The moment I stepped off the elevator into my penthouse office, the familiar hum of high-stakes productivity usually acted like a shot of double espresso. The lingering aroma of fresh Colombian roast, the muted tap of keyboards beyond acoustic glass, the rhythmic rustle of lookbooks—it was my empire. I had built Vance Design Group thread by thread, brick by brick. Yet, standing on my own Italian marble, I felt like a trespasser in a story I no longer owned.
Erica, my executive assistant—a woman I paid ninety grand a year to anticipate my every neurosis— sat at her floating desk, scanning her monitors. The second my heels clicked against the floor, her head snapped up. Her sharp brow furrowed, eyes narrowing into two tiny slits of profound confusion. She stood slowly, her posture locked between polite hostility and full-blown security alarm protocol.
"Excuse me, miss… can I help you?" she asked, her voice dangerously flat as she edged toward the desk phone. "The showroom isn't open to unregistered interns."
I offered her my most practiced, six-figure executive smile. "Is the Milan fabric rep here yet, Erica?"
She blinked, thrown off by the sharp, authoritative cadence of her name. "Wait—who are you? How do you know my calendar?"
Right. Fantastic. I was operating on forty years of muscle memory trapped inside a twenty-something shell. Glowing skin, collagen bounce, bright eyes, and posture untarnished by two decades of corporate battle—she didn't see the woman who signed her paychecks; she saw a trespassing college senior.
I scrambled for damage control. "I'm Ariana! Arisa's… niece. She sent me ahead." I gave her a rigid, tight-lipped smile, praying she'd let it slide.
Erica's frown deepened into a terrifying, familiar grimace. "Her niece? Miss Vance has mentioned two brothers and zero nieces. And she'd never let family run her showroom."
"It was an emergency," I interrupted, waving a manicured hand with practiced dismissiveness. "Family crisis. She asked me to review the morning briefs."
Erica didn't buy a single syllable. She crossed her arms, her expression hardening into granite. "Miss Vance wouldn't let a long-lost relative walk past reception without three forms of ID and a NDA. I'm calling building security."
Before I could invoke my own authority, she punched three digits into her desk phone. Ten minutes later, two six-foot-two guards politely but firmly escorted the CEO of Vance Design Group down the service elevator, ignoring my furious, low-register protests the entire way.
Sitting behind the wheel of my Porsche in the subterranean garage, I slumped against the leather headrest and glared at my reflection in the rearview mirror.
"What am I supposed to do now?" I muttered, tracing my jawline. Smooth, razor-sharp, completely free of the subtle tension lines I usually paid my dermatologist two grand a season to freeze away. I looked like the version of myself the universe delighted in mocking: glowing, twenty-something, with no physical proof of the heartbreak, fourteen-hour workdays, or hard-won authority I'd accumulated over two decades.
Was there really not a single trace of me left in here?
I needed one person whose bullshit detector could pierce through supernatural skincare. Someone who knew the woman behind the brand. I grabbed my phone and dialed Maria—my best friend since high school and the only human alive who'd seen me survive both terrible perm phases and my disastrous ex.
"Arisa!" Maria answered on the third ring, her background noise a chaotic symphony of domestic war. "Hold on—Junior! Stop licking the remote! I'm on the phone! Sorry. What's going on?"
"Maria, I need to see you. Right now," I said, my voice tight.
"Right now? What happened? Did the Milan deal fall through?"
"No. It's… physical. And structural. It's complicated."
"Okay, well… front door's unlocked. I'm making lunch for the zoo. Just walk in."
Ten minutes later, I pushed open her front door. Maria's house smelled like vanilla candles, simmering marinara, and expensive laundry detergent—homey, chaotic, and relentlessly alive. I walked toward the kitchen island where Maria was executing a masterclass in domestic multitasking, chopping onions while holding a toddler on her hip.
She didn't look up immediately. "Grab a seltzer from the fridge, Arisa. I'm drowning in organic puree."
