The Penthouse & The Cage

Lyra

At six-thirty, a black car idles outside our building like it knows more about my life than I do. Rhoades texts downstairs and I say goodbye to our stubborn little apartment with two bags and a joke for Maya I don’t feel (“Don’t let Cass feed you only pasta”), then step into leather that smells like competence.

By seven, we glide through a lobby that’s pretending not to watch. The elevator is private—the kind with a key and opinions. When the doors open, the world is all window.

The penthouse is a cathedral of glass and quiet: dark floors, pale walls, the city laid flat under our feet like a map that forgot to argue. It should feel cold. It doesn’t. It feels like a hand pressed to your sternum, checking for proof of life.

Dante is already there, tie gone, sleeves folded once with the kind of precision that says I don’t loosen; I reconfigure. His gaze goes to my bags—two, both defiant—and then to me.

“Welcome,” he says.

“It’s very… high,” I say, because beautiful would be surrender and terrifying would be honest.

He takes my bags without asking and sets them by a hallway. “You’ll adjust.”

“You say that like altitude is a personality trait.”

“Sometimes it is.”

He shows me the place like it’s a long, careful sentence. Kitchen: matte cabinets, a bowl of lemons somebody placed for magazine purposes. Living room: books stacked in intentional accidents, a piano that looks like it misspeaks in the right hands. A hallway that hums. At the end, two doors.

“This is yours,” he says, opening the first.

Mine is a bedroom the size of our old apartment, with a view so clean the sky seems ironed. The bed is low and wide. A vase of white peonies waits like a promise I don’t trust.

“And this,” he says, the next door, “is the closet.

It isn’t a closet. It’s an ecosystem. Racks organized by color and season. Hangers that all agree with each other. Shoes in quiet rows. A vanity with lighting that forgives. On a dress form, a black gown sleeps under tissue paper.

“I had stylists send options,” he says. “You don’t have to wear any of them.”

“You had my sizes?”

“I had guesses,” he says. “They guessed better.”

I run a hand over the gown’s fabric. It drinks the light and refuses to burp. “This one looks like an apology I don’t owe anyone.”

“It looks like tomorrow,” he says.

I turn. “Tomorrow?”

“A foundation gala. Small. Cameras. We’ll stand where they can see us and say very little.”

He says it like rain tomorrow, not we sell a story to strangers. I nod because the ring is heavy and the rent is paid and this is what paper looks like when it grows legs. He had said an announcement but I guess this did sort of count as an announcement of a kind.

“Before that—” He gestures to a desk in the corner. On it: a thin leather folio, two phones, a sleek black keycard on a tray. “Protocol.”

I flick the folio open. It reads like intimacy pretending to be logistics. Shared calendar access, our names braided through the week. A short list titled Media Notes (smile with your eyes; touch his sleeve if you need to end a question; if you don’t want to answer, say, “That’s generous—next one”). A one-page Security Agreement with checkboxes. No devices monitored. Driver at night. Visible detail at events. Maya: off-limits unless I say otherwise.

He watches me read. Not impatient. Concentrated. “If any of it feels wrong, we change it.”

“Bold of you to assume I’ll tell you.”

“Bold of you to assume you won’t.”

I pick up one of the phones. “This is the ‘if I’m kidnapped’ line?”

“Direct to Rhoades,” he says. “And me.”

“The other?”

“Your number, migrated. New plan. No changes to contacts.”

I set them down, feeling the soft click like a small decision landing. “Okay.”

He loosens something in his shoulders I didn’t realize was tight. “Hungry?”

“Always,” I say, because broke girls stay that way even with a platinum band.

Dinner appears like magic that tipped its servers well: charred salmon, greens that taste like they grew on purpose, cold wine. We eat at the kitchen island like we’ve done this before and it went fine. His appetite is efficient; mine is relief with manners.

“Tell me about your sister,” he says, as if asking the weather to be kind.

“She’s twenty-two. Studying when she can, working nights until her bones file a complaint.”

“Cass is with her?”

“Tonight and the next few,” I say. “Thank you for not asking to meet her.”

“I won’t ask until you invite me,” he says.

Which is the kind of line that knows it’s disarming and doesn’t mind. I file it under Dangerous/Useful and finish my wine.

After, he leaves me to unpack—leave being relative in a space where you can see the weather change in other people’s apartments. I stack my two bags in the closet and feel stupid and homesick and like I’ve smuggled contraband into a museum. The ring keeps catching on my sweater as if reminding me it exists.

Tissue paper sighs when I touch the gown again. Impulse wins. I slide it off the mannequin and step into it. It slides up like a secret and stops where my arms can’t reach.

I debate strategy. Pride says: die in this dress rather than ask. Practicality says: the zipper is at a latitude only a contortionist can reach.

