Before Copenhagen, before the fire and the courage and the love that would change their lives, there was Athens. Haris Valis has spent years living in the glow of other people’s admiration—until the day his brother’s perfect life exposes the hollowness of his own. Between tabloid headlines, curated nights, and suffocating privilege, Haris is forced to confront the truth he’s been avoiding: he’s the spare, the disappointment, the golden boy with nothing real beneath the shine. A few years later, Iris Mavridou is trying to rebuild herself one anxious breath at a time. After a humiliating fall from her first teaching job, she walks into the Toussaint Foundation trembling, hopeful and wholly unprepared for the elegant woman who sees straight through her fear. A botched interview becomes a second chance—one she doesn’t yet believe she deserves. Two strangers. Two beginnings. Two lives quietly orbiting the same foundation in a city that is both a home and a wound. This is the story of who they were before they collided. A map of the cracks, the choices, and the shadows that shaped them. A prelude to everything that comes next. Read the two stories that started the obsession. Free. Short. Impossible to put down. (Plus the first chapter of Copenhagen Reflections: Maybe Forever )