Nora didn't sleep well.
That wasn't surprising. The bed was too soft in the way that expensive things sometimes were — like it was trying too hard — and the city outside never fully went quiet. Manhattan had a different kind of silence than Millbrook. Back home, silence meant crickets and the occasional passing car and Ruth's old clock ticking in the hallway. Here, silence was just a lower volume of noise. Traffic humming fifty floors down. A siren somewhere far away. The building itself is breathing.
She lay on her back and stared at the ceiling and told herself she was fine.
She was fine.
She was two thousand dollars short of fine, but in six months she would be more than fine, and Ruth would be okay, and that was the only thing that mattered.
She was up by six-fifteen.
The apartment was quiet when she came out of her room, dressed and with her hair pulled back, expecting to be alone for a while. She wasn't prepared for the people.
There were four of them — three women and one man — moving through the apartment with the kind of practiced efficiency that meant they'd been doing this a long time. One was in the kitchen, another was moving quietly through the living room with a cloth in her hand, and the third was arranging something on the dining table. The man was near the front entrance, checking something on a small tablet.
They all stopped when they saw Nora.
She stopped too.
For a moment everyone just looked at each other.
"Good morning," Nora said carefully.
The woman in the kitchen — middle-aged, round-faced, with kind eyes that were currently very carefully neutral — gave a short nod. "Good morning, miss."
*Miss.* Not *ma'am*, not her name. *Miss.* The polite non-commitment of someone who didn't know yet what category Nora fell into.
Nora understood that feeling. She didn't know what category she fell into either.
"They arrive at six."
She turned. Ethan was coming down the hallway from the opposite wing of the apartment, already fully dressed — dark trousers, a white shirt with the sleeves rolled to the forearm, like he'd been awake for hours and had already decided how the day was going to go without consulting anyone. His eyes swept over her once, the same assessing look from yesterday, and then he moved past her toward the center of the room.
The staff straightened almost imperceptibly. Not from fear, Nora noticed. From habit. From years of knowing what his presence in a room meant.
"This is Nora Lane," Ethan said. No warmth, no preamble. Just the flat delivery of information, like he was reading from a file. "She will be living here. She is my fiancée, and you will address her as Young Mistress and treat her with the same respect you extend to this household. Is that understood?"
Four quiet, immediate responses. "Yes, sir."
Nora kept her face still.
*Young Mistress.*
The words landed somewhere strange in her chest — not unpleasant, just foreign. Like wearing someone else's coat and finding it almost fits.
"This is Mrs. Park," Ethan continued, gesturing to the woman in the kitchen. "She manages the household and oversees the staff. Any domestic matter, you take to her." He moved his hand toward the woman in the living room — younger, with a short ponytail. "Lily handles the cleaning and laundry. Beside her is Geena. She assists Mrs. Park with errands and household accounts. And the one by the door is Thomas. He manages security for this floor."
Each of them gave a small nod when their name was mentioned. Professional, composed.
"Good," Ethan said, as if that concluded something. He looked at Nora. "The kitchen is fully stocked. Mrs. Park can prepare meals on request or you can manage yourself. Your preference."
"I can manage myself," Nora said.
Something that might have been a reaction crossed his face — gone before she could read it — and he turned back toward his hallway. "My car comes at eight. Don't use my bathroom."
And then he was gone.
Mrs. Park looked at Nora.
Nora looked at Mrs. Park.
"Would you like some tea, Young Mistress?" the older woman asked.
And just like that, the morning started moving again.
---
The tea was good — strong and plain, the kind Nora actually liked — and Mrs. Park made it without asking what she preferred, which either meant she was very good at reading people or she made everyone's tea the same way. Nora suspected it was the former.
She sat at the kitchen island and watched the apartment function around her. It was strange, being waited on. She'd grown up doing everything herself. Ruth had never been the kind of woman who sat down while someone else worked, and Nora had inherited that instinct. Sitting still while Lily moved the cloth across the counters felt uncomfortable.
