I can’t do this . I can not fucking do this. I don’t know what I was thinking. This isn’t just meeting up with any old guy to chat and play a friendly game of chess. This is Raphael North, for crying out loud. I’m not ready for a meeting like this. I need more time to ready myself mentally, to prepare, to calm my damn nerves. I want to call my mom, but I already know what she’s going to say: “Elizabeth, men like Raphael North have had everything handed to them on a platter their entire lives. Do you really think he’s ever heard the word no before? Do you think he’ll hear it if you’re screaming it from the rooftops while he’s pawing at your body?” Raphael North could be a saint and it wouldn’t matter to my mom; she’d still assume he was going to try and force himself on me at some point.

My whole body is jangling with adrenalin and panic as I pick out clothes for the meeting. Thalia’s instructions were never-ending. They included a very specific dress code, a list of topics that should not be discussed, ranging from the weather (?), to sports (?), to anything related to Raphael’s past or his family. There are directions to Raphael North’s home address, which I could probably have told her. Every man and his dog in this city knows where Raphael lives. The Osiris Building is a work of art. The kind tourists stand in front of and have their pictures taken, huge cheesy grins plastered all over their faces.

It’s rumored that Raphael designed the building and had it built. It’s rumored that he still owns the entire structure, and the other seventy floors that soar straight up into the sky are merely rented by their occupants.

Four o’clock in the afternoon seems to take forever to come around. It’s Saturday, so no class. I putter around my small one-bed apartment, cleaning and reorganizing things, trying not to admit to myself that I might be about ready to bail on the whole thing. I can’t, though. I made a promise to Thalia, and I do my best to make sure I don’t break those.

My nerves don’t manifest themselves the same way they do for other people. Thalia feels lightheaded or sick. My mom gets very chatty when she’s anxious about something. Me, on the other hand? I get hungry. By one in the afternoon, I’ve already eaten an omelet for breakfast, a grilled cheese sandwich, a chicken caesar salad, and the remnants of some Chinese takeout that’s been sitting in my fridge for three days.

I tell myself that I eat the leftovers because it’d be a shame to throw it out, but the truth is I’m worried sick. I can be shy, and I’ve never found myself sat in front of a breathtakingly attractive, mysterious, secretive inventor/philanthropist/celebrity before. I have no idea how I’m going to react in that setting. I could be fine, but then again…god, it doesn’t even bear thinking about. I could be a complete and utter train wreck.

At one thirty, my cell phone rings. I assume it’s Thalia, since I’ve ignored her last two calls (she’s already spoken to me three times this morning, and her nervous energy has done nothing to help my own jitters), but it’s not. It’s my brother, David.

“Hey, Spooch,” he says when I pick up. Fucking Spooch. He’s been calling me that for as long as I can remember. We go through phases of weeks and sometimes even months where he forgets to torture me with the ridiculous nickname, but then, without fail, he’ll remember and it’ll resurface with a vengeance.

“What’s up, Dickface?” Unoriginal, I know, but I have to land my blows where I can with him.

He laughs. “Mom said you asked her if you could move in with me,” he says.

“Oh, lord. I did not . She told me I should .”

“And what did…you…say?” By the sounds of things, he’s eating something. Knowing him, pizza.

“What do you think I said? I told her I’d rather be homeless.”

He cackles, the same way he used to cackle when we were kids and he’d stolen one of my favorite toys. “Well, fuck you, too, little sister. I don’t want to live with you, either.”

“I know you don’t. You’d actually have to put on pants from time to time.”

“Mmm,” he grunts. “Yeah. Fuck pants.”

“Did your call have a purpose, or were you just checking to make sure I wasn’t going to show up on your doorstep tomorrow with all of my things in trash bags?”

“Hey, I know you’d…rather sacrifice your whole degree program and head back to Kansas before you allowed such a…ding to your pride.” He swallows whatever he was chewing. “And yeah, my call does actually have a purpose. The band’s playing at The Gallery next Friday night. Will you come? Pretend like you know the lyrics? Act like you like us and shit?”

My brother’s been in the same almost-nearly-about-to-make-it rock band for the past six years. While I’ve been slaving over my laptop and a towering mountain of textbooks, he’s been tending bar, playing guitar, and hitting on women professionally. “Sadly, I do know all the words. I guess I can pretend to like you guys if I absolutely have to. What’s in it for me?”

“Hmm.” David thinks about this. “I’ll set you up with Mal. He broke up with his girlfriend last week. I know you’ve got the hots for him.”

“The day I stoop to dating a failed real estate agent cum drummer is the day hell freezes over, Davey boy. How about you give back the record player you borrowed from me eighteen months ago? I think that’s a fair trade.”

“Hey, what are you doing later?” This kind of diversionary tactic is typical of David. He doesn’t want to give me back this record player. I’ve been asking him for months, he says he’ll bring it by, and then he never does. It’s not even a half decent player. He just hates returning things. Period.

“I’m playing chess with Raphael North,” I say in my most easy-breezy tone. “What about you?”

“Mutually masturbating with Olivia Wilde,” he fires back. “You’re so weird, Spooch. You’re one of the only people on Earth who’d fantasize about playing a game of chess with a Fortune 500 guy.”

“Uhhh… I am not fantasizing about anyone,” I say evenly.

