The cocktail event was on the twenty-second floor of a building I didn't know the name of. Glass walls. Manhattan spread out below like something breakable.
I was on display again. Not in a cage this time. Just standing near the bar in a black dress that was two sizes too small, holding a tray of champagne flutes because someone had decided that was funny.
A man bumped my elbow on purpose. A woman laughed. The tray tilted, and one glass slipped. It shattered on the marble. Champagne soaked my shoe.
"Clumsy," the woman said sweetly.
I knelt down to pick up the glass. My hands were shaking. I couldn't stop them. The pieces were small and clear and I couldn't tell which was floor and which was glass, and I felt my breath start to catch in that way I hated, that way that meant I was about to lose the shape of myself in public.
A coat dropped over my shoulders.
Heavy. Warm. It smelled like cedar and something clean.
I looked up.
He was tall. Dark suit, dark eyes, a face I'd seen before at these things but never spoken to. He didn't smile. He didn't crouch down and make it a scene. He just held out his hand, palm up, waiting.
"Let the staff get the glass," he said. Low voice. Nothing performative in it.
I didn't take his hand. I stood up on my own. But I kept the coat.
"Do you have a ride home?" he asked.
"I take the subway."
"Not tonight."
He didn't say it like an order. He said it like a fact he was offering me if I wanted it. I looked past him, toward the window, where I could see Caspian's back turned to me at the far end of the room. Davina was next to him, laughing at something a senator's wife had said.
"Okay," I said.
His car was black and quiet. He didn't turn on music. He didn't ask my address. He already knew it, and I didn't have the energy to wonder why.
Halfway across the bridge, I started crying. No sound. Just water sliding down my face because my body had held it in too long and there was nothing left to hold it with.
He didn't look at me. He didn't hand me a tissue. He didn't ask if I was okay.
He just drove.
When we pulled up outside my building, he put the car in park and waited. I wiped my face with the sleeve of his coat. Then I took it off and folded it on the seat.
"Thank you," I said.
"Darius Grant."
I paused. "Layne."
"I know."
I got out. I didn't look back.
I saw him again three days later, in the hospital lobby. He was reading a newspaper in one of the chairs by the window like he had every right to be there. He didn't approach me. He just looked up when I passed and gave me a small nod, the kind you'd give a neighbor.
A week after that, he was at the diner across from my apartment, sitting alone at the counter with a coffee. He didn't wave. He didn't turn.
He was just there. Present. Like a fence post you could lean against if your legs gave out.
I kept my distance. I'd learned what happened to men who stood too close to me.
But he didn't stop appearing.
***
On a Thursday, I went to see Tanner. My legs were worse than usual. The gala the night before had been long, and I hadn't slept, and when I turned to leave Room 307 I caught my heel on the edge of the doorframe.
A hand caught my elbow. Steadied me.
Darius. Standing in the hallway with a paper cup of coffee in his other hand.
"Careful," he said.
I righted myself. He let go the second I was stable.
"You shouldn't be here," I said.
"I have a friend on the fourth floor."
He was lying. I could tell. But he lied the way careful people lie — smoothly, without drawing attention to it, like he was giving me an easy exit from a conversation I didn't want to have.
I opened my mouth to say something else.
And then I saw him.
Caspian. At the end of the corridor. Coat over one arm. Frozen mid-step, staring at where Darius's hand had just been.
His eyes went to Darius's face. Then to mine. Then to the coffee cup. Then back to Darius.
He didn't move. He didn't speak. His jaw did that thing — the narrow, still thing his staff had learned to fear.
I felt my stomach drop.
Darius stepped back once, casual. He glanced at Caspian like he was noting the weather, then looked at me. "Take the elevator on the left. It's faster this time of day."
And he walked past Caspian without slowing down.
I didn't wait to see what happened next. I took the elevator on the left.
***
I heard about the office later, from Renata.
She told me in the kitchen the next morning while I was pouring coffee I wasn't going to drink. Her voice was flat, the way it always was when she was reciting things she'd cleaned up.
"The desk was overturned," she said. "The Rothko sketch was on the floor. There was glass in the carpet fibers I couldn't get out with the vacuum. I had to cut a section and replace it before the housekeepers came in."
I nodded. I didn't ask why.
"He didn't sleep," she added, quieter. "Miss Herrera stayed in the guest wing."
I thought about Davina in that guest wing, awake, listening. I thought about the little notebook I'd seen once on her nightstand, leather-bound, a pen clipped to the cover. I'd assumed it was a planner.
I was starting to suspect it wasn't.
I drank the coffee. It was cold. I drank it anyway.