Paper Promises

The city looked honest from forty floors up.

Glass didn’t lie; it reflected. It threw your face back at you when you leaned too close and dared you to name what stared. I’d built my headquarters with that in mind—angles so clean the night slid off them, windows that turned the skyline into an obedient double. Everything that could be seen could be managed.

Inside, the room was all velvet and hush, expensive laughter stitched like thread through the seams. Elias had chosen the private club for the view and the clientele: men who liked to imagine they ruled the city because they could see it. Decanters sweated on low tables. The jazz was quiet enough to eavesdrop over.

“Marcellus,” Elias drawled, turning his whiskey in a tight circle as if charming a snake. “Tell me something real. You’ve had the same expression on since we were twenty. We’re not at the academy anymore. You can unclench.”

I smiled because that was easier than telling him that men like us stayed alive by pretending we didn’t have a pulse. Across from me, Cassian lifted his brow, the unspoken warning in it as familiar as my own reflection. Don’t bite unless you mean to break bone.

Elias leaned back, all appetite and performance. He liked it when I entertained him; he liked it more when he thought he’d drawn blood. “We were saying,” he said to the table at large, “that some of us are human. We get bored of polishing our empires and we—what’s the word—crave. Warmth. Connection.”

“Softness,” someone snorted.

“Idiocy,” another offered, to general approval.

“Love,” Elias finished, with a theatrical shudder. “And I observe, Dante, that you remain immune.”

“Immune isn’t the word,” Cassian said, lazy but sharp. “He’s disciplined.”

“Discipline is just fear with good posture.” Elias’ eyes cut to me. “What is it you’re afraid of, old friend? That if you let someone in, they’ll see what happened to your mother and call it hereditary?”

The edges of the room went very quiet. I did not move. The hand I wasn’t using for my glass pressed briefly, invisible, against my thigh. Count. One. Two. Breathe past it. Let him think he’d found a seam; let him press.

When I finally spoke, it was lightly, because that made men like Elias lean closer. “If we’re reporting fears, I’ll start a spreadsheet. Yours is aging. Mine is inefficiency. We all carry something.”

He grinned. “There he is. Come on, then. Humor me. Time’s catching us, and I’d hate to attend your funeral and realize we never teased you for failing at the simplest thing.”

“Running a multi-billion-dollar portfolio is simple now?” Cassian said.

“Falling in love,” Elias corrected. “Even dogs do it.”

“Dogs also drink from toilets,” I murmured.

He laughed, delighted. “So you can’t.”

“I don’t.”

“Won’t, can’t—prepositions are for men who need an excuse.” Elias set his glass down and leaned forward, eyes bright. “Let’s make it interesting. Wagers keep the blood awake.”

I could have stood then. I could have said no and left him rustling in his own boredom. But men like Elias thrived on the door you didn’t open; they’d claw at it for years. Better to give him a room and make sure the exits were mine.

“What do you want to lose this time?” I asked.

“Not lose.” His smile sharpened. “Win. I say you can’t get married before the rest of us. Not engaged. Married. Paper signed. Wife in a ring and a public record. You won’t do it.”

The table laughed in that careful, wealthy way: sound that didn’t disturb the silver.

“Why,” I said mildly, “would I want to.”

“Prestige,” he said. “Stability. Optics. The board would eat it. Investors love a narrative—‘The Tamed Devil of Marcellus Tech.’”

“Devils aren’t tamed,” Cassian said, watching me.

“No,” Elias agreed, eyes still on mine. “But men who are very sure they aren’t can be taught tricks.”

I tipped my glass, catching the room inside it for a second: faces distorted into those funhouse masks people wore when they thought no one was looking. My reflection slid between them, a neat line of sight. My phone buzzed once in my pocket—security, a routine update from the penthouse. I ignored it.

“What is it worth,” I said, because that was the language Elias spoke.

“Dinner like this, every week, for a year, on me,” he said promptly. “First-class tickets to anywhere you choose for your honeymoon. A favor that doesn’t get questioned.” He paused. “And if you don’t do it—if you cannot—then you admit it isn’t discipline. It’s emptiness. You say it out loud, here, to your friends.”

Cassian’s gaze flicked to mine again. Don’t. His version of care. I filed it under ‘noted’ with everything else that could save me or be used against me later.

“Timeline?” I asked.

Elias’ smile showed a canine. “Before any of us fall. Which—” he gestured vaguely to the circle of men whose romantic lives were negotiations with publicity teams “—could be a very long time. I’ll give you a year regardless. We’ll call it a gentleman’s clause. If none of us marries in a year, the wager dissolves and you keep your pride.”

A year. A quarter and then some. A neat period in which to test a theory: Whether control could frame even this, the warmest, most foolish of human contracts, into a box with hinges that I owned.

I watched the windows. The city wore its lights like a confession no one would make at ground level. Somewhere down there, deliveries were happening with the accuracy of pulse. A life could be built from timing alone. A life could be maintained with rules.

“Dante,” Cassian said quietly.

Elias’ voice softened as if coaxing a dangerous animal. “Prove me wrong.”

There are decisions that feel like stepping into traffic: not because the car has hit you yet, but because you’ve recognized the line where law ends and momentum begins. This was not one of those. This was pure math: terms, optics, leverage. We acquired a mid-size analytics firm last week; their PR head was young, competent, and photogenic. People traded everything for the right price. People made sense on paper.