“Hilarious. You’re twenty-eight years old and you still haven’t figured out how to lie properly. I know how many girls want that guy’s dick in and around their mouths.”

“Don’t quote Superbad at me, David. I’m busy. And I assure you, I have not been day dreaming about sleeping with Raphael North.”

“Pssshhhyeah right. Whatever you say, sweetheart. You’re not fooling anyone. Women are all the same. You see a couple of dollar signs and your panties hit the floor at the speed of li—”

I hang up the phone, cutting him off. My brother is a grade-A dick. I don’t have the energy to listen to him complaining about money-grubbing women who have no morals, and even if I did, I would still have hung up. I can defend myself until I’m blue in the face, and I’ll never be able to convince my brother I actually am playing chess with Raphael North this afternoon. And really, is it any wonder? I honestly don’t believe it myself.

* * *

I haven’t worn business attire in about five years. Not since my father died and I donned my only formal black dress to the funeral. As soon as we got home from the service, I threw the dress in the trash and went and sobbed on my bed for five hours solid. A week later, the dress reappeared in my closet, wrapped in a dry-cleaner’s garment bag, so I took it out into the yard and burned it in a metal trash can like in the movies. Unlike in the movies, the can tipped over and the fire immediately caught on the long grass, nearly claiming the house along with it. My mother didn’t even say a word about it. She stood on the porch, watching me beat at the flames with a wet towel, arms folded across her body, and then she went back inside, as if resigned to her fate. If the house was consumed by fire, then so be it. She would be swallowed by the inferno right along with it. My father’s death came out of the blue. None of us were expecting it. The heart attack was massive and sudden. No way he could have survived it, the doctors said, but of course my mother had been with him at the time. She’d tried, and failed, to save him. I think for a little while there, the idea of dying was kind of appealing to her. Guilt hung around her neck like a yoke, undeserved. It took a long while for her to come through the other side.

I stand in front of the mirror, smoothing my hands over my bright red pencil skirt, fiddling with my button down shirt, trying to decide how much I should tuck in and how much I should leave out. This is a nightmare. I’m already so uncomfortable, I feel like I’m about to pass out.

At three-fifteen, the intercom buzzes, signaling that my ride is here. I was going to order an Uber, but then Thalia messaged to let me know Raphael had organized for a car to collect me. When I head downstairs, this time in the elevator, my pulse skipping all over the place, and I walk out the front of my building, there’s a sleek black Tesla with tinted windows waiting for me at the curb. I was expecting a town car or something equally as archaic and Gossip Girl, and so the Tesla is a surprise. A pleasant one. I’ve never ridden in a Tesla before, though I’ve wanted to forever.

I head to the vehicle, about to open the door, when a tall guy wearing a baseball cap turned backwards hops out of the driver’s side and rushes around the car.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa, don’t touch that handle,” he says.

My heart starts slamming in my chest. “Oh, god, shit, I’m sorry, I—”

He holds his hand up, cutting me off. “It’s more than my life is worth to let you open your own door, Ms. Dreymon. Please,” he says, opening the door and stepping away so I can climb into the back seat. My pulse is still throbbing at my temples and in my ears. My skirt feels like it’s trying to squeeze me out of it like a tube of toothpaste. I have to sit ramrod straight, my back arched away from the seat in order to feel like I’m not going to bust out of the stupid thing. The guy closes the door, runs around the car and climbs back in. Once inside, he turns around and smiles at me. “Hi. I’m Nathan. Raphael calls me Nate. You can, too.”

What would Mom say about me getting into a car with a strange guy I didn’t know? She’d probably have a goddamn fit. This guy doesn’t feel like a threat, though. He’s smiling like he’s having the best day ever. He’s fine, Beth. He’s just a normal, friendly guy, doing his job . I forcefully push down my initial nerves and I shake the hand he offers me between the front seats. “It’s very nice to meet you, Nate. You can call me Beth.”

“No can do,” Nate says, grinning. “Boss already told me not to. He’s particular about…formality .”

I eye him, his casual clothes, his back to front ball cap, the darts of ink I can see poking out of the wrists of his long sleeved t-shirt, along with around the neckline; the guy must be covered in tattoos. Nate smiles. He’s a good-looking guy in his own right, the bridge of his nose dashed with more than a handful of freckles. “And yet you’re hardly dressed formally,” I say.

Nate winks. “There are different avenues of formality, Ms. Dreymon. I conform to at least ninety percent of what Raphael considers proper and what isn’t. I run riot with the other ten percent.”

The ride across the city is longer than it should be, and tense. Nate doesn’t ask me any personal questions. He asks me what books I’ve been reading, and asks for my advice over whether he should attend his ten-year high school reunion. I tell him no, that looking back is never a good idea, no matter how much fun you had as a teenager. His wicked laugh implies he had an awful lot of fun indeed.

I don’t notice the Osiris Building creeping up on us. It’s one of the most noteworthy landmarks of the New York City skyline from a distance, but when you’re amongst the madness and the mayhem, the other towering buildings tend to block your view. One minute I’m fine, talking to Nate, rambling away, and then the next I’m staring straight up at the spear of glass punching out of the ground twenty feet away from the car. As always, a crowd of people is gathered around the building’s base, posing and taking photos. Nate hits a button on the Tesla’s dash, and the steel posts blocking off the narrow entranceway down into what I’m assuming is an underground parking lot disappear, sinking into the ground.

