Page 119 of The Contract

“Mostly because I don’t remember much of anything.”

Something in my chest tightens.

She hesitates, and I know—whatever she’s about to say, it’s significant.

“When I was seven years old,” she continues, voice softer now, “I was found on the steps of St. James Orphanage with a note that said my name was Elena.”

For the second time tonight—I’m speechless.

I stare at her, my grip tightening around my glass, the warmth of the whiskey suddenly meaningless.

She says it so simply. Like it’s just a fact. Something ordinary.

But there’s nothing ordinary about being abandoned.

Nothing ordinary about being seven years old with no past. No family. No home.

Elena keeps her expression smooth, controlled, but I see it now—the way she holds herself together like she’s used to keeping this story locked away, like she’s practiced saying it in a way that makes it sound like it doesn’t matter.

But it does.

It matters.

The way she said seven years old rattles something inside me.

I was twelve when my own world fell apart. Fourteen when I had to start raising myself because no one else would.

But—fuck. Seven.

Too damn young to be left with nothing.

I set my glass down carefully, pressing my elbows onto the table, studying her. “That’s all you know?”

Her lips twitch like she’s considering a smile, but it never fully forms. Instead, she just lifts one shoulder in a shrug.

“That’s all anyone knows.”

There’s a note of finality in her tone, but I don’t miss the way her fingers toy with the stem of her wine glass, restless, like theweight of what she just said is pressing down on her more than she wants to admit.

“The nuns tried to place me in foster homes, but you can imagine, I had separation issues. None of them lasted long.”

She’s opening up the darker parts of herself. Likely the parts that should stay hidden when she’s on the job.

Elena is paid to be what her contract wants. Never herself.

It stirs something in me, thinking I may be the only one she’s given this side of herself to. That it makes me different from the others.

“The older children get, the less likely adoption is for them.”

My heart keeps breaking, thinking about the small girl, the teenager who called an orphanage home. Alone. With no one but strangers to look after her.

“When I turned eighteen, I aged out, and that was that.”

I watch her closely as she rolls the stem of her wine glass between her fingers, her gaze drifting somewhere distant. Somewhere I can’t follow.

“When I was little,” she says, voice even but quiet, “I thought I’d been abandoned. That whoever left me on those steps didn’t love me enough to keep me.”

She exhales softly, shaking her head. “But as I got older, I started thinking… maybe that wasn’t it. Maybe leaving me there was the only thing they could do to save me. Maybe wherever I came from, whoever left me… there was nothing left. And that was their way of giving me a shot. The only shot they had to give.”

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