Chapter 5
Lena didn't sleep that night.
She lay on the small mattress beside her mother's bed, barely cushioned by the thin sheets, one arm draped over her stomach, eyes open to the ceiling. The sound of the rain had faded hours ago, but in her mind, it never stopped. It echoed in the silence of the room, in the rhythm of her mother's wheezing breath.
The business card rested on the nightstand, untouched but impossible to ignore.
Sophia Beaumont.
Those two words alone were enough to make her pulse jump.
She didn't need to search the name. Everyone in the city knew her—tech heiress, investor, empire-builder. Her face was always in the business section of the newspaper, her name floated in whispers by those who envied or admired or feared her. She was unreachable. Untouchable.
And yet, she had left Lena a note written in her own hand.
Let me buy time.
Buy.
Lena hated that word.
Because for girls like her, everything always came down to cost.
Food had a cost.
Medicine had a cost.
Even dignity had a cost—she'd paid it more times than she could count.
So the idea of a woman like Sophia offering to "buy" anything stirred something bitter in her.
But there was something else, too—beneath the bitterness.
Confusion.
Curiosity.
And a softness she didn't know how to hold without breaking.
⸻
By morning, her mother's fever had gone down slightly. Lena made tea, kissed her forehead, and promised to be back by evening. She didn't mention the bills. Or the card.
She carried it in her coat pocket like a secret.
At the café, she was quiet. Not her usual kind of quiet—the exhausted, distracted silence that came from survival. This was different. She moved slowly, as if caught in two worlds: the one she lived in, and the one she was afraid to imagine.
Chloe noticed.
"You okay?" she asked mid-shift, while scrubbing a milk jug behind the counter.
Lena didn't answer right away. She wanted to tell someone. Anyone.
But she couldn't even say it out loud yet.
"Yeah," she finally said. "Just tired."
But she wasn't just tired. She was changed.
Because in the back of her mind, she kept hearing it—Sophia's voice, that calm, clear tone.
"You always know what I need."
No one had ever said that to her before. No one had ever looked at her like she was anything more than a girl surviving day to day. But Sophia had. Briefly. Quietly. And now Lena couldn't forget it.
⸻
By the end of her shift, the sky had already turned that winter gray again. Clouds hung low, heavy with promise. She stood in the alley behind the café, breathing in the cold, trying to decide what to do.
She held the business card in her hand.
It was warm from her pocket.
Just call. One call.
She didn't owe Sophia anything. She wasn't accepting anything. Just… understanding. Clarity. That was all.
Her fingers hovered over the number.
She pressed call.
Her heart thudded. Once. Twice.
Then—
"Hello?"
The voice was soft. Controlled. But unmistakably her.
Lena couldn't speak.
"Lena?" Sophia asked, more gently now. "I hoped you'd call."
Lena blinked hard, grounding herself in the sound. "You left your card."
"I did."
"And a note."
"I meant every word."
Lena swallowed. "What did you mean by it?"
There was a pause. Not uncomfortable—just real.
"I meant… let me help you carry something. Just for a while. Time, pressure, burden. Whatever hurts the most."
Lena looked down at her scuffed boots, her cold fingers wrapped tightly around the phone.
"Why?" she asked.
Another pause.
"Because you feel real," Sophia said. "And I've lived too long surrounded by things that aren't."
That answer cracked something inside Lena. Not broken, but opened.
She didn't respond for a while.
Sophia didn't rush her.
Eventually, Lena said, "I don't want to be bought."
"You're not. I'm not asking you for anything, Lena."
"Then what are you asking?"
"Time," Sophia said simply. "Your time. If you'll allow it."
Lena exhaled a shaky breath, her head falling back against the brick wall behind her. Cold kissed her spine.
"I don't know what I'm doing," she murmured.
"Neither do I," Sophia said. "But maybe that's why it's worth trying."
⸻
That night, Lena didn't sleep again.
But not because of fear.
This time, it was because her heart felt—finally—awake.