I slid onto a leather barstool, folding my arms tightly over my ivory blazer. "Maria…"
Her three-year-old toddled into the room, clutching a plastic fire truck. He stopped, staring up at me with wide, unblinking eyes. "Mommy, who's the pretty lady?"
Maria offered a distracted smile, ruffling his hair. "That's your Auntie Arisa, sweetie."
The boy's brow furrowed in deep suspicion.
When Maria finally looked up from the cutting board, her chef's knife slipped from her fingers, clattering loudly against the quartz counter. Her jaw dropped.
"WHO ARE YOU?"
Her face locked into a terrifying cocktail of maternal panic and sheer horror. She grabbed the edge of the island like a lifeline. I could practically hear her brain short-circuiting as she tried to reconcile the high-end twenty-something sitting in her kitchen with her forty-year-old best friend.
"Maria, it's me," I said softly, holding up two placating hands. "It's Arisa."
She squinted, tilting her head as if shifting her angle might magically re-apply my crow's feet and professional fatigue. Spoiler: it didn't.
"Don't play games with me," she snapped, her voice dropping into a lethal, protective register. "Arisa doesn't look like an ad for a Glossier campaign. Where is she? Who gave you my address?"
"Maria, listen to me!" I leaned across the quartz counter, staring straight into her eyes. "I know it sounds like a psychotic break. I woke up this morning looking like this."
Maria stared at me like I'd just claimed to be an intergalactic ambassador. "Are you high?"
"No!" I groaned, burying my face in my hands. "Who else knows that in junior year, you dared me to flirt with the busboy at Antonio's, and I tripped over a high chair, took down a tray of garlic knots, and bled through my silk pants?"
Maria's expression faltered—a tiny flicker of shock cracking through her hostility. "That… that was on private security footage. That never went on the internet."
"Fine. How about this?" I leaned in closer, my voice dropping to an intense whisper. "Who gave me the nickname 'Capital B' after I wore those metallic leggings to spin class? Who told me, 'Arisa, if someone slaps your ass in those, it's not assault, it's a standing ovation'?"
Maria's mouth opened. The knife lay forgotten on the butcher block. I watched the precise moment the terrifying, undeniable truth hit her system.
"Holy crap," she whispered, her eyes wide with sudden horror. "It is you."
"Thank God," I breathed, sagging against the stool. "I thought I was going to have to recite our 2008 tax returns."
Maria narrowed her eyes and lunged forward, cupping my face with both hands. She squished my cheeks, turning my head side to side with zero gentle touch. "What in the black-magic dermatological hell is this? Did you go to Switzerland? Did you get a full-body stem cell swap?!"
"Maria, stop manhandling the face!" I swatted her hands away, smoothing my hair back. "No! I didn't go to Switzerland!"
She folded her arms, her eyes scanning my unblemished neck with ruthless suspicion. "Arisa, I saw you at dinner on Tuesday. You had subtle forehead lines and a very respectable forty-year-old neck. You don't just wake up looking like the lead in a CW drama!"
"I know!" I hissed, my composure cracking. "Something… supernatural happened."
Maria raised an eyebrow, taking a step back toward her knife. "Start talking. If you mention a blood pact or a sketchy med-spa in Queens, I'm calling a psychiatric hold."
I took a deep breath. "I accepted a vanilla ice cream from an old lady with a cart on my street last night—"
"Oh, brilliant," Maria cut in, her tone dripping with dry sarcasm. "You sold your soul for collagen. Give me her cross streets, because my under-eyes need a miracle."
"Would you shut up for five seconds?" I snapped, rubbing my temples. "I ate the ice cream, went to bed, and woke up like this. Then I got a notification on my phone about an app designed to 'overhaul my love life.'"
Maria blinked, processing the sentence with obvious concern. "Magic ice cream and a predatory dating app. Outstanding. What's it called?"
I pulled out my phone, unlocking the screen. "Look, it's right here—"