That is what I do after walking out of his office with his confirmation ringing in my ears. I sit down, I open the calendar system, and I do my job. Lena’s next payment is in eleven days. Nothing about that number changed in the last forty minutes.
On Tuesday morning, the lawyer calls. I sit in the break room on the thirty-ninth floor, my coffee going cold, while she tells me the contract is clean. That I signed willingly. That there is no clause she could pull on that wouldn’t fold back on itself. Binding, she says. Airtight. No viable challenge.
I thank her. Go back upstairs. Open a spreadsheet.
I don’t think about the wordairtightfor the rest of the morning because thinking about it would not change it. I’ve never had the luxury of falling apart during business hours.
Zane passes my desk at four on his way to a conference room two floors down. He doesn’t stop. I hand him the briefing notes he asked for without looking up. His fingers close around the papers.
Three seconds of that cologne, cool, unhurried, the kind that lingers in a room after the person has left it. Then he’s gone. I stare at my screen.
I notice everything. That’s the problem.
Priya calls during my lunch break on Thursday.
Priya has been Lena’s best friend since the seventh grade. She has existed at the edges of my life for over a decade, the way your younger sister’s people do. Always at the kitchen table. Always knowing where the spare key is. Always finishing whatever is left in the pot without asking. She’s one of three people on this earth I trust without thinking.
“I’m going over tonight,” she says. “Lena says she’s fine, but she said it in a voice.”
“Which voice?”
“The one where she’s lying.”
I lean against the wall in the corridor outside the break room. Close my eyes for a second. “Use the key under the mat.”
“I know where the key is, Celine.”
“Stay until I get back.”
“I was going to anyway.” A pause. “How’s the new job?”
I look down the corridor at nothing. “Complicated.”
“Complicated how?”
“I’ll tell you later.”
She lets it go. That’s one of the things I love about Priya. She knows when to pull.
Roman is at my desk on Friday morning, before I’ve taken my coat off.
“Mr. Volkov has lunch at one,” he says. “The Meridian Club on Fifty-Fourth. You’ll attend.”
I look at him. “As his assistant.”
“As his wife.”
I hang my coat up slowly. “I’ll have his briefing documents ready by ten thirty.”
Roman leaves. I sit down, open my laptop, and build the documents. I don’t think about what attending that lunch actually means until I’m in the back of the car at twelve forty-five in the black dress I keep in the office for occasions that require it. Zane is beside me, looking out the window. He turns, hands me a ring and tells me to put it on in a way that is not a request. I scoff, but slide the ring onto my finger, refusing to think about the weight of it there.
The city moves past. Neither of us says anything.
The Meridian Club is old money, low lighting, men who have been making decisions in rooms like this for thirty years. Zane moves through it without effort.
I walk beside him, smile at every introduction, file every name behind my eyes. That’s what I do in rooms I don’t belong in. I make myself useful. I make myself necessary. I’ve been doing this my whole life.
In the car on the way back, he says, “You handled that well.”