And there it was—the thought I tasted like iron when it came. People made sense on paper until the paper burned.

I said, “Done.”

Elias’ delight broke like a small, ugly sunrise. He clapped once, rich and amused. Around us, men murmured blessing and doom. Someone poured more whiskey. Cassian exhaled without meaning to, then set his jaw as if he’d remembered an injury.

“Terms,” I said.

“Public,” Elias said, happy as a child with a match. “Announce it before the end of the quarter. A ring. A legal record. A wedding my tailor can attend and whisper about to his other clients. Romantic photos we can all pretend to gag over while secretly admiring.”

“Nothing about love,” I said.

He laughed. “Nothing real ever is.”

I finished my drink. The burn was clean. “Good. You have your show. I have my… experiment.”

Cassian made a soft sound. I didn’t look at him. I looked at the city that made liars of men and mirrors of glass and tried to recall the last time anything had surprised me. That was the trouble with building a life out of height: the air got thin. It got easy to imagine you were a god because you couldn’t hear the rest of the world breathe.

Elias rose, beaming, and touched his glass to mine with a clink that was almost tender. “To your bride,” he said.

“To budgets,” I corrected, and set the glass down.

⸻

It was raining when I left the club. My driver held the umbrella at the exact angle I preferred: enough to keep my shoulders dry, not enough to blur the edges of rain sliding off the awning like falling thread. The car door closed with the heavy hush of money; the world turned private again.

“Home, Mr. Marcellus?” Rhoades asked.

“Office,” I said, because sleep and I practiced abstinence and I respected consistency in all things. He eased us into traffic as if merging with an ocean would be kind if you asked it politely.

The city was a smear of gold on black glass. I watched it move past and counted my heartbeats down from ten until they aligned with the rhythm of the wipers. When I reached the office, the building woke itself up for me—lights slicing on in obedient succession, security nodding with the blank eyes of men trained to register and forget.

My assistant had left the quarterly binders stacked in pleasing order on my desk. Beside them, a file I hadn’t requested: a preliminary list of philanthropic galas, with notes on “optics-friendly attendance.” Someone was always anticipating a need. I rewarded that; it saved me time. On the desk’s far edge lay a slender folder with a paperclip. A tab read: CANDIDATES (DRAFT). The handwriting was neat, uncharacteristically bold.

I didn’t pick it up.

Instead, I stood in front of the window and let the city transfer itself onto the glass over my reflection. In the overlay, I could see both men: the one with a name and a face and a mouth practiced into lines that meant nothing, and the other—the map of light, varicose and alive, turning every surface into a rumor. Somewhere out there, someone was deciding between rent and medicine; someone else was naming their child; someone else was signing a contract and believing a signature meant control.

I touched the glass—the childish gesture tourists performed, proof they’d been somewhere high enough to pretend to hold the world. Cold bled through to my palm. I thought of Elias’ grin, the word he’d chosen with such pleasure: tricks. I thought of Cassian’s warning and filed it with the others labeled inconvenient. Then I thought of paper—how it cut, how it burned, how something so thin could carry a future the weight of a building.

The file with its bold, teasing tab sat there like a dare translated into stationery. When I finally reached for it, not for a second did I pretend it wasn’t curiosity.

CANDIDATES (DRAFT), the heading said. Underneath: publicists, minor royals in exile, philanthropists who looked magnificent next to money. I turned pages until the list blurred into sameness. Good bone structure; neutral pasts. People who would make the right kind of noise and none of the wrong kind.

At the bottom, a paperclip held a single sheet. Not on letterhead. Not typed. A name written by hand. No photograph. No summary. Just: Lyra Quinn.

Below it, one line: She told a VP to stop speaking to her like she was furniture.

Something unfamiliar moved in my chest, wry and almost warm. I let the feeling sit exactly five seconds, then slid the sheet back beneath the clip. The interior lights dimmed with the hour; my reflection became less solid, the city more so.

Boredom is useful until it isn’t. A man like me could turn anything into order if he cared to—days, people, the weather if it signed a non-disclosure. I’d never confused order with goodness. I’d confused it with safety and found it acceptable.

The wager would make things untidy. Good. Untidiness had edges that cut boredom into pieces small enough to swallow.

I shut the folder, left it on the desk, and finally allowed the day to let go of my spine. In the dark, the glass ceased to be a wall and became only what it really was: a skin between me and a fall.

“Schedule a meeting with Legal,” I told the empty room, voice low enough to pass for thought. “Draft a contract template for a marriage agreement. One year. Mutual benefit. Confidentiality, non-disparagement, public appearances. Autonomy clauses to be discussed.”

My phone pulsed against my palm with the satisfaction of tasks moving forward. The rain eased. In the reflection, I looked like a man no one would bet against. I knew better. Men like Elias didn’t wager on the outcome. They wagered on the damage.

On the glass, lightning stitched one neat, bright seam between towers and vanished. The night swallowed the evidence. I could still feel it under my skin—like a signature, like a promise, like the moment a match thinks about being struck and decides it wants to be fire.

“Paper,” I said softly, the word leaving a temporary fog on the window. “Promises.”

And because I refused, on principle, to be the first to look away, I stood and let the city look back until dawn found us both.