’clock shadow lending him an air of calculated dishevelment.
His tie was undone, but it somehow looked intentional rather than careless because everything about Jér?me Rousseau was deliberate, even his apparent casualness.
“Sébastien,” his uncle said, studying him with an arched brow. “You look terrible.”
“You always say that,” Sebastian replied, unbothered.
“Perhaps because it’s always true,” Jér?me countered. Then he added, “I don’t think being around Charles agrees with you.”
“I don’t think being around Charles agrees with anyone,” Sebastian retorted.
Jér?me laughed as he crossed to the bar, pouring two drinks with the kind of flair that suggested it was both performance and habit. “So, is the royal engagement circus as insufferable as it appears?”
“I haven’t faked my own death yet, if that’s what you’re asking,” Sebastian muttered. The banter was easy now, worn in. Not the tentative awkwardness of their first reunion years ago, when Sebastian had shown up on Jerome’s doorstep, trying to reconnect with the only blood family he’d ever trusted.
“Hm. Maybe wait until after the wedding. I want to see you in tails.” Jér?me’s eyes crinkled with amusement as he gestured toward a low, modern leather couch.
Sebastian took a sip, let the burn settle. “Thank you for the car.”
“And for rescuing you from whatever gilded prison they were keeping you in? You’re welcome.”
Sebastian exhaled slowly. He hesitated, watching the amber swirl in his glass. “I needed to think. And I needed to talk to you. There are things happening, and I can’t say most of it in writing. Charles might be monitoring my messages.”
“Of course he is,” Jér?me said, his voice clipped. “He’s a snake.”
“The truth is, I’m working with someone,” Sebastian said slowly. “An investigative journalist.”
Jér?me’s brows lifted. “That’s new.”
“The goal is to expose Charles. Financial misconduct, illegal contracts, manipulation of public funds. It’s not published yet, but it’s close. We’re being careful.”
“And this journalist,” Jér?me said, narrowing his eyes. “Are they trustworthy?”
“Yes.” Sebastian’s tone left no room for debate. “Meticulous, principled, relentless. She triple-checks everything, every source, every document. The work will hold.”
There was something in his voice that was too steady, too sure and Jér?me, of course, caught it.
“Aha,” his uncle said lightly. “She, is it?”
Sebastian gave him a look. “Don’t.”
“I’m just observing. You’re usually more skeptical. It’s delightful.”
“It’s strategic,” Sebastian snapped. Then, after a slight pause, “And… maybe it’s something else. But that’s irrelevant right now.”
“Mm.” Jér?me sipped his drink, eyes gleaming. “Let me guess. She’s beautiful, stubborn, terrifying when cornered in an argument?”
Sebastian didn’t answer. He didn’t have to.
Jér?me exhaled a soft laugh. It was quiet, satisfied, like he’d just solved a particularly elegant equation.
Sebastian gave him a look. “Since we’re suddenly so invested in personal lives, should I finally ask what happened with Dominique?”
That wiped the smirk clean off Jér?me’s face. “Well, as you’ve clearly noticed, that chapter is closed. And, as you no doubt suspected, I’d really rather not revisit it at this point.”
They sat in a quiet pocket of comfortable silence, the kind that only came from long familiarity. Jér?me studied him for a moment longer, then seemed to relent.
“Well,” he said, rising from his chair with a small sigh, “as we both know that you’re here for more than just my charming company and overpriced single malt, I have something for you.”
Sebastian glanced up. “You mentioned that in your text.”
“It’s a box of your mother’s things,” Jér?me said. “I found it while clearing out the spare room. I wasn’t sure whether to keep them, burn them, or donate them to the shrine of tragic women, but—” He disappeared into the hall. “I saved them.”
When he returned, he was carrying a small, battered archive box. He held it out without ceremony.
Sebastian stared at it for a beat before accepting it. His fingers brushed the dust from the lid, his throat tightening.
“You don’t have to open it now,” Jér?me said, his voice gentler. “I just thought… maybe you’d want to have something that was actually hers. Not curated by Charles. Not filtered through Hawthorne’s control.”
“Thank you, I do. I have hardly anything left of maman’s. Charles got rid of most of her things.”
“Salaud,” Jér?me cursed under his breath as he took his seat again.
Sebastian set the box carefully on the coffee table like it might detonate. He didn’t open it until later.
When the flat was quiet, and the city outside had blurred into golden lamplight and rain, he sat cross-legged on the guest room floor and lifted the lid.
Inside the box was a handful of yellowing letters and envelopes.
A photograph tucked into the fold of a scarf.
Some canisters of undeveloped film. Sebastian picked up one of the letters and unfolded it.
The paper smelled faintly of ink and something sweeter: maybe old perfume.
The handwriting was looping, a little chaotic, full of life.
Jér?me— You were right about James. I hate to say it because now you will be insufferable.
I don’t know where this is going. Maybe nowhere.
I know you think this is a terrible idea.
But he sees me. Really sees me. And that’s terrifying.
Also, I painted over that hideous portrait in the hall.
I think you’ll like it a lot better now.
Tell Maman I’m sorry. (Not really.) Maddy.
Sebastian looked in the box again and saw that one was addressed to him.
But what caught Sebastian’s eye first was the cassette tape. Scrawled across it in blue ink were the words: For Madeline – Autumn Term Mix.
There was a folded track list tucked beneath it, handwritten in looping, impatient script. Some titles were underlined. One had been scratched out so violently the paper was torn. A few had little stars or hearts next to them, like notes passed in class.
Sebastian stared at it for a long moment, then pulled out his phone. Quietly, deliberately, he began to build a playlist.
“Of course,” he muttered, scrolling. “Oasis. Nirvana. Blur. How predictable.”
From the doorway, Jér?me leaned against the frame, arms crossed. “Ah. The mid-nineties mating call.”
Sebastian didn’t look up. “The Smiths. Radiohead. Christ. Was he trying to seduce her or give her seasonal depression?”
“You’re the last person allowed to judge someone else’s playlist.”
“I am correct,” Sebastian said flatly.
“Says the man whose playlist alternates between indie bands no one has heard of and jazz. Being an obscurantist doesn’t make you superior. You let Charles turn you into such a snob.”
“Please, Jér?me. We are Parisian. I come by it honestly.”
“Touché, mon neveu.” Jér?me laughed.
And just like that, his mother wasn’t just a fading photograph or an absence at family gatherings. She was just a girl again.
A girl who’d teased a boy in a lecture hall; a girl given a mixtape by a floppy-haired stranger who, it turned out, was the crown prince.