No flowers for the dead - Chapter 52: Chapter 52
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The farmhouse in Provence was quiet. Not the sterile silence of a penthouse suite or the humming hush of boardrooms—this was real, textured stillness. Wind through lavender. Distant bells. Pages rustling in her lap.
Alina sat on the porch barefoot, wrapped in a faded sweater, her second mug of lukewarm tea untouched beside her. The air tasted of thyme and unfinished thoughts.
She hadn’t checked her email in three days.
She’d meant to take a full week off. A clean break. No inbox. No memoir press. No interviews.
Just her, the manuscript she’d started months ago, and a little room where the ghosts didn’t follow her.
But the knock came anyway.
⸻
It wasn’t the door—it was her phone, blinking with a voicemail from a New York agent she didn’t recognize.
She listened, slowly.
“Miss Wen, I represent a production company that’s extremely interested in optioning for screen adaptation—limited series format. Streaming platform. Top-tier writers. Real artistic control. They want your voice to lead the room…”
The voice was charming.
Polished.
Insistent.
Alina closed her eyes.
⸻
They hadn’t called it his story. Not Elias’s.
But she knew what they really wanted.
They wanted the grief. The glamour. The tragedy.
They wanted Rae’s mystery. Elara’s rise. Elias’s shadow.
They wanted drama, and Alina had given them truth.
⸻
She didn’t delete the message.
She played it again.
Then again.
Then turned her phone off and went back to her writing desk.
A chapter half-finished blinked back at her.
Her new project wasn’t about Elias.
It was about her own beginning.
The girl before the man.
The silence before the storm.
The woman still standing after the wreckage.
⸻
But that night, with the wind rustling through the olive trees and the stars pale against the ink sky, she wrote a letter.
To Rae.
To Elara.
“They want to turn the memoir into a series.
I haven’t said yes.
I won’t unless we all agree: it’s our story, or it’s no story at all.”
Alina sat on the porch barefoot, wrapped in a faded sweater, her second mug of lukewarm tea untouched beside her. The air tasted of thyme and unfinished thoughts.
She hadn’t checked her email in three days.
She’d meant to take a full week off. A clean break. No inbox. No memoir press. No interviews.
Just her, the manuscript she’d started months ago, and a little room where the ghosts didn’t follow her.
But the knock came anyway.
⸻
It wasn’t the door—it was her phone, blinking with a voicemail from a New York agent she didn’t recognize.
She listened, slowly.
“Miss Wen, I represent a production company that’s extremely interested in optioning for screen adaptation—limited series format. Streaming platform. Top-tier writers. Real artistic control. They want your voice to lead the room…”
The voice was charming.
Polished.
Insistent.
Alina closed her eyes.
⸻
They hadn’t called it his story. Not Elias’s.
But she knew what they really wanted.
They wanted the grief. The glamour. The tragedy.
They wanted Rae’s mystery. Elara’s rise. Elias’s shadow.
They wanted drama, and Alina had given them truth.
⸻
She didn’t delete the message.
She played it again.
Then again.
Then turned her phone off and went back to her writing desk.
A chapter half-finished blinked back at her.
Her new project wasn’t about Elias.
It was about her own beginning.
The girl before the man.
The silence before the storm.
The woman still standing after the wreckage.
⸻
But that night, with the wind rustling through the olive trees and the stars pale against the ink sky, she wrote a letter.
To Rae.
To Elara.
“They want to turn the memoir into a series.
I haven’t said yes.
I won’t unless we all agree: it’s our story, or it’s no story at all.”
End of No flowers for the dead Chapter 52. Continue reading Chapter 53 or return to No flowers for the dead book page.