The Man I Was Forbidden to Love

Three Notes

By the end of my first week, I had learned three rules.

The first was that Beatrice Crane never raised her voice, because she never had to. The second was that the coffee on the forty-second floor was brewed fresh every twenty minutes, and that no one thanked the person who did it. The third was that Cassian Sterling did not leave his office before ten at night.

I knew because I was still at my desk.

"You are not required to stay," Beatrice had said on Tuesday, handing me a stack of contracts to sort before morning. She said it the way a person says a door is unlocked when she knows you have no coat.

"I don't mind," I said.

"Everyone minds eventually." She studied me over the top of her glasses. "Miss Vale, a word of advice. Mr. Sterling does not hire people. Assistants arrive through three rounds of interviews and a background review that takes a month. You walked in on a Friday morning and were given a key card by lunchtime."

I kept my face still. "I got lucky."

"No," Beatrice said, and for the first time I heard something other than disapproval in her voice. Caution. "Whatever you are, you are not luck. Find out why he wanted you here before someone else decides to ask."

She walked away, heels silent on the carpet, and left me with a stack of contracts and a question I had been carrying since Monday.

Why me?

On Friday night, the floor was empty by eight.

The cleaners came and went. The lights dimmed in sections, the way they did in hotels, until only my desk lamp and the glow from his door remained. I was matching signature pages to the right contracts, a task so tedious it felt like a kindness, when the door opened.

"Miss Vale."

I stood too quickly and knocked my pen onto the floor. "Mr. Sterling."

He had loosened his tie. It was a small thing, almost nothing, and it made him look like a man instead of a building. His sleeves were rolled to the elbow, and there was ink on the side of his hand. Behind him, his office was dark except for the city, which glittered through the glass like something he had paid for.

"It's past ten," he said.

"I wanted to finish the contracts."

"They'll still be contracts tomorrow." He glanced at the rain streaking the windows. "It's been coming down for six hours. Do you have an umbrella?"

I didn't, and my silence answered for me.

"Get your things," Cassian said. "I'll drive you."

"That isn't necessary. The subway"

"Is forty minutes in this weather, and you're already tired." A pause. His eyes held mine, steady and dark and unreadable. "It isn't a request, Elara."

It was the first time he had used my first name since the lobby. My name sounded different in his mouth, slower, like something he'd been careful not to say.

I got my things.

The car was black and quiet and smelled faintly of leather and rain. He drove himself, which surprised me, one hand loose on the wheel, eyes on the road. The city slid past in smears of red and gold. Neither of us spoke for the first ten minutes, and the silence was not uncomfortable, which was the most uncomfortable thing about it.

"You carry that box everywhere," he said at last.

I glanced down. The music box was in my bag, wrapped in a scarf. I hadn't meant to bring it. I'd taken it to work every day since Monday, the way you hold a rail on a staircase you don't trust. "How did you know?"

"I saw it on the stairs the first night." His eyes didn't leave the road. "It fell out of the cardboard. I picked it up before it hit the ground."

"You did." I remembered the long fingers, the plain steel watch. "Thank you for that."

"Does it still play?"

"Three notes," I said. "Then it stops. It's always stopped there."

I didn't know why I told him. Maybe it was the rain, or the hour, or the way he asked, as if the answer mattered more than he wanted it to. I took it out of the scarf and wound the key.

Three notes rose into the quiet. Soft, a little sad, falling like water down a stair.

Cassian's hands tightened on the wheel.

It lasted a single heartbeat. If I had blinked, I would have missed it. But I saw the knuckles whiten, and the long, careful breath he took before his face went smooth again, and I knew with a certainty that had nothing to do with evidence that he had heard that melody before.

The music box stopped.

"It's a lullaby," he said, very quietly, almost to himself. "Or it was."

"You know it."

"I know a great many things," Cassian said. "It's an unfortunate habit." He did not look at me. "Put it away, Elara."

I did, because his voice had turned to something I wasn't brave enough to argue with.

He stopped in front of the building and left the engine running. Rain hammered the roof. Through the windshield, the lamp over the door made a small yellow circle in the dark, and neither of us moved.

"Thank you for the ride," I said.

"Elara." He was still looking straight ahead. "I'm going to say something once, and I need you to listen."

My pulse picked up. "All right."

"Be careful in this building. Be careful in that office." A muscle moved in his jaw. "And be careful of me."

It was not a threat. That was what frightened me. It sounded like a confession.

"Is that a warning?" I asked.

"It's the only honest thing I can give you." He finally turned his head, and in the dim light his eyes were nearly black, and the thing in them was not cruelty. It was something far more dangerous. Restraint. "Go inside."

I got out. The rain soaked my hair before I reached the steps. When I looked back, the car was still there, a dark shape behind the glass, and I thought I felt his gaze on me until the door closed.

Upstairs, I turned the lock twice and sat on the edge of the bed without turning on the lamp.

My mother's voice. Cassian's voice. Two people who had never met, or so I had believed, giving me the same warning in different words.

I took the music box from my bag and held it in my lap. Walnut wood. A faded rose. One stubborn hinge.

I wound the key and let the three notes fall into the dark.

And I realized, with a cold shiver that ran from my neck to my wrists, that I had heard them before tonight, not only from this box. I had heard them in the car, before I ever touched the key, so faint I had taken them for the rain.

Cassian had been humming that melody under his breath the whole way home.