Chapter 4 — The City of Echoes

Amelia

The taxi navigated the narrow streets of Paris with a jerky rhythm, its tires skimming over cobblestones that gleamed faintly in the soft drizzle. Amelia pressed her forehead against the cool glass of the window, her green eyes tracing the familiar lines of the city she hadn’t set foot in for almost a decade. The damp air blurred the edges of streetlamps and shop signs, making the city appear like an impressionist painting—beautiful yet slightly out of reach. A fitting metaphor, she thought, for the life she’d built for herself: composed, successful, but somehow distant.