I was right; we wind our way down into a parking structure, and we’re suddenly surrounded by luxury cars. So many hundred-thousand dollar vehicles. Everywhere I look, there are Lamborghinis and Aston Martins. Bugattis and Fiskers. This must all be very old hat to Nate; he drives past row after row of sports cars without so much as glancing sideways. David would have a freaking field day in here.

Nate opens the door for me and helps me out, a gentleman dressed in gangster’s clothing. He guides me toward a bank of elevators, shaking his head as I reach out to hit the call button. “No, Ms. Dreymon. This way. Raphael has his own elevator.”

Nate leads me to an unmarked door painted industrial grey. There’s no lock to insert a key, only a small black box at head height next to the doorframe. Nate taps something into his cell phone, and a green light appears on the little black box, blinking slowly. He leans forward and looks into the green light, first his left eye and then his right. A loud clunking noise echoes around the garage, the sound of a bolt sliding back, and Nate then opens the door as if this is a totally normal way of passing a security check.

“After you,” he says, smiling, holding the door open for me. I walk through to find myself in a very small lobby area with pale peach and white marble underfoot, shot through with veins of glittering gold. The elevator in front of us only has one button, which Nate hits.

“This probably seems like a lot, doesn’t it?” he asks. “The building, the private elevator, all the secrecy? Unfortunately, things have to be this way. Raphael guards his privacy very fiercely. If the cloak and dagger stuff comes off as a little dramatic, then it’s because it really is. There’s a very good reason behind the security and safety we have in place. There are plenty of people in this city who don’t have Raphael’s best interests at heart.”

“And it’s your job to protect him from them?” I ask, curiosity getting the better of me.

He nods, watching the white light descend down the floor numbers to us. “Amongst other things. Driving. Managing his calendar. Making sure his many businesses are operating on an even keel. He likes to keep me busy,” he says, smiling. The elevator dings and the doors roll back to reveal the most luxurious elevator car I’ve ever seen. There’s an overstuffed sofa in there, dove grey carpet, and instead of mirrors everywhere, framed pieces of art hang from the walls. It resembles a very small, very tastefully decorated living room instead of a means of getting from one floor to another. Nate doesn’t step forward. He braces his hand against the wall and bends at the waist, pulling off his shoes.

“I’m gonna have to ask you to hand over those lovely pumps,” he says. “This elevator doesn’t open into a hallway. It opens into the penthouse itself.”

“Oh? I’m sorry, I don’t…”

Nate gives me an awkward smile. “Raphael’s old fashioned. He doesn’t allow people to wear shoes up there. Like, at all.”

“That’s…understandable, I guess.” It’s not really. Why the fuck would he not allow people to wear shoes inside his apartment? My rational brain is making up excuses: he doesn’t like the clutter; he has a dog with a chewing problem; someone once tried to shank him in the carotid with a Jimmy Chu stiletto. The suspicious part of my brain has found other reasons why this might be the case, though. Primarily that he actually is a serial killer and he wants his victims barefoot, so they can’t run and escape him.

It is his home, however. I want to be respectful and make a good first impression. If I’d even considered for a second that I’d have to remove my footwear, I might have made an effort to remove the chipped nail polish on my toenails, though. Lord, what is this guy going to think of me?

He’s not going to be looking at your feet, Beth. He’s going to say hello, sit you down, beat you at chess, and then he’s going to tell you to get the fuck out. He’s a busy guy. He has seriously important things on his mind. He’s not gonna give a shit about your toenail polish. He probably won’t look at you properly long enough to recall what you look like five seconds after you’re gone. You’re a means to an end. That’s all.

I’m beginning to feel a little antsy now, though. Once I’ve allowed my brain to start over thinking things, my suspicions run wild. Can this guy be trusted? Should I be wary of him? Is he going to try and touch me? Will he be a gentleman, or is Raphael North a misogynistic pig that will try and abuse me in unspeakable ways? Oh, god. I want to go back to the car. I want to—

“Ms. Dreymon?” Nate says politely, gesturing for me to step forward.

For Christ’s sake, Beth, get your shit together! It’s going to be fine. Everything’s going to be fine! I slip off my pumps, collecting them by the ankle straps, following Nate onto the elevator. The carpet is ridiculously soft beneath the soles of my feet. I almost groan, but manage to rein it in. Smile broadening, Nate reaches over and takes my shoes. “I’m used to Raphael’s strange idiosyncrasies. I’m sure he sounds like a complete fucking lunatic to other people most of the time.”

I blink, trying not to look a little taken aback. “Not at all. It’s really not a problem.” It kind of is, though. I feel vulnerable right now. Uncomfortable. My heels were a part of the suit or armor I donned to come here today, and without them I somehow feel even less equipped to deal with the situation that lies before me.

I try not to think about how tight my chest feels as the elevator begins to rise. I definitely block out the numbness that’s spreading to my fingers and down the backs of my legs. I’ve been so anxious about meeting someone before that actually I’ve passed out once; I can’t allow that to happen today. It would ruin everything, so I concentrate on sucking air in through my nose and blowing it out through my mouth.