I walk out.

He’s at the window, the city fitting itself to his reflection. He turns, and everything in him stills, then sharpens.

“I need a second spine,” I say, presenting my back. “Or extra hands. Hands would do.”

He doesn’t move for a breath. Then he crosses the room and stops at a distance that feels like suffocation, almost. “May I?”

“Yes,” I say, and the word is smaller than my mouth.

His fingers find the zipper and the line of my spine at once. He pulls slowly, not teasing—servicing the task like it’s sacred. The dress seals; the fabric settles. He smooths a tiny wobble at my hip with a palm that knows about restraint.

“Too tight?” he asks, voice low enough to leave goosebumps bead on my skin.

“It’s fine,” I say, though fine is not the word for my pulse.

He reaches past me to the vanity, opens a slim box I hadn’t noticed. Inside, a strand of small, stubborn pearls—vintage the way the ring is vintage. He holds it up so it catches the city’s leftover light. “I thought these would suit,” he says. “You don’t have to wear it.”

“I don’t do leashes,” I say lightly, trying to joke, break the tension.

“It’s not a leash,” he says, “ just a claim.”

I let him clasp it. His breath warms the back of my neck; the metal kisses skin for a half-second before the pearls settle cool. He doesn’t hurry, which is somehow worse. When he drops the clasp, his knuckle grazes the small hollow under my ear by accident or design. I don’t move. Neither does he. Air decides to be a participant.

He steps back first. We both pretend to examine the mirror. The woman there looks taller than she feels.

“You look like a promise of a stable future,” he says again, softer.

“I look like you’ve been apologizing and groveling with very nice gifts,” I say, and he almost smiles, which is rarer than good weather.

I turn to face him. The pearls feel like punctuation. “Sleeping arrangements?”

He nods toward the hallway. “Your room here. Mine at the other end. Your door locks from the inside. Twice. There’s a touchpad for the panic system—Rhoades can explain it without frightening you.”

“Everything frightens me,” I say. “I just stand up anyway.”

“That’s useful,” he says, and I can’t tell if it’s praise or a diagnosis.

We change out of the costumes. I hang the gown back onto the mannequin, layover the tissue like a truce. He’s in a dark T-shirt now, which should be illegal on a man built for suits. We meet again at the island, standing across from each other. I think about my tiny kitchen and the mug of tea I’d usually enjoy after a long day. It makes me homesick.

“House rules?” I ask.

“Simple,” he says. “Tell me where you are. Don’t let the press bait you. If something feels wrong, say so.” A beat. “And try not to read the comments.”

“I never read the comments,” I say, which is a lie I intend to keep.

My phone buzzes.

Rhoades: Car confirmed for 6:45 tomorrow. Service entrance to avoid press curiosity. I’ll text routes. Sleep if you can. —R

“Press already?” I ask.

“Buildings gossip,” he says. “They smell new stories like rain.”

“Great,” I say. “I’ll bring an umbrella.”

He looks at my hand, at the ring that stretches almost up to my knuckle with its size. “How does it feel?”

“Like a small sun,” I say. “Like I’m lighting up the wrong parts of my hand.”

“Remove it if you want,” he says.

“I won’t,” I answer, and we both hear the yet I don’t say.

We drift toward the hallway. The city moves like a creature outside the glass. At my door, he stops a step away—close enough for breath, not enough for anything else.

“Goodnight, Lyra,” he says, and the way he says my name proves he’s been practicing not to.

“Goodnight, Dante,” I say, and the way I say his name proves I haven’t.

He takes my hand—not like the signing, not like a show. Just palm to palm, warm and steady. He turns it and presses his mouth to the place where the ring meets skin—a breath on metal, a kiss on bone. It’s old-fashioned and devastating. He holds one second longer than he should. Two.

I don’t pull back. I let the moment register like evidence. Dante knows what restraint feels like. So do I.

“Seven,” he says quietly, as if confirming a spell.

“Seven,” I echo.

In my room, I lock the door because I can and exhale because I have to. The peonies try to be soothing. The city fails at sleep like always. I set my hand, heavy with the ring on my stomach and tell the ceiling a vow no priest would certify:

Play the part. Keep the power. Don’t go soft because someone handed you soft things.

My phone lights again. Maya: safe @ Cass’s. send pics of the view???

Tomorrow, I text. Be good.

Outside my door, footsteps pass and disappear, then go back again, this time with a pause outside my door - lingering, just listening to their options. Then they move on and I hear the soft snick of his door closing. I close my eyes and feel the pearls cool against my collarbone, the ghost of his mouth at my knuckles, the weight of the glass above the city.

Morning comes fast in buildings this high.