Chapter Two — The Man Behind the Glass
1522 Words
POV: Nora
I almost wore the wrong shoes.
I'd stood in front of my closet at seven this morning staring at two options — the navy flats I'd had for three years or the black heels I'd bought for my cousin's wedding and worn exactly once. I went with the flats. Practical. Comfortable. The kind of shoes that said I'm a real person, not I'm trying to impress you.
Standing in the lobby of the Weston Empire building now, surrounded by women in shoes that probably cost more than my monthly rent, I was second-guessing the flats.
I was second-guessing everything, honestly.
The lobby was all marble and silence — the expensive kind of silence that buildings cultivate when they want you to feel small.
It was working. I gripped the strap of my bag a little tighter, straightened my spine, and walked to the front desk like I belonged there.
I absolutely did not belong there.
"Nora Calloway," I told the receptionist. "Nine o'clock appointment with Mr. Weston."
She looked at me. Then at her screen. Then at me again, in the way people do when they're trying to reconcile what they expected with what actually showed up.
"One moment," she said.
The moment was forty minutes.
I know because I counted. I sat in a chair that probably cost more than my car — low and angular, the kind designed to look impressive rather than be comfortable — and I did not fidget. I did not check my phone every thirty seconds. I did not let myself look as out of place as I felt.
I just sat. And waited. And told myself this was a power move on his part, not an accident, and that I wasn't going to let it work.
It almost worked.
At nine forty-three, a man in a gray suit appeared and walked me to an elevator without a word. We rode up in silence. He deposited me outside a door at the end of a long corridor — dark wood, no nameplate — and left without telling me to knock or wait or breathe.
I knocked.
"Come in."
The office hit me first — floor-to-ceiling windows on two sides, the whole of Manhattan laid out below like a painting Ethan Weston had commissioned and hung specifically to remind visitors how far up they were.
The ceiling was high. The furniture was dark. Everything about the room said: power lives here.
Ethan Weston was at his desk, reading something, and he did not look up when I walked in.
I stood there.
He turned a page.
I kept standing.
"Mr. Weston."
"Sit down, Miss Calloway."
"I've been sitting for forty minutes."
He looked up then — just for a second, a quick, sharp glance — and went right back to his document. "Then you're already practiced at it."
I sat down.
I took that moment, while his eyes were on the page, to look at him properly. He was exactly what I'd expected from googling Ethan Weston at two in the morning: dark hair, perfectly cut. Sharp jaw.
The kind of face that looked like it had been arranged to be taken seriously. He was in a charcoal suit that fit the way suits fit in movies — like it had been made for him specifically, because it probably had been.
He was also completely, utterly uninterested in the fact that I was in the room.
When he finally set the papers aside and looked at me — really looked, for the first time — I understood what Mrs. Calloway from my high school used to say about certain people having eyes like a calculator. His were steel-gray and they moved over me the way you read a document you're assessing for value. Thorough. Detached. Entirely without warmth.
I felt, very precisely, like I was being priced.
"You brought the bill," he said.
I reached into my bag and set it on his desk.
He glanced at it without touching it. "Three hundred and twelve thousand."
"Yes."
"Surgery scheduled in—" he checked something on his screen "—sixty-eight hours."
"Yes."
"And you have no viable means of covering it."
"If I had viable means, Mr. Weston, I would not have answered a phone call from a stranger at midnight."
Something moved in his expression. Not warmth — more like a minor recalculation. He leaned back in his chair, unhurried, like time was a resource he had in unlimited supply.
"I need a wife," he said.
I stared at him. "I'm sorry?"
"My father's estate is held in a succession trust. The release condition requires that I be a married man. I have ninety days remaining to satisfy that condition before the controlling shares of Weston Empire transfer to my uncle."
He delivered every word of this like he was reading from a board report — factual, flat, not a flicker of discomfort anywhere. "I need a wife within two weeks. The arrangement would last one year. At the end of the term, we divorce. Cleanly. No complications."
"And in exchange for that," I said slowly.
"Your brother's surgery is authorized and paid for by end of business today. His full aftercare is covered for two years. And upon successful completion of the one-year term, you receive a personal settlement of two hundred thousand dollars."
The room went very quiet.
I could hear my own heartbeat.
"You want to buy a wife," I said.
"I want a contractual arrangement. The distinction matters."
"Does it?"
"Yes. A wife implies emotional investment. A contract implies mutual benefit. I'm offering the latter."
"And what exactly does mutual benefit look like? Day to day?"
"You live in my residence. You attend required public events as my spouse. You maintain the appearance of a functioning marriage for the duration." He paused. "In private, we have no obligations to each other beyond basic civility."
Basic civility. Something about the way he said it — like it was a reasonable floor, not an embarrassingly low bar — made me want to laugh. I didn't.
"Why me?" I asked instead.
"You're unconnected to my social world. No existing relationships that would complicate the arrangement. No professional ambitions that intersect with mine. No reason to make this difficult."
"So I'm convenient."
"You're suitable."
"There's a difference?"
"Convenience implies I settled. Suitable implies you qualify."
I looked at him for a long moment. He looked back. Neither of us blinked.
"What happened to the last one?" I asked.
His expression didn't change. Not a flicker. "That's not relevant to this conversation."
"It feels relevant to me."
"The terms of this arrangement don't include information about my personal history, Miss Calloway. They include a medical bill paid in full, two years of aftercare, and two hundred thousand dollars." He reached into his desk drawer and slid a folder across to me. Thick. A lot of pages. "Everything is in there. Read it. I need an answer by Friday."
I looked at the folder. Then at him.
"And if I say no?"
"Then you walk out of here, go back to Millhaven, and find another miracle in sixty-eight hours." He picked up his pen. "I have another meeting in ten minutes."
A dismissal. Clean and efficient, like everything else about him.
I picked up the folder. Stood. At the door I stopped — I don't entirely know why. Something about walking out of that room without asking felt wrong.
"The card that came under my door last night," I said. "The one with I can help on the back."
"Yes."
"You had someone watching me. Following my situation."
"I had someone gathering information. I needed to know whether you were a viable candidate before I made contact."
"And if I hadn't called?"
"You would have called," he said. Not arrogant. Just certain, the way gravity is certain. "You don't have another option. We both know that."
I wanted to argue with him. I couldn't, because he was right, and we both knew that too.
He was already back to his papers.
I walked out.
In the elevator going down, I opened the folder. Forty-seven pages of dense legal language. And at the top of the first page, in clean black print:
One-year contractual marriage agreement between Ethan James Weston and Nora Elizabeth Calloway.
My name. Already there. Already decided.
Like the yes was always going to happen and he'd just been waiting for me to catch up.
My hand was shaking when I closed the folder.
I told myself it was the elevator.
I told myself a lot of things in that elevator. That this was insane. That no reasonable person would consider this. That I should walk out of this building, get on a train back to Millhaven, and figure out another way.
Then the doors opened onto the lobby and I walked out into the noise and scale of Manhattan and I thought about Danny moving carefully down the hallway at home, one hand on the wall, pretending he wasn't.
I kept walking.
I already knew what my answer was going to be.
- Writer
