Echoes of the Glass Estate
By @john1208
The story opens at a miserable, rain-soaked funeral. Tullia Gevran, a world-weary catering maid buried under her sister's staggering medical debt, just wants to survive her shift. But when she forces a cup of herbal tea into the hands of Bastien Morvath - the notoriously ruthless, chronically insomniac heir to the city's largest conglomerate - he experiences his first uninterrupted hour of sleep in four years. Hired as his personal night-attendant, Tullia expects a tyrant. Instead, she finds a fractured, exhausted man. Told in alternating perspectives between the two, their late nights become a quiet sanctuary. Tullia's cheerful customer-service mask slips into sarcastic banter, while Bastien secretly corrects the margins of her university study guides. But their fragile, platonic peace is threatened. Ignatia, a snobby childhood friend, demands Tullia's dismissal, while a mysterious saboteur targets Bastien’s factories. As the attacks escalate, Tullia discovers the saboteur is fighting to cure the exact same industrial plague afflicting her sister. Will Bastien choose to destroy his own lucrative empire to save the city, or will the crushing weight of the elite class shatter their midnight sanctuary forever?
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