My ears pop somewhere around the thirtieth floor, then again at the fifty-sixth. My hearing has just righted itself when the doors roll back and we’re met with a wall of daylight, glass and sky. My knees almost buckle out from beneath me as Nate ushers me out of the elevator and into the empty, marble tiled room beyond. About thirty feet long and perhaps half as wide, the space is sparsely decorated. Two off-white leather sofas face each other on either side of a low-lying coffee table in the middle of the room. There’s a soft, pale grey rug beneath the sofas, but the remainder of the floor is bare marble. At the far end of the room, a desk and chair have been arranged so that the desk is flush with the glass, the chair looking out over the city. Dotted here and there, huge potted plants sit on the ground, providing a splash of deep emerald green to the otherwise pale, light space.

“This is the anteroom,” Nate says. He pads off to the left in his socks. Looking behind us, back into the elevator, I can’t see where he’s put our shoes, but they are no longer in his hands. “If you’ll follow me, please?” Nate calls over his shoulder. The marble is cool under my bare feet. I should have worn stockings; I remember my grandmother telling me when I was thirteen that all girls who wore skirts or dresses, no matter how long they were, without stockings were all whores. She was well entrenched in dementia by that point, but I find myself wondering if I should have put some on now as I follow after Nate.

I’m flooded with adrenalin. I hug the right hand side of the wall, the one side of the room that isn’t made of glass but solid, bare brick, and I try not to think about falling off the building. It feels extremely exposed up here, precariously balanced between the Earth and the clouds.

“Don’t worry,” Nate says, smirking. “You get used to it. I couldn’t go all the way to the edge for weeks when he first brought me up here. I kept thinking about how long it would take me to hit the ground if the glass shattered and I was sent tumbling out into all that empty space.”

I swallow. Hard. “Great. Now I’m thinking about that, too.”

“Don’t worry. It’s all tempered glass. A herd of elephants could lean against those windows and they wouldn’t even so much as groan.”

That does reassure me a little. Nate carries on. Soon there’s a glass door in the brickwork wall, but a curtain on the other side hides the room beyond. Nate rings a small brass doorbell, then stands with his hands behind his back, waiting.

I’m filled with an immediate, very urgent need to run away. I’m sweating like crazy. I feel a little dizzy if I’m being honest. I’m lost in a haze of panic when Nate reaches out and places a hand on my shoulder. “He’s worse than a stern grandfather,” he says. “But not as bad as, say, an asshole boss with a power complex. Like everything else in this weird and wonderful little world at the top of the Osiris Building, Raphael takes a little getting used to. But trust me… he’s a good guy.”

His words are reassuring. Enough that I can take in a deep breath without feeling like I’m about to keel over. There’s a small clattering noise on the other side of the glass door, and then the curtain pulls back and the moment has arrived. Raphael North stands on the other side of the abnormally thick glass. He’s dressed in a plain dark blue t-shirt, and a pair of washed out blue jeans. His feet are completely bare. His hair is even darker than it was in his picture, if that’s at all possible. Almost curly, too. It’s then that I realize it’s wet—he must have just gotten out of the shower. There are small dark patches on his t-shirt where water has obviously soaked through the material.

He looks at Nate first, his expression utterly blank, and then…then he turns those startling vivid green eyes on me and I’m breathless all over again. It feels like I’m tumbling over some steep cliff face, a weightless sensation turning my stomach over as I fall. Inside, I’m back to wanting to flee the building. Externally, I’m praying to deities of faiths and religions all over the world that I don’t look like I’m about to slump in an unconscious mess on the floor right in front of him. My top lip begins to twitch—something that only happens when I’m really, really anxious. Without thinking, I press my fingertips to my mouth, as if I can put a halt to the twitching by touch alone. A strange look passes over Raphael’s face. A slight movement at the corner of his mouth. I can’t decide if it’s displeasure or amusement. Either way, the reaction is fleeting, barely noticeable at all, and then his face is a blank mask again. He places his hand on a curved silver handle on the other side of the door, and then pulls it toward him, opening it. There are no barriers now. Nothing standing between myself and a man whispered and gossiped about by an entire city. Screw that, an entire nation. I’m in an enviable position right now, but I’d gladly thank the universe if the ground opened up and swallowed me whole.

The first words Raphael North speaks to me will haunt me until the day I die. He angles his head ever so slightly to one side, then says, “Your toenail polish is chipped, Ms. Dreymon.”

Lord have mercy. His voice is deep but soft. It has no hard edges, but at the same time his tone is overflowing with self-confidence and command.

“I’m sorry, I…wasn’t aware of your no-shoe policy.”

He simply arches an eyebrow at me. So much for him barely even looking at me. He’s going to remember what I look like after I leave all right. He’s going to remember what I look like for the rest of time. His gaze doesn’t politely slip over me, conforming to social niceties as he introduces himself. No. He flat-out stares at me, taking in each and every hair on my head, every aspect of my face. His eyes hover for a second at the base of my throat, and his lingering attention sends a shiver skating down my spine.

His inspection of me is deeply personal. Not in a sexual way, per se, though the intensity of his eyes on my skin is making me feel naked. He’s sizing me up from head to toe, assessing me, judging me, looking for… I have no idea what he’s looking for. I have no idea if he finds himself disappointed or pleased by the time he tears his gaze away from me and turns back to Nate.

