Chapter 2 - A FRIDAY WITHOUT A NAME
Inside the study, the heavy silence was punctuated only by the soft click of an antique brass lighter. Nico took a slow draw of a cigar, the smoke drifting lazily toward the ceiling vents, his tailored silhouette framed against the floor-to-ceiling glass that overlooked the shimmering expanse of Central Park.
“You think she’s an ornament you can replace with another visit to Bergdorf’s,” Arthur murmured, his scarred hands resting flat against the leather armrests of the wingback chair. “You’re blind, kid. A woman who stays when the feds are tapping the phones isn't staying for the marble.”
Nico dismissed the warning with a flick of his wrist.
“I’d change the locks by morning.”
The words were spoken with effortless cruelty, tossed into the air between them like a dropped coin.
A beat followed—heavy, rhythmic, and cold.
“Forget her name by Friday.”
Outside the door, the corridor felt as though it had dropped below freezing.
Norah did not blink. A tear did not fall. The sudden, violent shock that had made the water glasses tremble moments before was replaced by an eerie, glacial stillness that settled into her bones. It was the terrifying peace that arrives only after an execution has been carried out—the total, irrevocable death of hope.
For three years, she had convinced herself that beneath his ruthless exterior, beneath the tailored black suits and the whispered orders that made men disappear, Nico loved her in his own fractured way. She had excused his emotional detachment as the price of his survival. She had accepted the loneliness of his lifestyle because she believed that within this fortress, she was his anchor.
Now, she heard the truth laid bare: to Nico, she was merely an expense on a balance sheet, an interchangeable luxury that could be evicted and erased between a Tuesday morning and a Friday afternoon.
Norah did not knock.
She did not kick the door open to scream at him. She did not demand an apology or an explanation. In the world Nico ruled, emotional outbursts were treated as weaknesses to be exploited; she would not give him the satisfaction of her pain.
Slowly, deliberately, Norah turned her body away from the study doors.
She held the heavy silver serving tray perfectly steady across her forearms. Not a single drop of water spilled over the crystal rims. The porcelain bowl of blood oranges did not shift an eighth of an inch. Her soft leather flats made no sound against the polished herringbone parquetry as she walked back down the gallery toward the private living quarters.
May you like
Her posture was straight, her head held high, her face an unreadable mask of carved porcelain. She walked past the modern art hanging in the hallway, past the bronze sculptures and the gilded mirrors, carrying the untouched glasses of water back toward the kitchen like a ghost departing an empty tomb.
The three-year contract of her devotion had just expired.
