The city carried a different air after the morning with Nico and his mother. Lila felt it as she walked, a residue of citrus and confession trailing her like a faint perfume. The photograph of him alone in the glass still lived in her pocket, heavier than the book she had bought. Evidence. Not mercy, not leverage—evidence.
That night, she couldn't sleep. She replayed his hand pressing into the orange, the quiet tremor, his mother's voice calling him Nicholas with vowels soft enough to unmake him. She should have been angry, she told herself. She should have left with contempt. But her body had stored something else: the knowledge that he was not made of stone. And knowledge, she knew, was its own temptation.
The offer arrived the next day, not by courier but by envelope slipped under her door. Heavy cream stock, embossed with the name of a global publishing consultancy she had once dreamed of working for: Palgrave-Adler Literary Futures. Their logo was all serif and gravitas—the kind of font that gave the illusion of permanence.
She turned the envelope over twice before opening it, almost superstitious. Inside: a letter addressed to Ms. Lila Prescott.
They had been "following her work with great admiration." They "recognized her sharp eye for cultural analysis and narrative leverage." They were "delighted to extend an invitation" to join their International Advisory Board. Quarterly meetings in London, New York, and Berlin. An honorarium that would erase her rent worries for a year. And influence: her name listed beside figures who had shaped whole genres.
At the bottom, the signatures.
She scanned them quickly, eyes skipping like stones across a pond—recognizing one or two famous critics, a philanthropist who collected poets the way other men collected wines. Then her gaze caught.
Ryan Calder.
The name was typed in neat font above the ink of his signature, bold and undeniable. His hand had written it recently; the blue of the pen still looked alive.
Her throat tightened. Ryan had once joked that advisory boards were for men too tired to write and too proud to stop talking. He had sworn never to take one. And yet here he was, already seated at the table, already complicit in its machinery.
Beneath his, another signature. Not Nico's—not directly. But she recognized the name: a holding company he controlled through three cutouts, a whisper she'd caught in Noor's notes. His fingerprints without the courtesy of a hand.
Lila folded the letter back into its envelope and placed it on the table as though it were glass that might shatter.
She didn't touch it for hours. She walked her flat instead, tracing the space between desk and window, window and sink. She told herself she wouldn't call Noor until she had decided what it meant. But her phone betrayed her: fingers dialing before her mind caught up.
"You sound like someone holding fire," Noor said when she picked up.
"It's paper," Lila said. "But it burns."
"Read it."
She did, voice flat, words mechanical. When she said Ryan's name, Noor whistled low.
"Of course he's there," Noor said. "He plays both sides of the board and calls it balance. What will you do?"
"What I always do."
"Which is?"
Lila didn't answer. She looked at the letter on her table as if it might grow teeth.
The next day she went to the consultancy's offices—not because she had accepted, but because she wanted to see the shape of temptation with her own eyes.
The building gleamed on Fleet Street, a temple to words dressed as business. The lobby smelled of ink and ambition. A receptionist in a tailored suit greeted her with warmth practiced to the syllable.
"Ms. Prescott, welcome," the woman said, already sliding a badge across the desk. "We're thrilled you're here."
Already. The word sat like a premonition.
Upstairs, the glass-walled conference room looked over the city like a throne. On the table: a folder with her name printed neatly. Inside, the contract.
Pages of polite clauses: confidentiality, honorarium, travel stipend. The flattery of committees. The soft coercion of exclusivity. And there, on page three, the list of current board members. Her eyes went again to Ryan's name, steady as a heartbeat.
She imagined his hand signing it. Did he hesitate? Did he think of her? Or had he written it clean, without a tremor, because for him it was only strategy?
The representative—a man in his fifties with careful hair and an accent that had studied at Oxford and stayed—leaned forward.
"We believe your perspective would be invaluable," he said. "You've seen how stories are consumed now. You understand appetite."
She nearly laughed. Appetite. The word followed her everywhere, a wolf with too many disguises.
"What about independence?" she asked.
"You'd have full independence," he said smoothly. "That's the beauty of an advisory role. Influence without responsibility."
Influence without responsibility. The phrase felt like poison dressed in silk.
That night, she sat with the contract spread on her kitchen table. She lit a candle—not for ritual but for light. Outside, the city moved restlessly: sirens, laughter, the click of heels.
Her pen hovered over the margin of page three. She wrote nothing, but her hand trembled with the ghost of writing.
Ryan's shadow filled the room. She remembered him younger, his hands ink-stained, swearing he would never trade truth for a seat at someone else's table. Now his name lived here, neat and permanent, daring her to join or to stand apart.
She thought of Nico. His tremor, his oranges, his mother. The list of names he had asked her to study. He wanted her inside this too. He wanted her gaze not just at his table, but fixed, tethered, legitimized by contracts.
The candle flickered. The shadows moved.
When she finally slept, her dream was simple and cruel. She sat at a long glass table beside Ryan. He leaned close, but his face was blurred, like a photograph smudged by water. Nico stood at the far end, silent, watching. When she turned the contract over, her name was already there, written in ink she didn't remember using.
She woke with her hand clenched, as if still holding the pen.
Two days later, the consultancy sent her a reminder. Polite, efficient. We'd be delighted to receive your signed acceptance before the end of the week.
She read it twice, then deleted it.
Her phone buzzed again minutes later. This time, not the consultancy. An unknown number. The message: a cropped photograph of the contract's signature page. Ryan's name visible. And below it, a blank line waiting.
No caption. Just the image—and the implied invitation: you belong here, or you don't.
She closed her eyes. The temptation was paper, but the strings were steel.
She didn't sign. Not yet. But she didn't tear it up either.
The envelope still sat on her table when she left the flat that evening, coat collar up against the wind, the city rehearsing Saturday in its bones.
She walked faster, as if outrunning the weight of ink.