Chapter 1: The Interview

The elevator climbed sixty stories, and Nyx counted every one.

She wasn’t nervous; she'd trained that out of herself years ago, the same way you train a dog not to flinch. But her body was nervous anyway. Her heart was doing something irregular behind her ribs, a skip step rhythm that made her think of broken metronomes. She’d worn the dress for three hours before leaving her apartment, practicing how to sit in it, practicing how to move, practicing the exact moment when she’d look up from her phone and meet his eyes for the first time.

She’d also researched him for six weeks straight.

Not in any official way. Just the usual things: G****e, LinkedIn, a few financial databases she’d learned to access years ago when access mattered more than legality. The society pages from Monaco and Cannes. A Reddit thread from some woman who’d dated his friend. The ghost of an I*******m account that belonged to his last companion Margot something, blonde, influencer, now deleted.

Vane Solari had fired her for “excessive social media presence.” Nyx had interpreted that to mean: she thought she was more important than the arrangement, and he’d corrected her on that.

The dress she was wearing had cost forty euros from a shop in Marseille. It looked like it had cost four thousand. She’d spent most of a night alone in her apartment with a needle and thread, taking it in here and there, letting it settle against her body in a way that suggested she’d been born wearing it. That was the trick with men like this they didn’t want to know you’d prepared. They wanted to believe you were naturally, effortlessly the right fit.

She stepped into his penthouse and felt the air change.

It was the kind of space that made you understand money in a way you couldn’t from just looking at pictures. Not because it was ostentatious it was almost aggressively minimal but because everything in it whispered that someone had spent ungodly amounts of money to make it look like they hadn’t spent anything at all. The floors were pale marble. The furniture was low and expensive and designed to be uncomfortable in subtle ways that you only noticed after sitting down. There was a painting on the wall that she recognized but couldn’t name, and the fact that it was hanging in a penthouse in Monaco without any label or explanation felt like a specific kind of power move.

He was standing by the window. She could only see his profile, the line of his jaw, the slope of his shoulder which meant he’d positioned himself like that on purpose. He’d known she’d enter from the east facing door, and he’d angled his body so she’d get the silhouette shot, backlit by a Mediterranean sunset, the kind of composition that made normal men look like they’d been Photoshopped into movie posters.

“You’re late,” he said.

He wasn’t turning around. He was looking at the sea like it had personally betrayed him.

“Three minutes,” she said.

“Right. Late.”

She waited to see if he’d say something else. He didn’t. He just stood there, and the silence accumulated between them until it started to feel like a third person in the room.

“Why are you still here?” she asked.

That made him turn. He did it slowly, like he was making a decision about something, and when she saw his face in full light not just the outline of it, but the actual geometry of it she understood why women in Monaco whispered about him at charity galas the way they whispered about natural disasters. Not beautiful, exactly. Beautiful wasn’t the right word. He was the kind of face that made you recalculate what beautiful meant. Sharp the way expensive things were sharp. Young in the way that privilege kept you young. His eyes were somewhere between brown and green, the color of old glass or old money, and they were looking at her like she was a problem he was trying to solve.

“You’re not what I expected,” he said.

“What were you expecting?”

“Someone who smiles more.”

“I smile when there’s a reason.”

He didn’t respond to that. Instead, he walked over to one of the low tables glass and metal, probably designed by someone with a name and picked up a folder. He moved like he’d learned his body in a very specific way. Not nervous energy. Not the kind of movement that announced itself. Just the efficiency of someone who’d been taught from childhood that wasted motion was a form of disrespect.

“The arrangement is straightforward,” he said, handing her the folder. “You’ll come three times a week. Events mostly galas, dinners, that sort of thing. You’ll dress well. You’ll not be embarrassing. You’ll not speak unless spoken to. You’ll disappear when I tell you to disappear.”

She opened the folder. The contract was in there thick with legal language, tiny font, the kind of document that had been written by someone expensive and paranoid in equal measure.

“And I get paid for this,” she said. It wasn’t a question.

“Fifty thousand a month. Plus incidentals. Clothes, jewelry, travel. Whatever you need.”

She read through the contract while he watched her. She was fast at reading. She'd always been fast but she wasn’t skimming. She was looking for the buried clauses, the small-print betrayals, the things that would matter when everything else fell apart.

There was a clause about exclusivity. Another about medical screening. One about what she’d be expected to do at events marked as “sensitive in nature,” which was lawyer speak for things that could get her killed or arrested or both.

“You’re not actually looking for a sugar baby,” she said, still reading.

“No?”

“Sugar babies are interchangeable. You go through them like socks. Find a pretty girl, let her spend your money, send her home when you’re tired.” She looked up from the contract. “You fired your last one for I*******m. That’s not about discretion. That’s about something else.”

He was quiet for a moment. Then: “What’s something else?”

“You want someone who already knows how to keep her mouth shut. Someone who’s been practicing that her whole life.”

He moved closer to where she was standing. Not threatening his movements were too controlled for that but present. Close enough that she could smell him. He wore something expensive under his skin, some combination of soap and whatever it was that made rich people smell different. It was distracting in a way she hadn’t anticipated.

“Have you?” he asked. “Been keeping your mouth shut your whole life?”

“More or less.”

“For how long?”

“Since I was old enough to understand that people hurt you if you give them reasons.”

He was quiet again. Then he reached over and took the contract from her hands brushing her fingers in the process, which might have been accidental and pulled out a pen. A very nice pen. The kind that costs more than some people’s weekly rent.

“Sign here,” he said.

“I haven’t read the whole thing.”

“You’ll read it faster the second time.”

She took the pen. It was warm from his hand. His name was already on the document Vane Solari, written in a precise script that suggested he cared about penmanship the way other people cared about toothbrushing. She added her signature in the blank space: Nyx. Not her full name. Just Nyx, which was what she’d been calling herself for the last four years, and which had seemed like a good idea at the time.

“The first event is Saturday,” he said, taking the contract back. “Cannes. A gala. You’ll meet me at the airport. Seven AM. Pack for three days.”

“What should I wear?”

“Something expensive looking. Something that doesn’t say you’re trying. You’ll know when you see it.”

She didn’t point out that it was unhelpful advice. She’d figure it out. She always figured it out.

He walked her to the door without saying anything else. The elevator ride down was quiet. She watched her reflection in the polished walls and tried to figure out what had just happened, whether she’d made a mistake or landed exactly where she’d meant to land.

Her phone buzzed as she stepped onto the street.

You left your bag.

But she hadn’t brought a bag.

Another message: Black leather. Vintage. There’s fifty thousand in cash inside. First deposit. Congratulations.

And then, before she could process that: See you Saturday, Nyx.

She looked up at the building even though she couldn’t see into the penthouse from this angle. It was all dark glass and reflection but she knew he was standing at that window, watching her walk away.

She smiled to herself. It was small and quick, the kind of smile she usually didn’t let herself have.

That was probably a bad sign.