“Thanks, Nate. You can go. I’ll message you when it’s time to take Ms. Dreymon home.”

“Sure thing. I’ll see you soon,” he says to me, grinning as he walks back toward the elevator. “And good luck.”

“Luck?”

He nods. “Yes. For the game. I hope you thrash him .”

* * *

I fix my eyes on Raphael’s back, right between his shoulder blades, as he walks me down a long, fairly wide hallway. There are framed magazine covers on the walls here. It would make sense if they all featured him in some way—he’s been on enough magazine covers that he could probably wallpaper the entire penthouse with them if he felt like it—but there isn’t a single picture of him in sight. It takes a second for me to piece together the theme that connects the framed covers. American Scientist. National Geographic. The New England Journal of Medicine. Giving USA. Non- Profit Times. Their straplines all contain buzzwords like breakthrough, revolutionary, discovery, groundbreaking and innovative.

The covers are indeed featuring him in some way after all, but they’re not focusing on Raphael North, the party boy socialite. They’re focusing on his philanthropic achievements. They are about the good works he’s done, the inventions, the patents, the design, the manufacturing, and the charitable works, all his projects. His true legacy.

He’s at least a full head taller than me, a looming presence. He doesn’t say a word as he leads the way, taking me god knows where, and I’m grateful of the fact. I need these precious moments to pull myself together. We pass a number of internal doors, all firmly closed. At the end of the long hallway, Raphael takes a right, and I am left speechless by what I see. If I thought the anteroom where we left Nate was grand and spacious, the room, if it can even be called that, is just ridiculous. Again, only one side of the room is walled by brick. The other three sides of the space are glass-walled and seem to go on forever. Overhead, there’s nothing but sky. Bright blue sky, for as far the eye can see. It’s a cloudless day, and through the sloped glass roof above us, an airplane, barely more than a flash of silver lost in a sea of blue, is making slow progress across the horizon, leaving behind it a narrow trail of white.

“There are people out there who believe the government is putting chemicals in chemtrails to make us all infertile,” Raphael says. He’s standing way closer than I realized, barely a foot away from me. I snap my focus back to him to find him watching me intently. No doubt about it—I’ve been gawking for the last thirty seconds, barely able to take the view in. Barely able to breathe.

“People think you’re dead ,” I blurt. Both his eyebrows lift an inch higher at that. “What I mean to say is that people are always coming up with weird conspiracy theories. It doesn’t make them true.”

He nods, the ghost of a smile flashing across his face, not at his mouth but at the corners of his eyes. “Would you sit?” he asks. I haven’t even taken in the furnishings of this area of the penthouse yet. I was too blown away by what I saw out of the windows. Now that I’m looking, I’m unsurprised by how light this space is, too. Pale wood furnishings, obviously expensive; a huge sectional sofa that could easily seat at least ten people; a movie-theatre-worthy flat screen. The floor here isn’t white and rose marble; it’s smooth concrete painted a dark grey. In the center of the room, a world map has artfully been painted in silver and gold on the floor, huge, complete with intricate coastlines, vast mountain ranges, lakes and rivers. Beautiful doesn’t even come close.

Raphael places his hand on the small of my back, and the contact is surprising. There’s something aloof about him. Distant. If he’d avoided any sort of physical contact during this meeting, I wouldn’t have been shocked at all.

“We’ll be playing over here,” he says stiffly, guiding me over to the northern corner of the room, where a small table has been arranged with two wingback chairs sitting opposite one another. On the table, a chess set has already been prepared. The pieces are works of art, the black side carved out of what looks like polished stone, and in place of white bone or stone, the opposing side’s pieces have been shaped out of what looks like solid copper.

“Which do you prefer?” Raphael asks. “Light or dark?”

I grip hold of my purse, wringing the strap in my hands. “I don’t really have a preference.”

Raphael glances at me with those sharp eyes. “That’s a pity. I hoped you’d be a woman who knew what she wanted.”

Ouch. His tone is even, his voice quiet, but his words are sharp as razors. I feel like I’ve just been judged in some way, and I haven’t exactly impressed. Raphael sits down on the left, behind the copper pieces. “I’ll let you stretch your legs with the obsidian. When was the last time you played?” His questions are clipped, perfunctory almost.

“It’s been a couple of years,” I admit. “I haven’t had a lot of time for chess recently.”

His head snaps up. “Why?”

I sit down, studying the set before me. It really is a lovely thing. Picking up the rook from the edge of the board, I turn it over in my hands, taking a closer look. “I’ve been studying for the last eight years. I don’t have a lot of free time.”

“You’re a doctor?” he asks.

“No. Lawyer. At least I will be once I’ve passed the bar.”

“Hmm.” There’s a critical edge to that hmm that makes my defensive streak rear its ugly head.

“You don’t approve of lawyers?”

“Not particularly. They plagued my adolescence. Every time I opened my mouth, there was someone in a pantsuit ready to cover my mouth in case I said something inappropriate. I should have guessed by your choice of outfit that you were a bloodsucker in training.”

I tug self-consciously at the front of my dress shirt. “Thalia told me you requested business attire.”