"You don't have to avoid me," Nora said, when Lily came close enough. "I don't bite."
Lily glanced up, clearly surprised to be addressed directly. She was young — maybe twenty, twenty-two — and had a smile she was trying to keep professional. "Sorry, Young Mistress. We just—" She stopped herself.
"Weren't sure about me," Nora finished.
A pause. Then, quietly: "We weren't sure what to expect."
Nora nodded. That was honest. She appreciated honesty. "Neither was I."
Lily's almost-smile got a little closer to a real one, and she moved on with her work, but something in the room had loosened slightly. Mrs. Park, who had clearly heard all of it from two feet away, refilled Nora's tea without comment. But her eyes were warmer now.
---
He came back at quarter to eight.
Nora was still at the island, working through a list of things she needed to sort out on her phone, when Ethan walked back into the kitchen, adjusted his cuff links, and stopped on the other side of the counter. He looked like he was going to say something logistical. Something about schedules or rules or things she wasn't allowed to touch.
Instead, he said, "We need to talk about appearances."
She looked up. "Okay."
He pulled out the stool across from her and sat down — which surprised her, because she'd half expected him to deliver whatever he had to say while already walking away. He folded his hands on the counter and looked at her with that steady, unreadable gaze.
"When we're in public, or when any member of my family is present, we're a couple," he said. "That means you stay close to me. You speak to me as you know me. You don't look at me like I'm a stranger." He paused. "You don't flinch."
"I don't flinch," she said.
"You did. Yesterday. When I said you were smaller than I expected."
She held his gaze. "That wasn't a flinch. That was me deciding you weren't worth responding to."
He was quiet for a moment. "Good," he said finally, and she wasn't entirely sure what he meant by it. "My family — specifically my parents — have a habit of dropping by without much notice. When that happens, I will send you a message before they arrive. And when they are here, you will not be sleeping in your room."
Nora felt the sentence settle.
"You'll be sleeping in mine," he said, in exactly the same tone he'd used to list the rules yesterday, like this was just another item on the checklist. "The room shares a dressing area with a second bathroom. You can use the second bathroom. You will not be disturbed. But the arrangement has to look real, and right now the only thing in your room is a suitcase and an empty nightstand, which my mother would notice in about thirty seconds."
"How often does your family visit?"
"My mother, once every few weeks. My father — less often, but when he comes, it matters more." Something shifted very slightly in his expression. Not softness. More like the edges of something he kept locked down. "My father is the reason this arrangement exists. You understand that?"
"Yes."
"He needs to believe it. Completely." His eyes stayed on hers. "He's not a man who is easily deceived. You'll feel him watching you and wondering. Don't let it make you nervous."
"I don't get nervous."
"Everyone gets nervous around Richard Voss."
"Then I'll be the first one who doesn't," Nora said simply.
He looked at her for a moment longer than was necessary.
"And the romantic part," she said, keeping her voice even. "What does that look like to you?"
"In public — small things. A hand on your back. Eye contact that holds a second longer than with strangers. Sitting close enough that people can see we belong to each other." He said *belong to each other* with zero inflection. Like it was a phrase from a script. "I don't need you to perform. I need you to be convincing. There's a difference."
"What's the difference?"
He pushed off the stool and stood. "Performing is acting like you feel something. Convincing is making other people feel like you do." He straightened his jacket. "The first one falls apart under pressure. The second one doesn't."
His car would be downstairs in four minutes. She could tell by the way he was already half leaving.
"Ethan," she said.
He paused. He looked back, and she had the impression he was mildly surprised she'd used his first name — not offended, just unused to it.
"I understand the terms," she said. "You don't have to keep explaining them."
He looked at her for one more second.
Then he left.
Nora turned back to her tea. It had gone slightly cold while they talked.
Mrs. Park, without being asked, took the cup away and replaced it with a fresh one.
*Young Mistress,* she said softly, and went back to the kitchen.