His Secret Luna

Chapter4

I woke up not knowing where I was.

That half second of pure confusion, the ceiling too high, the light coming from the wrong direction, the bed so wide I had unconsciously curled into the very center of it like a person trying not to fall off an edge. Then it all came back. The contract. The elevator. The Penthouse.

I lay there for a moment and let the silence of the penthouse settle around me.

It was a specific kind of silence. Not the silence of an empty place. The silence of a place where someone was being very deliberate about making no noise. I had grown up in apartments with thin walls and I knew the difference.

He was already awake.

I got up and washed my face and looked at myself in the mirror for a moment, which I immediately regretted, and then put on the first sensible thing in my bag and went to find the kitchen.

He was standing at the counter with a cup of coffee and a newspaper. An actual printed newspaper, which felt like something out of a different era, which I supposed he was old enough to be from.

He looked up when I came in.

Nothing in his face changed. Not surprise, not irritation, not any version of good morning. Just that steady, measuring look he seemed to have for everything.

'Coffee is on the left,' he said. 'Clara comes in at nine. She will ask what you want for meals this week and you should tell her honestly because she takes the list seriously.'

'Good morning to you too,' I said.

A pause.

'Good morning,' he said. As flatly as possible.

I almost smiled. I did not, because I did not want to give him the satisfaction of knowing he was even a little bit funny without meaning to be, but it was close.

I poured myself coffee and stood on the other side of the counter from him and we did not talk. The city moved far below us through the glass. A helicopter cut across the sky. Sebastian turned a page of his newspaper with the focused quiet of a man who was used to mornings alone and was not sure yet how to adjust for company.

'Do you always read an actual paper,' I said.

He looked up. 'Yes.'

'Why.'

He considered this like it was a real question worth a real answer, which I had not expected. 'Screens make everything feel temporary,' he said. 'Like it can be deleted. Paper means it happened.'

I looked at him over my coffee cup.

That was not the answer I expected from a man who owned half the buildings in this city. That was the answer of someone who thought about things more than they let on, which I filed away somewhere in the back of my mind without meaning to.

'Okay,' I said.

He looked at me for a second longer than necessary. Then he went back to his newspaper.

* * *

Clara arrived at nine and she was the kind of woman who filled a room not with noise but with warmth, round faced and efficient and completely unbothered by the fact that she was taking a meal list from a woman who was now apparently living in the penthouse.

She asked me what I liked to eat and I told her and she wrote it down without judgment, even when I said I was not a fan of fish and then immediately apologized for being picky, which she waved off with a hand like I had said something slightly ridiculous.

'You are not picky,' she said firmly. 'You are a person with preferences. Those are different things.'

I liked her immediately.

Sebastian had disappeared into his study by then, the door shut in that way that communicated very clearly it was not an invitation. I stood in the living room with my second cup of coffee and looked at the bookshelves that took up the entire far wall.

They were full. Really full, not the decorative kind of full where someone buys books by the meter to fill space, but the kind of full where the books are slightly different heights and some of them are doubled up and a few are lying on their sides on top of the others because there is simply no more room. Some of them had markers sticking out. One near the end of the third shelf had what looked like a coffee ring on the spine.

I ran my finger along a row of them without pulling any out.

He read. Really read. This man who scared everyone in every room he entered came home at night and ran out of shelf space.

I did not know what to do with that so I just stood there with it for a while.

He came out of his study at noon, jacket on, keys in hand, looking at his phone.

'I have meetings until seven,' he said without looking up. 'There is a car available to you if you need to go anywhere. Diana has the number. There is a card on the kitchen counter for any expenses related to your role here, use it for clothes, personal items, whatever you need for appearances.'

'I don't need you to buy me clothes.'

He looked up from his phone then. 'The card is not charity,' he said evenly. 'You are playing a part. The part requires a certain presentation. That is a business expense, not a gift.'

I wanted to argue. I could feel the argument sitting right there ready to go.

But he was already walking to the elevator, phone back up, attention elsewhere, completely unaware that he had just said something that stung a little and probably would have stung more if I had let myself think about it too hard.

The elevator closed.

I stood in the quiet penthouse and drank the last of my coffee and thought about a man who read newspapers because screens made things feel too temporary, and who had a coffee stain on one of his books, and who had just handed me a credit card like a business expense and somehow made me feel both insulted and taken care of at the same time.

One year, I told myself.

I could figure him out in a year.