Celeste Hale
The ride back from the gala is silent. The city lights smear across the tinted windows of the town car, a river of fractured jewels. The warmth from Caden’s hand on my back is gone, but I can still feel the ghost of it, a phantom heat on my skin. He sits across from me, a silhouette of black and white, his face turned toward the window. He has not said a word since we left.
The car glides into a private underground garage and stops. The driver opens my door. Caden is already out, waiting for me by a plain steel door.
“This way,” he says. No other explanation.
He leads me to a private elevator. There are no buttons, just a small panel where he presses his thumb. The doors slide shut, and we ascend in unnerving silence. The memory of his body shielding me from Julian, the solid strength of his arm around my waist, feels like a scene from a different lifetime.
The elevator doors open not into a hallway, but directly into the penthouse. My breath catches. It is less a home and more a monument to space and light. Walls of glass on two sides showcase the city skyline, a glittering carpet laid at our feet. The floors are polished white marble. The furniture is sparse, beautiful, and looks profoundly uncomfortable. It is magnificent and completely sterile. A beautiful, empty box.
“Your belongings were moved this afternoon,” Caden says, his voice echoing slightly in the vastness. He gestures down a long, white hallway. “The closet in the east wing is yours.”
I follow him, my heels clicking on the marble, the only sound in the dead quiet. He stops before a single, massive door of dark, unmarked wood. He pushes it open.
And there it is.
The master bedroom. The words from the contract flash in my mind. *The parties shall share the master bedroom and a marital bed.*
The room is larger than my entire old apartment. The far wall is another sheet of glass, the city lights a distant, cold fire. In the center of the room sits a bed. It’s not just a bed. It’s a platform, a stage, an island of dark wood and crisp white linens. It seems to float in the middle of the room, a lonely continent in a sea of white marble.
I stop in the doorway, my throat suddenly dry.
Caden walks into the room as if it’s any other. He begins to remove his cufflinks, placing them on a dark wood valet near the window. He doesn’t look at me.
“Our room,” I say. The words feel like marbles in my mouth. Awkward. Unnatural.
“As stipulated,” he replies, his back to me. He unbuttons his suit jacket. “Clause 4.3.”
Of course. The contract. He reduces everything to a clause number. The gala, the embrace, this room. It is all just business. A transaction. I was a fool to think, even for a second, that the heat I felt was anything other than a performance.
“The bathroom is through there,” he says, nodding his head toward another door. “There are two sinks.”
Two sinks. The smallest concession to privacy in this shared cage.
“I’ll… unpack,” I murmur, turning toward a door I assume leads to the closet. It does. It’s another room in itself, lined with empty hangers and built in drawers. My two suitcases look pathetic and small in the far corner. I feel pathetic and small.
I don’t unpack. I just stand there, in the silent, cedar scented closet, and try to breathe. The silk of the emerald dress feels like a costume I can’t take off. After a few minutes, I hear the soft spray of a shower start, and then stop. I force myself to move. I find a simple silk robe I own, change out of the dress, and hang it up. It looks like a wilted flower among the empty chrome hangers.
When I come out, he is already in bed. He lies on the far side, flat on his back, a single white sheet drawn up to his waist. He is shirtless. The dim light from the city carves the muscles of his chest and arms into sharp relief. He looks like a marble statue of a fallen god. He is turned away from me, a still, silent shape in the darkness.
The space between his side of the bed and mine feels like a mile long chasm.
I walk to my side. The sheets are cool and impossibly smooth against my skin as I slide in. I lie rigidly on my back, my hands folded over my stomach, trying to take up as little space as possible. The bed is an exercise in excruciating awareness. I can hear him breathe. A slow, steady rhythm in the silent room. I am acutely aware of every inch of space between us. An invisible, high voltage wire.
Sleep is impossible.
After what feels like hours, I give up. His breathing has not changed. I wonder if he is even asleep. I slip out of the bed, my feet silent on the cold marble floor. I need a glass of water. I need to escape this room.
I find the kitchen. It’s a gleaming expanse of stainless steel and white quartz, as sterile as a laboratory. I open a cupboard, looking for a glass. My eyes scan the shelves. And then I see it.
A small, unassuming tin canister on the second shelf. My heart gives a strange little flutter. I reach for it. The label is familiar. Silver Needle Jasmine. It’s a rare, delicate white tea from a single estate in the Fujian province. My mother used to drink it. She called it her one small luxury. I inherited the taste, but it’s so difficult to find, so expensive, that I only buy it for myself once a year, for my birthday.
How is it here? In this man’s kitchen?
It must be a coincidence. A bizarre, improbable coincidence. He’s a billionaire. He probably has his staff stock all kinds of expensive things.
I put the tin back, my hand shaking slightly. I get my glass of water and drink it, leaning against the cold counter. The silence of the penthouse presses in on me. I feel like an intruder. A ghost haunting someone else’s perfect, empty life.
I don’t want to go back to the bedroom. I wander through the living area, my bare feet making no sound. I find another door and open it. A library.
Of course he has a library. Floor to ceiling shelves of dark wood, filled with what looks like an entire collection of legal texts and first edition economic treatises. It is a monument to knowledge as power. I run my fingers along the spines. They are cold, untouched.
But then I see it. One shelf, right at eye level, breaks the pattern. It is not filled with leather bound law books. It is filled with a dozen oversized art books.
I step closer. My breath catches in my throat. They are all monographs on the work of a single architect. Santiago Calatrava.
The architect I wrote my master’s thesis on. The architect whose work I have been obsessed with since I was a teenager. His blend of kinetic sculpture and structural engineering was a primary inspiration for the Phoenix Project.
This is not a coincidence. Two is not a coincidence. Two is a pattern.
I pull one of the heavy books from the shelf. It’s a new publication, one I’d had on a wishlist for months. The spine cracks softly as I open it, the telltale sign of a book that has never been read. Someone bought these. Recently.
Caden Blackwood. The man who reduced our marriage to a clause number. The man who saw me as an asset. He had researched me. Not just my academic record or my patents. He had dug deeper. He knew my favorite tea. He knew my favorite architect.
These small, thoughtful details are terrifying. They do not fit the man I met in the office, the cold statue I now share a bed with. They are pieces of a puzzle I don’t understand. They are tiny cracks in his icy facade, and I don’t know if they are a trap or a clue.
I close the book and slide it back into its place on the shelf. The gesture feels final. I stand in the silent library, surrounded by his books, and a single, chilling question echoes in the vast, empty space of the penthouse.
Who is Caden Blackwood?
