The ink on the divorce papers was the only thing dry in the Waldorf penthouse. The Bollinger, however, was flowing like the Hudson at high tide.
"To the death of the 'Humphrey' brand," Serena van der Woodsen toasted, her legs draped over a silk chaise lounge. Her golden hair, once weighed down by Brooklyn granola and Dan’s "moral superiority," finally had its bounce back. "I feel like I’ve been wearing a cheap polyester blend for five years. I’m finally breathing silk again."
"It was a tragic aesthetic era, S," Blair Waldorf-Bass replied, checking her reflection in a vintage 1920s vanity. "But the purge is complete. I’ve already had his name removed from the building's guest registry and blacklisted from every restaurant south of 96th Street."
Chuck Bass entered, looking less like a businessman and more like a Regency prince in a bespoke velvet blazer. In his hands was a leather-bound journal found in Bart’s most private safe, a safe that had required a drop of Bass blood to open.
"The divorce is a footnote," Chuck rumbled, his voice like expensive gravel. "I found the foundation of our family. My father didn’t build the Empire on real estate, Blair. He built it on a debt owed to a woman named Penelope Featherington. We are the stewards of the original Whistledown Ledger."
Blair’s eyes widened. "The Bridgerton name? That’s 1813 ghost stories, Chuck."
"It’s a blueprint," Chuck said, opening a page dated May 1814. "The Waldorf name is listed as the primary financier for the original Gossip Girl. We didn't just 'invent' a blog. We inherited a throne that has been waiting for us for two centuries."
GOSSIP GIRL BLAST
Spotted: S and B celebrating a divorce and a discovery. It seems the Golden Girl has finally dropped the Brooklyn baggage, but the Basses just picked up some very heavy history.
They say the past is a foreign country, but in this town, it’s just a neighborhood you haven't gentrified yet. Is New York ready for a Regency revival? Or will the weight of the Whistledown secrets crush the Empire?
You know you love me. XOXO, Gossip Girl.
In the corner of the room, three-year-old Cornelia Waldorf Bass didn't look up from her iPad. She was busy staring down her nanny until the woman apologized for breathing too loudly. She took her mother’s phone, found Dan Humphrey’s contact, and hit 'Block'.
She looked at her parents and smirked. It wasn't a child's smile; it was a dictator’s decree.
CLIFFHANGER: As Chuck turns the page of the 1813 ledger, a loose photograph falls out a modern Polaroid of a teenage Serena in a hospital bed in Switzerland, dated 2005.
