Chapter Two: "The Rules"

ZARA

Monday, 11:48pm

She found the contract at the bottom of her bag at midnight and sat with it on her bed.

She'd been home three hours. Showered, eaten toast over the sink, called Mae and said work ran late, nothing interesting. The biggest lie she'd told since she was nineteen.

She'd stood in the bathroom afterward and looked in the mirror once. Auburn hair half down. Jade eyes in a face that had spent twelve hours performing and hadn't quite stopped.

She didn't recognise herself entirely.

She turned the light off.

On her nightstand, half under her phone charger, was the Mount Sinai envelope. Third one this month. Mae didn't know she'd been intercepting them. Mae thought the insurance was handling it.

The insurance was not handling it.

Zara put the envelope face-down. Opened the contract.

It had started with Bri.

Brianna Cole worked the Limelight front desk Zara's closest friend, four years running, the person who called Sunday night at nine-fifteen and said I'm not supposed to tell you this the way she always started the ones that mattered.

A private placement. High discretion. Short term.

Then the number.

Zara had gripped the phone and looked at the corner of the envelope under the charger and done the math in her head without meaning to.

"Why me?" she'd asked.

"They've been through four people already. You were the last name I had."

She'd almost said no.

Then her eyes had gone back to the envelope.

"Send me the address," she'd said.

Clause Four.

The Contractor will assume the role of spouse in all relevant social, familial, and private contexts without contradiction.

She read it three times. It didn't soften.

Without contradiction.

Every instinct she had every reflex that said no or stop or that's not right the contract had already accounted for it. Already removed it.

She set the page on the duvet.

Looked at her wardrobe across the room. The navy blazer. Three audition dresses. Her good boots, secondhand, resoled twice.

She thought about Isla.

She has thirty-seven dollars in her bank account.

Not she's struggling. Not she needs the money. Thirty-seven dollars. Exact. Current. Isla hadn't looked her up that afternoon she'd been looking before Zara walked through the door. Had come to that apartment already knowing. Had walked back through that kitchen door already knowing.

The dinner wasn't an accident. The kitchen conversation loud enough to carry into the hallway was part of it. All of it was part of it.

Zara kept reading.

Clause Fourteen.

Upon conclusion of the arrangement, the Contractor will cease all contact with the Client, his associates, and his family members. No correspondence, no disclosure of the arrangement's nature, and no reference to persons met during the term of the contract. The Contractor acknowledges that the arrangement will have no lasting presence in the Client's life or the lives of those connected to it.

No lasting presence.

She read it again.

Then once more.

Outside, the Bronx at midnight a bus grinding up the hill, music three floors up, a dog going off about something and then stopping like it thought better of it.

She thought about Marguerite holding her hand in the doorway. He never notices the things that matter. The Earl Grey and shortbread smell of that apartment. The way the old woman had looked at her across the dinner table steady, warm, already decided.

She thought about Isla walking back through that door.

You must be the one he chose. For the role.

Dropped. Walked away from. Zara had smiled and said something smooth and held her wine glass with a completely steady hand and performed the rest of that evening without a crack.

But Isla hadn't said it for the room. She'd said it for Zara. A message dressed as small talk. Delivered, received, and Isla had known from the half-second before Zara's smile arrived that it had landed exactly where she'd aimed.

Zara set the contract on the nightstand.

Turned the lamp off.

Dark. Contract on one side. Envelope on the other.

Mae hadn't told her. Mae wouldn't. Mae had raised her on black tea and the firm belief that you didn't put your weight on the people you loved most.

Six weeks of intercepted envelopes.

She lay in the dark and thought: call the agency in the morning. Walk away clean.

Her phone lit up.

Callum's number.

Marguerite would like to know if you'll come for tea on Thursday. She says she forgot to ask you herself, which means she remembered and decided I should be the one to ask.

She stared at the ceiling.

The phone lit up again.

Different number. No name saved.

We should talk.

Isla

Then an address.

Zara sat up.

Jade eyes open in the dark. Chest completely still not calm. The other kind of still.

She looked at Callum's message. Then Isla's. Then the envelope she could feel on the nightstand without seeing it.

In the morning she would call the agency.

She would walk away clean.

She picked up the phone.

When.

Sent.

She put it back down. Lay still.

The decision was already made.

It just wasn't the one she'd said out loud.