TAMING THE WOLF OF VOSS TOWER

EPISODE TWO: HOUSE RULES

Tessa wrote the rules on the back of a repair form, in marker, and taped it to the door of Damien Voss's office.

RULES OF THE THIRTY DAYS

1. No women in the tower. Not at meetings, not at lunch, not "just a friend."

2. No lying to me. I can smell it.

3. No touching my tools.

4. Say please when you want something.

5. If you break a rule, you owe me a favor. My choice.

Damien read it standing up, coffee in hand. His office was the entire top floor, all glass and black marble, with the city spread beneath him like a map of everything he owned.

"Rule four," he said. "You want me to say please."

"It's a good word. Most people have one."

"I'm the CEO."

"And I'm the one holding the wrench that keeps your floor from falling sixty stories." She hooked her thumbs in her tool belt. "Rule four stays."

He studied her for a long moment. Then he crossed out nothing, picked up a pen, and signed the bottom of the form with a flourish.

"Thirty days," he said. "Begin."

Tessa gave a satisfied nod and went to work.

He broke the first rule in fifty-one minutes.

She was under his desk, rerouting a ward-line that fed his private lift, when she heard the door open and heels click across the marble. Then a woman's voice, honey-warm:

"Damien, darling. I was in the neighborhood."

Tessa stayed very still.

"Seraphine," Damien said. His voice was perfectly easy. "What a surprise."

"You didn't call me last week."

"I was busy."

"You're never too busy for lunch." A pause. A rustle of silk. "Come. The Moonlit Terrace. My treat."

Tessa could picture it exactly. Seraphine Lorne, heiress to the Lorne Crystal fortune, tall and graceful, with a laugh like a silver bell. Pia from Accounts had shown her a photo once, with the caption dated Damien for six weeks and survived.

"I'd love to," Damien said. "But I'm afraid I've got a prior engagement."

"With whom?"

Tessa slid out from under the desk.

She did it slowly, so they could both see her. She was on her back with a flashlight in her teeth and a coil of copper wire around her shoulders. She took the flashlight out, sat up, and said, very pleasantly:

"With me. Hello."

Seraphine looked at her the way you look at a stain on a tablecloth. "And you are?"

"The help." Tessa stood, dusted off her knees, and waved a wrench. "Mr. Voss and I have a standing appointment. Mostly about wiring. You wouldn't be interested."

"Damien," Seraphine said, in a voice that could freeze a river. "Who is this?"

For a moment, Tessa thought he might say it: nobody, my engineer, a nuisance. She braced for it.

Damien set down his coffee. He looked at Seraphine, then at Tessa with a smear of grease on her cheek and a wire on her shoulder, and something flickered across his face that she couldn't read.

"This," he said, "is the person who saved my company yesterday. And she's right. We have a standing appointment." He turned to Seraphine and gave the practiced smile. "I'm so sorry, Sera. Another time."

Seraphine left, furious, with the door closing hard behind her.

Silence.

"You were going to go," Tessa said.

"I was considering it."

"That's one broken rule."

"I didn't go."

"You considered it. The rule says no women in the tower, and she was in the tower." Tessa held out her palm. "You owe me a favor."

He laughed, a short, startled sound. "You're keeping score."

"It's the only thing that works on wolves. Don't feed them for free." She plucked her flashlight off the desk. "Also, you did say please to nobody. Next time say it before you invite a woman up."

"I didn't invite her."

"No," Tessa said, more softly. "You didn't. I noticed that too."

She went back under the desk. After a moment, she heard Damien Voss sit down heavily in his chair, and she wondered, privately, whether the thing she had just seen on his face might be the first honest expression of his entire life.

The favor she collected that afternoon was small.

"Eat lunch with me," Tessa said. "In the cafeteria. With everyone."

"Why?"

"Because you've never eaten there, and you don't know what you're missing. The fried plantains on Thursdays could end wars."

Damien looked as though she'd asked him to walk barefoot across glass. But a rule was a rule. He followed her down sixty floors, and the whole cafeteria went silent again.

Tessa walked to the counter, loaded two trays, and led him to her usual table, where Pia sat frozen with her fork halfway to her mouth.

"Pia, Damien. Damien, Pia. She knows everything about everyone, so be nice."

"I'm always nice," Damien said.

"You're always charming," Tessa corrected. "It's different."

He took a bite of plantain. His eyes widened.

"Told you," Tessa said.

"It's... incredible."

"It's seven dollars."

"I'd pay a thousand." He ate another, then a third. "Why didn't anyone tell me?"

"Because you never asked anyone anything that wasn't an order."

It was quiet at the table. Damien put his fork down, and for a second he looked younger. Not the Gilded Wolf. Just a man eating plantains.

"That's the first time anyone's said something like that to me," he said.

"Then you've been surrounded by cowards."

"Maybe." He picked up the fork again. "Or maybe none of them ever made me eat plantains."

Pia let out a tiny squeak.

Adrian found her at six o'clock.

She was alone in the sub-core, hunched over the engine's fourth ring with her sleeves pushed up, humming to it under her breath. She didn't hear him until he cleared his throat.

"Mr. Voss," she said, startled. "Sorry. Lost track of time."

"Adrian," he said. "Please."

"That's a Rule Four word," she said before she could stop herself, and then flushed.

Something warm moved across his face. "I heard about your rules."

"News travels."

"Everything travels in this building." He stepped closer to the engine, his hand hovering above the cracked ring without touching it. "Is it bad?"

"It's old. Seventy years old. Your grandfather built this tower, and nobody's replaced the core since." She traced a hairline fracture with her fingertip. "She's tired, that's all. She needs someone to listen to her."

"And you listen."

"I talk. She usually answers." Tessa glanced at him, embarrassed. "That sounds ridiculous."

"It sounds like the only reason this building is standing." Adrian looked at her for a long moment, calm and direct. "I want to make you an offer."

"Another bet?" she asked warily.

"No bets." The faint smile appeared. "A real position. Head of Arcane Infrastructure. Your own department, your own staff, a seat on the technical board. It's the job you've been doing for six years without the title."

Tessa's mouth fell open.

"I'd have given it to you months ago," he continued, "but my brother insisted maintenance be handled by the lowest bidder. I should have overruled him sooner. That's my failing, not yours."

"I... Mr. Voss..."

"Adrian."

"Adrian. Why now?"

He hesitated, and for a moment the composed Chairman looked almost shy. "Because I read your logs every night. Because I've watched you fix this place with your bare hands for years, and nobody has said thank you." His eyes met hers. "So thank you, Tessa."

Her eyes stung. She looked away and made a show of wiping her hands on a rag.

"That's," she said, and cleared her throat, "that's against my rules. You're making me cry in front of an engine."

"Is that a violation?"

"It's a very serious violation."

Adrian laughed, deep and quiet, and she realized she hadn't heard it before. It was a warm, rare sound, like an old clock chiming.

"I'll accept the penalty," he said.

"Then say yes, and I'll think about it?"

"Take your time. The offer stands whether you win my brother's bet or not." He turned to leave, then paused at the door. "Tessa."

"Yes?"

"He doesn't deserve your effort."

She blinked. "Who?"

"My brother." The words were gentle but certain. "Not because he's a bad man. Because he doesn't yet know how to be anything else. Be careful you don't spend yourself on someone who hasn't learned to stay."

He left.

Tessa stood alone with the humming engine, with Rule Five written in her own handwriting still taped upstairs, with the fourth ring warm beneath her palm.

"Well," she whispered to it. "That's two Voss brothers in one day. I don't know which one's more dangerous."

The ring pulsed, once, a soft blue glow.

She was almost certain it was laughing at her.