Three Rules & a Lie
890 Words
It wasn't Rowan. The man at the door was older, silver at the temples, wearing a suit with the quiet precision of someone who'd never once in his life spilled coffee on it. He didn't smile. He didn't threaten either. He just held out an envelope like he was delivering a parking ticket.
"Marcus Vale," he said. "I work for Mr. Miller." "Of course you do," Rose muttered. "He'd like to see you. Tonight. Somewhere public, if that helps you say yes." A pause, dry as dust. "It usually does." "And if I say no?" "Then I drive away and you never hear from either of us again." Marcus said it plainly, no threat in it at all, which somehow made it more unsettling. "He was very specific that it had to be your choice." Rose looked at Nina. Nina looked at the envelope like it might bite her. "Open it," Nina said. "I need to know what kind of trouble you're about to get into."
Inside was a single card, heavy stock, handwritten in sharp, slanted ink: Three rules, since you'll need them eventually. One: never ask what I do for a living...you already know, you're just deciding whether to believe it. Two: I don't do soft. Don't expect flowers. Three: I always tell you the truth. I just don't always tell you all of it. Dinner. Eight o'clock. Wear something you can run in, just in case. — R.M.
Rose read it twice. Then a third time, mostly to make sure her hands had actually stopped shaking, which they hadn't. "He wants to have dinner with me," she said, "and he's warning me to wear running shoes." "That's not a date invitation," Nina said. "That's a hostage situation with a dress code." "I know."
"You're going to go anyway, aren't you." Rose looked at the card again...at I always tell you the truth and thought about grey eyes that had gone cold in half a second when danger walked into a club, and warm again the moment he'd looked at her. "I spilled tequila on myself in front of the most dangerous man in the city," she said, "and he came back for a second round. I have to know why."
Marcus, still waiting at the door, allowed himself the smallest, most tired sigh of a man who had clearly had this exact conversation with other women before and watched every single one of them say yes anyway. "Eight o'clock," he said. "I'll have a car sent. Try not to bring anything sharp...Mr. Miller finds that sort of thing charming, and we're trying to keep this dinner from turning into a story he tells at parties." He was gone before Rose could ask if that was a joke. She was fairly sure it wasn't.
By seven-thirty, standing in front of her closet with her hands still trembling, Rose Haven understood two things with total clarity: she had absolutely no idea what she was walking into, and nothing...not the headlines, not Nina's warnings, not her own good sense was going to stop her from walking into it anyway.
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