“I didn’t. She made an assumption,” Raphael says, picking up the copper rook, the mirror to the piece I’m holding in my hands. “People do that a lot,” he continues. “Maybe once upon a time, it would have been normal for you to come here dressed for a job interview, but not any more. And that’s not what this is. I prefer for people to feel comfortable in their own skin when they’re around me. If you choose to come and play with me again, Ms. Dreymon, please wear whatever the fuck you like.”

I know he curses—he swore eighteen times on his questionnaire alone—but hearing him say fuck does something to me. Something…odd. He’s being pretty damn cold, but there’s something so edgy about him, so slick and confident. It has me a little turned around. I fidget in my seat, trying to gather my thoughts, which are currently scattered to the four winds.

“I will. Thanks,” I reply.

“Good. Then shall we get started?”

“Yes.” I whisper the word. It seems to catch in my throat. The immense space is totally silent, though, so even the soft rasp of my voice sounds like it echoes. I place the rook back on the board, and so does Raphael. Since I’m black, and white goes first, Raphael makes the first move. Strange that he took the advantage of first move for himself. Most people I’ve played in the past with, especially guys, make a point of giving up the first move to prove they’re the more superior player. Raphael doesn’t seem to give a shit about appearances, however, in more ways than one. He brings his e4 pawn out first, a strong opening. A forceful opening. He’s an aggressor, then. Some people might go for a softer opening, to test out their opponent, but not Raphael. He’s coming out guns blazing.

I counter, moving my pawn to e5, and Raphael meets my gaze, smirking a little. “Tell me something about yourself,” he demands. His knight to f3.

“What would you like to know?” Something about watching him watch the board is very distracting. I’m not pinned under the full wattage of his eyes, which is definitely a relief, but I still feel like he’s monitoring me intently as he plays. His brow creases ever so slightly in the middle as he picks up his bishop and moves it to b5, and I realize I’m staring at that small groove of concentration above the bridge of his nose.

“I want to know why you’d come here,” he says. “Isn’t going to a stranger’s house alone still considered dangerous?”

I gape at him. “You answered the ad on Craigslist . Who does that ?” I pick up my knight, moving it to f6. Raphael moves immediately afterward, relocating his a pawn to d3. He looks up from the game, then. Looks up at me. Looks into me somehow. I sink back into my chair, shying away from how weirdly vulnerable he makes me feel when he focuses on me like that. I feel…I feel like a tuning fork that’s been struck, vibrating, humming on a cellular level.

“I answered the ad because I’m an eccentric recluse who just does shit like that. You’re a smart girl, a girl who’s studying to be a lawyer. A pretty girl. Someone who’s been warned her whole life about getting into cars with men she doesn’t know.”

“You sent Nate to get me.”

“Yeah. And did he look like the kind of guy you’d expect to be driving around in a Tesla? He wears his ball cap back-to-front like a frat boy for fuck’s sake.”

I open my mouth, floundering for something to say. Raphael just stares at me. “It’s your move, Ms. Dreymon.”

I look down at the board. I’ve completely lost where I am now. I scan the pieces, figuring out where he moved last. I move my bishop to c5 right next to his. I’m thoroughly perplexed right now; the way Raphael is speaking is very to the point. Brusque, even. I’ve never met someone so combative before, and to be like this five seconds after we meet? I don’t know what I’ve done to offend this guy, but I’m beginning to think this was all a horrible idea.

“I’m sorry, I seem to be a little confused. Did you want someone to come here to play chess with you, or did you want someone to come here so you could insult them? For the record, I did think this was a risky thing to be doing. I said as much to Thalia, at least three times. I even turned down the job twice. And then…”

He presses the knuckle of his index finger into the table, hard. It’s a subtle action; I wouldn’t see if it if I was trying to stay a step ahead of him in the game. He presses so hard, his skin blanches white. “And then your friend said my name, and you changed your mind.”

Fuck. That is what happened. Raphael clenches his jaw, lowering his gaze. His knuckle is red now as he picks up another of his pawns and moves it to c3. “It’s okay, Ms. Dreymon. I know I’m a source of fascination to a lot of people. I’d be surprised if you weren’t curious.” He pauses. And then, “Am I not allowed to be curious about you in return?”

I castle my king.

“Nice ,” Raphael concedes.

“You aren’t being curious. You’re being rude.”

“Hmm.” He’s doing that thing again, looking at me like I’m a new species of animal, never seen before. “I’m gonna think about that,” he says. I sit very still, trying to understand what the hell is going on right now and why he’s acting so strange. It’s as though he hasn’t had a normal, regular conversation in a very long time. With business meetings, trips overseas, rushing about from one conference to the next, I’m sure the majority of his time is spent discussing business matters and not much else. Even studying law, I often find myself realizing that that all I do is discuss landmark cases from the eighties and nineties, arguing about legislation and government regulations. When the time comes to have a fun, light conversation with someone outside my law circle, there are times when I can’t quite think of anything to say.

That’s not what this is, though. This is something else entirely. It’s as if Raphael has forgotten all of his social skills. Surely that can’t be the case. It wasn’t that long ago that he was out wining and dining with New York’s most popular social influencers, staying out until three am on the weekends, getting caught making out down alleyways with beautiful, unobtainable actresses.

