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“I’ll add it to the list of things I don’t know about him.”
“That list is concerningly long.”
“I’m aware. I’m working on it.”
At midnight, on the dot, someone knocked.
Romily opened it to a courier in a plain black uniform, no visible logo, holding a slim envelope like it might bite him. “Devlin?”
“That’s me.”
“Sign here.” He held out a tablet, waited exactly as long as necessary while she scrawled an illegible signature across the screen, and handed over the envelope. Nothing about his uniform tied back to Sharpe Global — no stitched name, no branded packaging, nothing that could be traced if anyone asked the wrong question. Efficient. Or deliberate. Possibly both. He was gone before she’d fully closed the door, footsteps already fading down the block with a briskness that seemed almost engineered for it.
Jessa appeared at her shoulder, already narrating. “Midnight. On the dot. That’s not a courier. That’s a statement.”
“It’s efficient.”
“It’s a flex disguised as efficiency. Rich people do that.”
The contract inside was thin. Too thin for a deal with this many zeros attached to it. Six pages, clean margins, clauses that read like someone had gone out of their way to make legal language sound almost human. No hidden fees. No unreasonable exclusivity clauses. A kill fee that favored her if the project fell through on his end.
By every metric she knew how to measure, it was a remarkably good contract.
That was the part that worried her.
She’d learned the hard way that “too good to be true” meant what it sounded like. Clean paperwork had burned her before. Clean paperwork had a way of hiding the mess until it was too expensive to walk away from it.
She read it twice. Jessa read it once out loud, doing voices for the legal language — a clipped, officious voice for the liability clauses, a breathy soap-opera voice for the confidentiality section, a full game-show-host voice for the payment schedule that made even Marco laugh without opening his eyes. “‘Client shall provide access to the installation site during agreed hours’ — riveting stuff. Truly the stuff of legend.”
“Keep reading.”
“‘In the event of force majeure’ — ooh, fancy — ‘including but not limited to acts of God—’” Jessa stopped short. “Does that cover dragons? Asking for research purposes.”
“Keep reading.”
“‘Party of the first part reserves the right to—’ this is just contract language for we can change our minds and you can’t.” Jessa flipped to the signature page, taking her time. “This is either the best deal you’ve ever been offered or an elaborate trap. I’ve read the whole thing twice and I genuinely can’t tell which.”
“That’s not reassuring.”
“I’m not paid to reassure you. I’m paid to be right eventually.”
Marco, half-asleep, opened one eye. “Sign it. I’ve decided. This is the moment in the story where the heroine takes the leap.”
“This is a business contract, Marco.”
“Everything’s a story if you frame it right.”
Jessa left first, scooping up her bag and pointing a finger at Romily on her way out. “Text me the second you hear anything else. Anything. I don’t care what time it is.”
“Understood.”
Marco lingered in the doorway, jacket back on, looking unusually serious for a man who’d spent the better part of an hour reviewing a stranger’s jawline. “You’re going to be fine. Whatever this turns out to be.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I don’t. But I’m saying it anyway, because that’s what you do for people.” He knocked twice on the doorframe on his way out, an oddly formal little gesture from a man who did nothing else formally, and then he was gone too, leaving nothing behind but a stillness the playlist hadn’t allowed in hours.
She signed it at 12:47 a.m., in the quiet after Jessa and Marco had both finally gone home, alone at her desk with the lamp throwing a small circle of light and the rest of the studio sitting in shadow around it. She needed the money. She’d read the whole thing twice and found nothing to hang a real objection on beyond an itch at the back of her neck that hadn’t steered her wrong yet.
