Page 10

I wake up in a room bigger than my whole apartment, and before my brain hands me the trunk or the hood or the man, it hands me the square footage.

Two-forty, maybe two-fifty, and that’s not counting the bathroom I can see through a doorway that has its own chandelier, because naturally the bathroom has a chandelier. I got three hours of sleep. I know it’s three because I watched the sky go from black to the bruised gray it’s wearing now, and somewhere in the middle of hating the ceiling I lost the fight with my own body and dropped, which I resent, because going under in the bed of a man who had me abducted feels like a vote I didn’t cast. The sheets are a thread count my salary has never met. I lie in them and resent how good they feel.

A soft knock and then a woman lets herself in with a stack of folded clothes balanced on one arm like she’s done it ten thousand times.

“Good morning, koukla. I’m Penelope. I tried to talk him into letting you sleep, but that man’s never lost an argument to common sense in his life, so.” She sets the clothes down. “Up we get.”

She’s somewhere past sixty, silver coming in at the temples, soft around the eyes. She lays the clothes at the foot of the bed, slacks and a sweater.

“These aren’t mine,” I say.

“They are now, and the right size too. He had someone out buying them before the shops were even open, which is very him, solve it at four in the morning, wake half the city, never once consider just asking you. I gave up being surprised by it decades ago.” She squares the edges of the stack until they’re flush, a habit I have too. “I guessed at the sweater. You looked like you run cold.”

“I was taken out of bed in a tank top at three in the morning. I’d have run cold in a sauna.”

She laughs, caught off guard by it. “There it is. He warned me you had a mouth.”

“He’d know. He sat next to it for four minutes at a bar and apparently decided that was a hiring interview.” I push up against the headboard, dragging the ridiculous sheets with me. “How long have you been working for him?”

“Working.” She turns the word over like it tastes funny. “I changed that man’s diapers, koukla. I had him before he had teeth. The teeth were an improvement and also the start of every problem I’ve had since.”

I sit up the rest of the way, because I came in here braced for a staff member who flinches when he exhales, but the first person through the door talks about him like a son who doesn’t call enough.

“You were his nanny.”

“I was everything his mother didn’t have time to be, may she rest in peace, and then I was his housekeeper, and now I’m whatever this is.” She gestures vaguely at the room. “Mostly I make sure he eats. He forgets. He’s forgotten since he was small. Put a problem in front of that boy, and his dinner would go stone cold while he beat it. He hasn’t changed a thread, he’s only got a bigger plate to neglect.”

“That fits the data. By the time his men finished gift-wrapping me and dropped me off, he was still in last night’s suit, running on the same fumes.”

“Of course he did.” She shakes her head, fond and worn out at the same time. “Other men sleep. Adrianos has a thought and goes to war with it until one of them is left standing.” She picks the discarded tank top up off the floor and folds it, a reflex older than I am. “Eat what I bring you. All of it. I don’t care what you make of him, your head’s the reason you’re in this house, and a head doesn’t run on principle.”

“You read minds, or only mine?”

“I’ve fed a hundred stubborn people under this roof, and I’ll feed two more before lunch. You’re not even the worst of today.” At the door she stops, one hand on the frame, and the fondness goes out of her face into something more careful. “He’s in a bad way, this last day. I won’t say more, it isn’t mine to give away. But if he’s hard with you, it isn’t about you. There’s more than money bleeding in this house right now. Try to keep that in mind.”

She’s gone before I can ask what she meant.

I get dressed, because the sweater’s warm and my dignity got out of the car somewhere around the grated bridge deck, and there’s no version of today where cold and proud beats warm and proud.

The dining room has the same glass wall as the office, the city poured out below it going through its usual morning routine like it has no idea I’m up here against my will. Penelope sets down a plate of eggs, tomato, and thick-cut bread, a small dish of honey, and a cup of coffee that smells strong. I look at it, then eat, because starving myself would only hurt me.

“Good?” Penelope asks, topping up a coffee I didn’t ask her to.

“Infuriatingly. You’re too good at this to be wasted on him.”

“That’s what I keep telling him, koukla, but he keeps signing my checks, so we’re at an impasse.” She lifts the plate while I’m wiping honey off my thumb and angles her head at the hall. “He’s waiting. Go on. He doesn’t bite before noon.”

“That’s an oddly precise guarantee.”

“It’s the only one I’ve got. After noon, you’re on your own with him.”

He’s at the desk when I come in, and the photograph is gone from the shelf. I see the gap before I see him, the clean empty rectangle where it stood last night.

That frame took the fight right out of me last night. One second I was building the argument that would corner him, the next I was just staring at the two of them, creased up, laughing in the sun, easy with each other, close, a Kalliopi I’d had and lost and never once known he’d had too. He didn’t only hire her. That much was in the photo. And I stood there holding the fact that I knew her, that she was my best friend and somehow also part of his life, and I never had the first clue, and I said none of it, and this morning the frame’s gone, so he caught me reacting to something even if he doesn’t know what.

I don’t know why he moved the photo, and I’m not going to ask.

“Slept well?” he asks.