Chapter 2: A CEO Who Should Be Dead

A man who is meant to die tomorrow should not send a marriage proposal at dawn.

I read the letter a third time, as if the words might change if I looked hard enough. They did not. The ink was dark, the handwriting was calm, and the proposal was real.

“Miss Parker,” Rosalie said softly. “Mr. Whitmore is still waiting in the private lobby.”

I had almost forgotten him. In the book, Genevieve would have run to the elevator with her hair done and her ruby jewels on. I folded the letter and turned to the courier.

“Where is Mr. Wolfe now?”

“In the roof garden of the Blackthorne building, Miss Parker. By the old fountain. He said he would wait for as long as you needed.”

That surprised me. In the novel, people waited for Genevieve out of fear. They did not do it out of patience.

“Rosalie,” I said, “go down to the lobby and tell Mr. Whitmore I am unwell. Tell him I am not receiving visitors today.”

Her eyes grew wide. “But he has come for you personally. You have waited weeks for this.”

“I know,” I said. “Please, just go.”

She nodded and hurried off, clearly sure that I had lost my mind. Honestly, I was not certain she was wrong.

I did not wait for a stylist to do my hair. I threw a plain gray coat over my pajamas, slipped on a pair of flat shoes, and took the service elevator, because I remembered from the novel that it led straight to a quiet side street. It was strange to walk through a building I had only read about. Every corner felt familiar and wrong at the same time, like a dream where the faces are slightly off. A black car from Blackthorne Capital was already waiting at the curb, as if someone had known I would come.

The roof garden was quiet. Morning mist still clung to the hedges, and the white roses along the path hung heavy with dew. In the middle of the garden stood an old stone fountain with a cracked basin, and beside it, with his back to me, stood a man in black.

I stopped walking.

I had pictured a monster. The book called Cassian Wolfe the Black Wolf of Wall Street, a CEO who had burned down three rival firms in one winter and never smiled at anyone. Every employee in the city crossed the hall to avoid him. I had expected a giant with scars and a cruel face.

He turned around, and he was none of those things.

He was tall, yes. His hair was black and a little untidy from the wind, and his eyes were a pale gray that made me think of a winter lake before it freezes. His face was calm and sharp and very quiet. He looked like someone who had learned long ago not to waste a single word.

And he was alive. That was the part that made my knees feel weak. He stood there breathing in the cold morning air, with a pulse, with a shadow, whole and real.

“Miss Parker,” he said. His voice was low and even. He gave a small nod, exactly as deep as courtesy required, not an inch more. “Thank you for coming.”

“Mr. Wolfe.” I nodded back, stiffly. I had no idea how the real Genevieve would have greeted him, so I decided to be careful. “Your letter was a surprise.”

“I imagine it was.”

“We have never spoken before.”

The smallest pause followed. It was so short that anyone else would have missed it. I did not.

“No,” he said. “We have not.”

He was lying, or at least hiding something. I was sure of it. But I did not know why, and I did not yet know how to ask.

“Then you will forgive me for being direct,” I said. “Why do you want to marry me?”

“Because it would be a sensible match.”

“For whom?”

“For both of us.”

I stared at him. “That is not an answer.”

“It is the one I am able to give today.” His gray eyes did not move from my face. “I will tell you the rest when you are ready to hear it.”

I wanted to argue, but something in his tone made me stop. He was not being cruel. He was being careful, the way a person is careful when they are carrying something that might spill.

I tried a different road.

“Mr. Wolfe,” I said slowly, “may I ask where you plan to be tomorrow evening?”

For a moment, nothing happened. The mist drifted. A bird called from somewhere in the hedges. Then Cassian Wolfe’s expression changed, only slightly, the way ice changes when a crack runs through it. His eyes sharpened, and I felt as if I were being looked at by a blade.

“Why do you ask?”

I had just made a mistake. A small one, maybe. But I knew that look. It was the look of a man who had been given a warning he did not expect.

“I only wondered,” I said, too quickly. “A CEO must be a busy man.”

“Tomorrow evening I have an appointment at the old docks in Red Hook,” he said, and he said it very evenly. “It is a matter of some importance. Why does the thought of it interest you, Miss Parker?”

The Red Hook docks. I tried to remember the novel. There had been a short, ugly paragraph, only a few lines long, about a billionaire found dead in an alley near the Red Hook docks. The author had not even given him a proper death scene. He was a footnote.

I clenched my hands inside my coat pockets so he would not see them shake.

“I have heard it is dangerous at night,” I said.

“It can be.”

“Then perhaps you should not go.”

“Perhaps.” Something strange moved behind his eyes. It almost looked like curiosity. “The old Genevieve would not have cared whether I went or not.”

My heart jumped. “The old Genevieve?”

“Forgive me,” he said calmly. “A figure of speech. People change, Miss Parker. It is one of the few things in this city worth watching.”

He was testing me. I was sure of it now. And I had walked straight into it, with my plain coat and my bare face and my questions that no sensible woman would ask.

I forced myself to breathe. I could not run and I could not hide. I had no armor here except the one thing I still had, the knowledge of what was supposed to happen.

“Mr. Wolfe,” I said, “I will be honest with you. I do not trust proposals that appear out of nowhere. I also do not trust men who will not explain themselves.”

“That is a wise rule.”

“Then why should I say yes?”

He did not answer at once. He looked past me, toward the glass towers of the city, and then back at me, and something in his face softened for the first time. It was a small thing. Almost nothing. But it made him look suddenly very tired.

“Because, Miss Parker,” he said quietly, “someone already tried to kill me this morning.”