“It’s going to be alright, Marlowe,” he said. Soft. Almost gentle. “This is a new beginning.”
I looked down at his hand on mine – large, warm, steady – and thought about how easily those words came to people who had never lost anything. A new beginning. As if my life was a document that could be signed, revised, and filed. As if the house and Rowan and everything I was leaving behind were just a first draft.
I nodded because it was easier than arguing.
The drive stretched. The countryside gave way to suburbs, the suburbs to the city’s outer rings, and finally the skyline rose ahead of us like a wall of glass and ambition. I watched it approach through the window, this city I’d only visited twice, and tried to imagine myself belonging here. The image wouldn’t hold. It kept sliding off, like water on wax.
The Rolls-Royce pulled up in front of a building that looked like it had been designed to intimidate. All glass and steel and height, the kind of architecture that exists to remind you how small you are. A doorman in a uniform only slightly less crisp than Elliot’s held the door open with the solemnity of a butler in a period drama.
“Welcome to your new home,” Caelum said, guiding me through a lobby that was more museum than foyer – marble floors that reflected the chandeliers back at themselves, fresh flowers in arrangements that probably cost more than my monthly grocery budget, the smell of money so thick you could practically taste it.
The elevator was mirrored on every surface. I stared at my reflection – a girl with red eyes and a borrowed suitcase – multiplied to infinity. She didn’t look like someone who belonged here. She looked like an intruder who’d been given a key and told to pretend.
The apartment door opened, and I stepped into the kind of space that makes you forget, for one disoriented moment, that anyone in the world lives differently. Floor-to-ceiling windows framing the city like a painting. Light pouring in from every direction. Furniture that looked like it had been placed by someone who understood negative space. A kitchen with an island the size of my old bedroom and appliances that gleamed like surgical instruments.
I walked through the rooms without speaking. Each one was more beautiful than the last, and each one made me feel more like a ghost.
“This is incredible,” I said, finally turning to face him. The compliment escaped before I could stop it.
He smiled. The satisfied smile of a man who’s achieved the desired effect.
“I’m glad you like it. I want you to feel at home.”
I let the silence stretch for exactly one beat. “The place is nice. But I’ll never like it as long as you’re in it.”
The smile flickered. Not quite wounded – Caelum didn’t seem like a man who wounded easily – but dimmed. Like a light behind a closing door.
“That’s unfortunate,” he said, recovering. “Especially since we’ll be moving to my villa in a week.”
“Your-” I blinked. “I thought this was your house.”
“It is my house. One of them.”
“One of-“
“I’m a businessman, Marlowe. Men in my position tend to accumulate properties the way other people accumulate book recommendations. This is the smallest one.”
I stared at him. Then, because the absurdity of the moment demanded it, I said: “Wow. I’m so fascinated.”
His eyebrows rose. “Really?”
“No. That was sarcasm. Which you’d recognize if you weren’t so busy being impressed with yourself.” I folded my arms. “Let me be very clear, Mr. Caelum. You could own every building on this skyline and it wouldn’t change a thing. I’m here for one reason, and it’s currently in a hospital bed wondering whether his lungs will hold out until next month. That’s it. That’s the only reason. Now please – I’m exhausted, and I need you to leave.”
He studied me for a long moment. Not angry. Not offended. Something else – something that looked, irritatingly, like admiration.
“You just need time,” he said. “You hate me now because I forced your hand. But I’m confident that with time, you’ll fall in love with me.”
I laughed. A real laugh, startled out of me by the sheer audacity of the prediction. “Fall in love with you? Mr. Caelum, you couldn’t compete with my ex-boyfriend on your best day, and he’s currently sleeping with my best friend, so the bar is subterranean.”
“Then let’s make a deal.” He leaned against the doorframe, arms crossed, looking for all the world like a man proposing a game rather than negotiating a life. “If I make you fall in love with me, you accept this marriage fully. If I don’t – you’re free to keep your heart wherever you want.”
The offer hung between us, glittering with danger and possibility. My brain screamed trap. My heart, exhausted and bruised and desperate for any illusion of control, whispered: what do you have to lose?
“Deal,” I said. “But you should know – you’re going to lose.”
He smiled again, and this time there was something different in it. Something that, if I’d been less angry and less tired, I might have found charming.
New Book: Back Home to Marry Off Myself
Loredana’s father left the family for his mistress, leaving them to fend for themselves abroad. When life was at its toughest, her father showed up with “good news” after 8 years of absence: To marry off Loredana to a paralyzed son of the wealthy Mendelsohn family.