Untitled story

Lucien Ashford's life ran on a single rule, and the rule had nothing to do with romance, or heartbreak, or any of the ordinary reasons a man might swear off love. It was simpler and colder than that. He didn't avoid love because he was afraid of being hurt. He avoided it because he knew, with total clinical certainty, exactly what it would do to him — and to whoever made the mistake of loving him back.

He could not afford it. That was all. The way another man couldn't afford a particular investment, or a particular risk. Love, for an Ashford, was simply the one expense that bankrupted everything else.

At seven o'clock every morning, without exception, Lucien walked through the revolving doors of Ashford Global. His employees had stopped setting their watches by the clock in the lobby years ago and started setting them by him instead. If he arrived, you were on time. If you arrived after him, you were already behind, and everyone knew it.

He crossed the marble lobby without acknowledging anyone directly, though he registered all of it anyway — the tailor who'd taken in his suit half an inch too much last week, the new hire trying not to stare, the security guard whose wife had just had a baby, judging by the exhaustion he was doing a poor job of hiding. Lucien noticed everything. He simply didn't comment on most of it.

"Good morning, Mr. Ashford."

He gave the barest nod in return, which was, by the standards of Ashford Global, an unusually warm greeting.

By eight, he'd signed three contracts, rejected two proposals that hadn't survived his first read-through, and dismissed a vice president who'd tried to bury a bad quarter under language soft enough to slide past a less careful man. The boardroom had gone utterly silent by the time the man gathered his things and left, pale and refusing to meet anyone's eyes.

"The meeting is over," Lucien said, closing the folder, and no one argued.

Nathan caught up to him in the hallway afterward, half-jogging to match his stride, a habit he'd never quite broken in four years of trying.

"You fired him."

"He lied."

"It was one number, Lucien. One quarter."

"A small lie is still a door. Once it's open, you don't get to choose what walks through it later."

Nathan sighed the particular sigh he reserved for arguments he already knew he'd lose. "You know people think you're heartless."

"They're welcome to."

"Doesn't that bother you?"

Lucien pushed open his office door without answering, which was, in its own way, an answer.

By lunch, rain had started against the windows, fine and steady, the kind that would likely last the whole afternoon. Lucien stood at the glass with a folder he wasn't reading, watching the city go on without him thirty floors below — people running for cover under shared umbrellas, a couple laughing at something on a street corner, a jogger unbothered by the weather entirely.

Somewhere down there, people were falling in love. Being ordinary about it. Getting to be careless.

He looked away before the thought went any further than it needed to.

His phone lit up. Father.

He let it ring twice before answering, an old habit that had never once made the conversation any easier. "What is it."

"You haven't visited."

"I've been busy."

"You always are."

The silence that followed had the particular weight of a conversation both of them had had too many times to bother finishing properly.

"Your birthday's next week," his father said eventually.

"I'm aware."

"Twenty-nine."

"I can count."

Another pause, and then, predictably: "Have you thought any more about marriage?"

"We've had this conversation."

"We'll keep having it until you give me a different answer."

"The answer isn't going to change."

"You need an heir, Lucien."

"I don't need a wife to get one."

"I didn't say wife."

That, at least, startled a short breath out of him that might have been the beginning of a laugh, if either of them had let it finish. His father had never been subtle about which parts of the old rules he still believed in and which he'd quietly let go.

"You know what I mean," his father said.

"I do."

"Lucien." His father's voice dropped into something gentler, something closer to the man who used to sit with him at sixteen and pour whiskey neither of them drank. "You cannot spend the rest of your life like this."

"I can."

"You deserve to be happy."

"No," Lucien said, too fast, too flat, the word out of him before he could decide whether he wanted it to be. "I don't."

He ended the call before his father could answer that, and stood for a long moment with the phone still in his hand, the rain drawing thin silver lines down the glass in front of him.

People assumed a man who lived like he did must be lonely. They were wrong, mostly. Loneliness was something that happened to you. What Lucien had built was a choice, made on purpose, maintained on purpose, defended on purpose every single day since he was sixteen years old. Love was a risk with only one outcome, and he had watched that outcome play out twice in people he'd loved more than anything else in the world.

He would not be a third.

A knock interrupted the thought before it could finish curdling into something worse. Nathan, again, with the particular carefulness in his face that meant something unusual had happened.

"Sir. There's someone here to see you."

"I didn't schedule anyone."

"He says he doesn't need an appointment."

Lucien set the folder down. "Who is he."

"He wouldn't give a company name." Nathan glanced at the card in his hand as though it might explain itself better the second time. "He said to tell you—" He hesitated, which was unlike him. "He said, 'Tell Lucien Ashford that someone wants to buy his memories.'"

For the first time since the phone call, something in Lucien's expression actually moved.

Outside, the rain kept falling, harder now, streaking the glass until the city below blurred into something formless and gray. And somewhere in that blur, in an apartment across the street with a view straight into Ashford Global's windows, a young man with amber eyes folded a signed contract into his coat pocket and allowed himself a small, satisfied smile.

The target had taken the bait exactly as planned.

He had no way of knowing yet that the job would end up costing him something the contract had never once mentioned.