We shuttle through another two rounds of fast moves, neither of us saying anything. Chess games can last for hours, days sometimes. There are speed rounds too, of course, held against the clock. We seem to be oscillating between rash, quick decisions and labored, drawn out plays that take longer than they should. After about fifteen minutes, Raphael takes a deep breath and leans back in his chair. “You’re right,” he says. “I was being rude. I’m sorry.”

Wow.

Of all the things I thought he was going to say, I’m sorry isn’t one of them. He doesn’t strike me as the type to apologize. For anything. Ever. I don’t know this man, though. Despite all of the speculation and drama online, I have no real knowledge of him. It may seem like there’s a mile high, flawlessly smooth, impenetrable wall erected between us right now, but in truth he could be as open and welcoming as Thalia. I might just need to get to know him.

“No problem. I’m nervous. I might have overreacted a little,” I say.

“Can we start over?”

For a second I think he’s talking about the game. “Neither of us has taken anything yet. Neither of us has lost anything. It’d be a waste to start from scratch.” The corners of his mouth twitch, almost turning into a smile. Almost, but not quite. I realize my mistake, then. “Oh, you mean…yes, of course. I’m sorry. You can ask me anything.”

He nods, just a very small dip of his head. “Are you an only child?”

“No, I have a brother, David. He’s a year older than me. He lives in New York, too.”

“But you’re not from here?”

“No, Kansas originally.”

“So you’re a Midwestern girl, then. Charming. Your family are farmers? Were you surrounded by fields of wheat as a child?”

“That’s quite the stereotype there.”

“So what then?” He castles his own king to d5. “What do your parents do?”

“Sunflowers.”

“Sunflowers?”

“Yes. They grew them commercially. Sold them wholesale to florists and event planners. Things like that.”

“On a farm?”

“Yes.

“So your family are farmers. You grew up in fields of flowers instead of grain. That must be why you have such a sunny disposition.” He’s straight-faced. I can’t tell if he’s being sarcastic or he’s teasing me. His words certainly aren’t truthful. I’ve been tense and edgy since I arrived. I sure as hell am not in possession of a sunny disposition.

We each take another turn. Still, we’re just skirting around the board, testing each other, looking for any signs of weakness in each other’s defenses. Then, he takes my pawn with his knight.

“You have a boyfriend?” he asks.

I take his pawn with mine. “No.”

He watches me place his pawn next to the right hand side of my board, his gaze lingering on the piece I just took for a second. Then he takes a deep breath. “Why not?”

“My studies haven’t left me much time for a relationship. I work part time as well.”

“So you’re too busy for love.”

“I’m sorry? That’s a really strange way of putting it.”

He shrugs. Looks to his right, out of the window, over the city, his eyes seemingly unfocused. “But true. You’ve prioritized the foundations of your career and your ability to care for yourself over romantic connections.”

“I suppose so, then.”

“You don’t want children,” he says. Not a question. A fact.

There are people I’ve known for years who have never asked me these questions. It’s confronting that Raphael is asking me them now. They trip off the end of his tongue like he has every right to know the answers. I find myself responding without giving it a second thought, despite my discomfort. “I haven’t even thought about it.”

He looks at me, hands resting on his legs, index finger tapping absentmindedly against the outside of his knee. “That’s not true,” he says, shaking his head a little. “I’m betting you’ve thought about it a lot. I’m betting you feel bad about wanting a career more than you want a family. Sons join the military, like their fathers. They take over the family business. They become doctors like the men who came before them. Women aren’t meant to just be mothers and homemakers anymore, Ms. Dreymon. You don’t have to feel bad about the choices generations of women have made in the past. They weren’t choices, after all. They were the only avenues open to them at the time.”

A fierce prickling sensation travels over my skin; it starts on my scalp and travels down over my cheeks, around the back of my neck, behind my ears, down my spine, over my shoulder blades. It feels like individual pinpricks of fire singeing my nerve endings. I grind my teeth together, my nostrils flaring.

“Why are you angry?” he asks.

“I’m not.”

“The look in your eyes says otherwise. Am I totally wrong? Do you want children?”

I don’t want to give him the satisfaction of letting him know he’s right. Not only right, but precisely on the money. Over the years, I’ve seen high school friends online get married, buy houses and start families. I’ve watched their lives evolve into something completely unrecognizable from my own and I haven’t observed this evolution with jealousy. I’ve witnessed it with fear. Fear that it might happen to me, too, before I’ve accomplished all of my goals, before I’ve realized my dreams, before I’ve had chance to travel the world, see new countries, experience new cultures. I’ve feared it, because the people in the pictures on Facebook have all looked so deliriously happy. Content with their lot. The things they held dear, the goals they strived toward so hard and for so long, are now secondary to something else—to the men and women they love, to their children and their dogs. I do not know who I am without my goals. If I abandon them, I abandon the very root and core of myself.

Raphael sighs down his nose. Takes my pawn with his second knight. I take his knight, and so it begins. We go to war. The board is our battlefield, and we are both wrestling for supremacy. No more feeling each other out. No more dancing around, waiting for the other to strike. Both queens come out. My bishop. I take his knight. His queen takes my bishop. My queen then takes his queen. This is a ruthless, bloody game, and neither one of us backs down. Rook takes rook. Raphael guards his king fiercely, as do I.

“How old were you when you lost your virginity?” he asks casually.

