It's two in the morning when I wake up with a throat so dry it feels like sandpaper. I lie in my enormous bed and try to convince my body that it doesn't actually need water—that I can simply roll over and go back to sleep. My body disagrees with the kind of vehemence that only comes from basic biological needs being ignored.
I sit up with a groan. The unicorn pajamas rustle softly around me. Outside the floor-to-ceiling windows, the city glitters with a million lights. Somewhere out there, normal people are sleeping in normal apartments with normal kitchens they can find in the dark.
I am not normal people. And this is not a normal apartment.
I swing my legs over the side of the bed. The marble floor is cold against my bare feet. Everything in this penthouse is cold at night. The marble and the glass and the silence—all conspiring to make me feel like I'm living inside a very expensive refrigerator.
"Chen Home," I whisper into the darkness. "Lights on. Low. Please."
Nothing. The smart home system continues its silent rebellion against my existence. I'm a stranger in my own house, and the house knows it.
Fine. I'll find the kitchen in the dark. How hard can it be to locate the one room in a twelve-thousand-square-foot penthouse that contains water? I've been living here for days now. Surely I've absorbed enough spatial awareness to navigate my own home without a map and a compass.
I step out of the bedroom and into the hallway. The city lights provide just enough glow through the distant windows to see outlines and shapes and absolutely nothing that looks familiar. The hallway stretches in both directions, long and wide and lined with doors that could lead anywhere. Bedrooms and bathrooms and closets and secret passages to other dimensions. I have no idea which direction leads to water and which leads to more confusion.
I pick left. Or maybe it's right. And I start walking.
The first door I open is a linen closet. Shelves and shelves of white towels that glow faintly in the darkness like friendly ghosts. They're soft and fluffy and completely useless for hydration. I close the door with perhaps more force than is strictly necessary.
The second door is a bathroom. Not the one with the enormous tub carved from a single piece of marble. This is a smaller bathroom—only slightly larger than a normal person's entire apartment. Gold fixtures. Heated floor. A toilet that probably has features I can't begin to understand. I don't need a bathroom. I need water. I close that door too.
The third door is a private gym. Treadmills and weights and a yoga mat unrolled on the floor like someone's been using it recently. Machines I don't recognize line the walls. A wall of mirrors reflects my unicorn-clad self back at me from every angle. I look ridiculous. A billionaire in children's sleepwear, lost in her own home, hunting for water like a desert explorer who took a very wrong turn.
I close the door and keep walking.
The next door is a wine cellar. Temperature-controlled and filled with rows and rows of bottles stretching into the darkness. Reds and whites and champagnes and vintages I can't pronounce. Thousands of dollars of wine, perfectly preserved and waiting for a woman who apparently never drinks any of it. The bottles sit in their careful racks, silent and judgmental. I don't need wine. I need water.
I close the door and keep walking.
The next door opens into a room with a grand piano. Black and glossy and enormous, sitting in the center like it owns the place. Moonlight streams through the windows and catches the polished surface. It's beautiful and haunting and completely wasted on me. I don't know how to play the piano—or at least I don't think I do. Maybe the old Vivian was a concert pianist in her spare time. Maybe she entertained guests with Chopin and champagne. Or maybe it's just another expensive thing in a penthouse full of expensive things. Purchased and forgotten like everything else.
I close the door gently. More gently than the others. The piano feels different somehow. Sad and lonely and waiting for someone who's never coming back. I understand that feeling more than I want to admit.
I keep walking. The hallway finally opens into a larger space. The air changes—becomes cooler. The faint scent of chlorine drifts toward me.
I've found the indoor pool.
It stretches before me like a perfect rectangle of turquoise water. Underwater lights glow softly, casting rippling patterns on the ceiling. The room is warm and humid, a tropical oasis hidden on the top floor of a skyscraper. I stand at the edge and stare at the water—so calm and still and completely unnecessary. Who needs an indoor pool when you own an island? Who needs an island when you can't remember buying it?
My throat is so dry it feels like sandpaper. I've found a gym, a wine cellar, a piano, and a pool. No kitchen. No water. Nothing to drink except thousands of dollars of wine I'm too tired to open and too responsible to consume at two in the morning while lost in my own home.
I keep walking. Past the pool and through another doorway and down another hallway. The penthouse is endless. A labyrinth of luxury designed by someone who has never needed to find water in the dark. I'm beginning to think I'll die here and be discovered weeks later by Lucas, who will find my dehydrated body still wrapped in unicorn pajamas and will probably blame himself for not leaving better directions.
And then, finally, I find it.
A library.
Shelves and shelves of actual books line the walls from floor to ceiling. Leather-bound volumes and paperback novels and everything in between. The old Vivian apparently read—or at least she collected books. Whether she actually read them is a different question I'm too tired to consider.
The library is warm and cozy in a way the rest of the penthouse is not. There's a fireplace and a velvet chaise lounge and a large window overlooking the city. It feels lived in and loved and completely different from the cold, minimalist perfection of every other room I've stumbled through.
And there, in the corner, disguised as an antique globe, is a mini-fridge.
I almost cry with relief. I cross the room and open the globe. The top half swings upward to reveal a small refrigerated compartment. Inside are bottles of water. Fancy water in glass bottles that probably cost more than gasoline. And champagne—because of course there's champagne in every room of this penthouse.
I grab a bottle of water and twist off the cap. I drink directly from the bottle like a woman who's been wandering the desert for forty years. It's cold and crisp and slightly mineral. It's the best water I've ever tasted in my entire forgotten life. I finish the entire bottle in seconds and grab another.
I sink onto the velvet chaise lounge and look around the library while I catch my breath. Books surround me. Stories I've probably read or meant to read or bought because they looked impressive on the shelves. The fireplace is dark and cold, but I can imagine it lit and crackling and warm. The kind of place where a person could sit and read and feel like a human being instead of a portrait.
Somewhere in this labyrinth, Lucas is probably asleep in his modest apartment across the city—in a place he can navigate in the dark without getting lost. I envy him. And I miss him, which is strange because he's my assistant and I've only known him for a few days in this new, forgotten life.
Tomorrow I'm asking him to draw me a map.
A real map with labels and directions and a little red star that says You Are Here. Because I'm tired of being lost. Tired of opening doors to things I don't need. Tired of wandering through my own home like a stranger who broke in and is hoping no one will notice.
I finish the second bottle of water and stand up. I look around the library one more time. Somewhere in this penthouse, there's a version of me waiting to be found. Not the cold, efficient billionaire who owned everything and felt nothing. The other one. The one who cried so hard she forgot everything. The one who has a friend named Sophie and emergency unicorn pajamas and maybe a reason to keep going.
I don't know where she is. But I'm going to find her.
Even if I need a map.