Bellerose peeled my hands off my embarrassingly shabby suitcase, put it down by the bed, and ushered me into the master bathroom, where he showed me how to use the shower. It was this shining marble enclosure where water came at you from everywhere. I wasn’t sure how much of it I took in but, honestly, there were probably U2 spy planes less complicated to operate.
Then back out into the…for want of a better term…hall area.
“Kitchen, sitting room, reception room—”
“Sitting room and reception room?”
An elegant shrug. “One for sitting, one for receiving—”
As ever when slightly nervous, I regressed to about the age of thirteen and started giggling.
“—guests,” Bellerose finished coldly.
“Sorry.”
“Dining room, study, shower room, balcony.”
“Thank you.”
“Finally, this is for you.”
This was a phone—the latest model iSomething. I took it instinctively and then wished I hadn’t. “I thought only prostitutes, drug dealers, and spies needed two phones.”
“There’s an app on there that controls the apartment. You can use it as needed or program it in advance, if you want the heating or lights or a particular electronic device to activate or deactivate at a certain time, for example.”
“And I couldn’t just download it for myself because…?”
Bellerose clearly had a PhD in ignoring people. Well, ignoring me. “The phone,” he went on smoothly, “also contains Caspian’s contact information in London, New York, Lisbon, Berlin, Tokyo, and Beijing. And you can access one of Caspian’s drivers, a range of restaurants and private caterers, masseurs, hairdressers, manicurists, tailors, and similar services, all of whom are at your disposal. The apartment will be maintained daily and the details of the cleaning company are likewise to be found in the address book. In the unlikely event of an emergency, a private security contractor can be summoned by using the relevant application. Or by triggering any of the panic buttons situated around the apartment.”
“You do know that I’m not going into witness protection, right?”
“Finally, I am on speed dial one.” He gave me a surprisingly sweet and boyish smile—though there was something chilling in it, too. Maybe it was just a little too perfect. “Please don’t hesitate to call me should you need anything.”
I shuffled, feeling overwhelmed and faintly awful. “Um. Thank you. But surely this isn’t your job.”
“My job is whatever Caspian needs.”
Wow. Because that didn’t have a ring of “pet assassin” or anything. Or maybe all the talk of panic buttons and private security firms had gone to my head. “I’ll try not to bug you.”
“Arden.” It was the first time he’d used my name to directly address me, but he said it meanly, like I was someone else’s dog who’d pissed on his carpet and he didn’t feel it was his place to rebuke me. “I’ve been asked to look after you and I will do it to the best of my frankly considerable ability. However, if you make things more difficult than they have to be out of some misplaced bourgeois guilt, I will be quite displeased.”
As I opened my mouth to reply, I hoped something appropriate and vaguely sensible would emerge. Except what happened was, “And I won’t like you when you’re displeased?”
Because weak attempts at humor had served me so well so far.
There was a tense little pause and then Bellerose continued. “Caspian mentioned you would be resistant to this next proposal.”
Well, it was nice to know I’d briefly crossed his mind while he was making all these arrangements. And, oh God, I was being a dick. Caspian was letting me stay somewhere frankly incredible and my internal monologue was being super ungrateful about it. Just because I’d imagined—okay, hoped for—something different. “Um, okay?”
He produced a credit card. One of the terrifyingly plain and discreet ones that you only got by having assets in the unthinkillions.
“Oh hell no,” I said.
“He’s not suggesting you go on a spree. Well, not unless you want to.” His eyes, maybe unintentionally, did that up-and-down thing that people on TV property shows did when they were stuck with a fixer-upper. “But it’s for emergencies.”
“You mean so that when I’m kidnapped from the fifth floor of an impregnable building and haven’t been able to summon a private security task force I can pay my own ransom?”
He sighed, very softly. “Take the card, Arden. Put it your wallet or in the freezer. I don’t care. You don’t have to use it.”