“What ?”

“I’m guessing you were young. And that you immediately regretted it.”

“Why the hell are you trying to psychoanalyze me?”

“I’m just figuring out who you are, Ms. Dreymon.” He sounds so reasonable, not defensive at all, which makes me feel like I’m flying off the handle. I’m not, though. People don’t just ask strangers when they lost their virginity. It’s not polite. It’s really fucking rude .

“How does knowing when I lost my virginity help you figure out who I am?”

“It’s the small, unexpected details that often give me the most insight into a person,” he replies.

“When I lost my virginity is not a small detail to me. It’s private. Personal.”

“I lost my virginity when I was sixteen to a girl in a graveyard. She was five years older than me. I lasted about three seconds before I lost it and came. She was seriously unimpressed.” He cracks his thumb knuckle, looking me dead in the eye. “See? It’s that easy. You could have just said, I didn’t lose my virginity until I was twenty-one. Or fifteen. Or twenty-eight. You could have said the brutal rape my mother suffered through when I was a small child made me wary of forming physical connections with people. You could have said—”

My cheeks start to burn. What. The. Fuck. Did. He. Just. Say? He’s still talking, I can see his lips moving, but all I can hear are those words playing on repeat. He knows about my mother’s attack? How ? My father never even knew about what happened that day. My brother. Mom made me promise I would never tell a soul, and I kept that promise. So…how the fuck does Raphael North know about it? My eyes must have glazed over. Raphael’s stopped talking, and he’s gone back to cracking his knuckles.

“I’m sorry. Perhaps that was tactless of me,” he says.

“Tactless? Bringing up my mother’s rape during our very first conversation was tactless ? God, I can’t fucking…” I shake my head, about to get up out of my chair. Raphael holds out a hand, leaning forward in his chair, though.

“I haven’t had a proper conversation with a normal human being in a very long time, Elizabeth. I’m afraid my social skills leave a lot to be desired. I’m very sorry if I’ve offended you. Just...don’t get angry. Please.”

This guy…this guy is something else altogether. I’m boiling mad, but I don’t want him to see that. I slam his pawn I’ve just taken down next to all the other pieces I’ve claimed. Six thousand dollars, Beth. Six thousand dollars. I keep the number in my mind, focusing on everything I’ll be losing if I walk out of the apartment now. Grinding my teeth together, I say, “Okay. How about this? I won’t completely lose my temper and storm out of here, but I’m going to take a leaf out of your book and tell you that what happened to my mother is none of your fucking business . I don’t know how you even found out about that, and I don’t want to know. I never want to speak with you about it again.”

Raphael sits back in his chair, very still for a moment. His body is relaxed, though, at ease. His breathing is steady and even, unlike mine. I’m holding my breath.

A long, terrible minute stretches out before us. A rhythmic thumping, pounding sound breaks the silence. Raphael turns to watch as a helicopter rises beside the building, maybe only a hundred feet away, hovering in place for a second before it peels off to the left, lifting higher into the sky. When he turns back to me, he’s smiling sadly.

“Fair call, Ms. Dreymon,” he says. “I deserve that. I’ll never bring it up again. You have my word. And congratulations.”

“What for?”

“On winning the game.” He nods towards the chessboard. “You have me in check mate in three moves. See?”

I look down at the remaining pieces, running through the remaining plays, and I see that he’s right. My bishop to his king. I always, always play three or four moves ahead if I can, trying to analyze and anticipate where my opponent is going to go next. This time, however, I’ve been on the back foot, strategizing on the fly. His moves have been unpredictable, his game strong. And, let’s face it, I’ve been pretty damn distracted. Raphael gets to his feet and offers out his hand.

“It was a pleasure to meet you, Ms. Dreymon. I have some pressing work I must attend to now, though. I trust you can see yourself out?”

“Yes. I know the way.” I stand and shake his hand, my stomach twisting itself into knots. Damn. This has not gone well. This has not gone well at all.

Raphael doesn’t speak again. He inclines his head, a deferential gesture completely at odds with how he’s behaved the last forty minutes, and then he turns and walks away. He exits through a door at the other end of the room, and the silence he leaves behind is deafening.

It’s a straight shoot back down the hallway to the anteroom. When I leave through the glass door, Nate is already standing there, waiting for me. “You haven’t been crying,” he says with a grin. “That’s impressive.”

Crying ? What the hell? How many other women has he had come here to play chess with him? And how many of them have fled his penthouse in floods of tears? “I’m not that easy to intimidate. I don’t make a habit of allowing assholes to get under my skin.”

Nate’s head rocks back, and he roars with laughter. “Perfect,” he says between gasped breaths. “You’re just…that’s fucking perfect. Come on. I’ll drive you home.”

He opens a small closest inside the actual elevator and gives me back my shoes. On the way home, Nate chats to me about the weather, about sports, about his past. He talks to me about everything I was warned not to discuss with Raphael North. My mind is only half on the conversation. As we pass through the familiar streets of New York, I wonder just what Raphael North really wanted when he answered that ad on Craigslist. Yes, we were playing a game from the moment our eyes met through that door in his apartment, but it wasn’t fucking chess. And the thing that vexes me the most about that? The thing that has my fists clenching by my sides the entire ride home?

I can’t for the life of me tell who really won.