ADVERTISEMENT
PART 2
His voice landed in Sera’s ear with the same quiet weight it had carried across the ballroom.
“You wrote it yourself.”
For a second, she forgot the café around her. Forgot the espresso machine shrieking steam. Forgot the line of customers waiting beneath the chalkboard menu. Forgot the fact that she had only six minutes left on her break and that her manager, Erin, had already warned her twice about taking personal calls behind the stockroom door.
Sera tightened her grip on the phone.
“Yes,” she said. “I wrote it.”
A brief silence followed. Not empty. Assessing.
“Good,” Milo Strand said.
She waited for more. None came.
“That’s it?” she asked before she could stop herself. “You called a catering company, left your name, had your assistant transfer me, just to say ‘good’?”
“I didn’t call the catering company,” he said. “I left a message with their manager after she asked whether I needed dry cleaning compensation.”
“Because I spilled wine on you.”
“Because you tried to fix it.”
Sera frowned at a stack of paper napkins.
“That’s usually what people do after ruining expensive clothing.”
“No,” Milo said. “Most people apologize and wait to see how much power the other person intends to use against them.”
Something in her chest went still.
She remembered the way the room had quieted around them. The way everyone had watched without watching. The way he had looked at her hand on his sleeve as if contact was not something that happened to him often without permission.
She shifted the phone to her other ear.
“What do you want, Mr. Strand?”
“Milo.”
“What do you want, Milo?”
Another pause. This one felt almost like amusement, though his voice did not change.
“I read one sentence,” he said. “I want to read the rest.”
Sera laughed once, softly, because it was better than sounding startled.
“No.”
“You haven’t asked what I’m offering.”
“I don’t need to.”
“Most people do.”
“I’m not most people.”
“I noticed.”
The words should have sounded like flattery. They did not. They sounded like a fact he had found inconvenient and therefore interesting.
Behind her, Erin knocked on the stockroom door with two knuckles.
“Sera. Break’s over.”
Sera closed her eyes.
“I have to go.”
“When are you free?”
“I’m not.”
“You called me.”
“Because curiosity is a disease,” she said. “Not a contract.”
For the first time, she heard something from him that was almost a breath of laughter.
“Then let me make it a contract.”
She opened her eyes.
“What?”
“I have a proposition. One hour of your time. Bring the manuscript. Let me read the first chapter. If I’m not interested, you never hear from me again.”
“And if you are interested?”
“Then we discuss terms.”
“Terms for what?”
“For finishing it.”
Sera stared at the wall.
The stockroom smelled like coffee grounds, cardboard, and lemon cleaner. Her apron was stained with oat milk. Her phone bill was due in two days. Her half of the rent was already late. Her manuscript lived in a cracked phone, a cheap laptop that overheated after forty minutes, and a folder of printed pages she kept under her mattress as if poverty were a flood that could rise at any moment and take everything.
She should have hung up.
Instead, she said, “Are you a publisher now?”
“No.”
“An agent?”
“No.”
“A bored billionaire collecting hobbies?”
“Not bored,” Milo said. “And not a billionaire.”
“That denial was very specific.”
“I dislike inaccurate reporting.”
“Fine. A very rich man with too much interest in a waitress’s unfinished romance novel.”
“You were catering that night.”
“I waitress when I have to.”
“And write when you can?”
The question was too sharp. Too close.
Sera said nothing.
Milo’s voice lowered slightly.
“One hour, Ms. Walsh. Public place. Your choice.”
She looked at the clock above the storage shelves. Her break had ended three minutes ago.
“I’ll send one chapter,” she said. “By email. You can read it or not.”
“No.”
Her eyebrows lifted. “Excuse me?”
“I don’t want a file. I want the pages you would choose if you knew someone had only one chance to understand what you were trying to do.”
“You’re demanding for a man asking a favor.”
“I’m offering one.”
“Money?”
“Time,” he said. “Attention. Both are more expensive.”
She hated that answer. She hated more that part of her believed it.
Erin knocked again, harder.
“Sera.”
“I really have to go.”
“Tomorrow,” Milo said. “Four o’clock. The Palm Room at Alcott Hotel.”
“That is not my choice.”
“It’s public.”
“It’s expensive.”
“I’ll pay.”
“No, you won’t.”
A silence.
Then Milo said, “Choose.”
Sera swallowed.
There was a library six blocks from her apartment. Old brick, terrible heating, soft chairs with split seams, and a security guard who pretended not to notice when people slept there during winter.
“West Halden Library,” she said. “Reading room. Tomorrow. Four.”
“I’ll be there.”
The line clicked dead before she could regret it.
By the time her shift ended, Sera had replayed the conversation so often that each word had begun to feel fictional. Milo Strand wanted to read her book. Milo Strand, whose name opened doors and closed companies, wanted one hour with the pages she had built out of exhaustion and stubborn hope.
At home, her roommate, Nina, was sitting cross-legged on the sofa with a bowl of cereal and a laptop balanced on one knee.
“You look like someone offered you a kidney and asked for your social security number,” Nina said.
Sera dropped her bag by the door.
“A man wants to read my manuscript.”
Nina’s spoon froze halfway to her mouth.
“What man?”
“The one from the gala. The wine sleeve.”
“The scary handsome one?”
“I never said handsome.”
“You said gray eyes four times.”
“I said he had gray eyes.”
“You said they looked like ‘winter before the light came in.’ That’s not a color, Sera. That’s a problem.”
Sera pulled the printed pages from beneath her mattress and set them on the kitchen table. Three hundred and twelve pages, held together by binder clips and desperation.
Nina came to stand beside her.
“Who is he?”
“Milo Strand.”
Nina typed the name into her laptop.
Her expression changed before Sera finished aligning the pages.
“Oh.”
“Yeah.”
“Oh, Sera.”
“Yeah.”
Nina turned the laptop toward her. The headline at the top of the search results was one Sera had already seen.
THE QUIET MAN BEHIND CHICAGO’S MOST RUTHLESS ACQUISITIONS.
Nina lowered her voice as if he might hear them through the screen.
“This guy eats companies for breakfast.”
“Not literally.”
“Don’t joke. Rich men with cheekbones don’t show up at libraries to help struggling writers because they’re nice.”
“I know.”
“Then why are you going?”
Sera looked down at her manuscript.
Because he had read one sentence and stopped.
Because the sentence he’d read was not the prettiest or most dramatic. It was not a kiss, not a confession, not a line designed to seduce. It was the kind of line readers underlined only if they understood loneliness from the inside.
She had never wanted to be seen so badly, and never worked so hard to remain invisible.
He had seen it.
That was the dangerous part.
“I’m going because I want to know what he saw,” she said.
Nina touched her arm.
“Take pepper spray.”
“I don’t have pepper spray.”
“Take me.”
“No.”
“Then send me your location.”
“I will.”
“And don’t get in a car.”
“I won’t.”
“And if he says anything like ‘come with me,’ run.”
Sera smiled faintly.
“You read too many thrillers.”
“You write too many romances.”
The next day, she arrived at the library twenty minutes early with the first chapter printed fresh at a copy shop she could not afford. She had revised until two in the morning, then again during breakfast, then again on the train, crossing out two adjectives in pen because they had suddenly offended her.
The West Halden Library reading room was almost empty. Rain pressed against the tall windows, blurring the gray afternoon beyond them. A retired man slept over a newspaper near the radiator. Two teenagers whispered furiously over a shared textbook.
At exactly four o’clock, Milo Strand entered.
He did not belong there.
Not because he looked down on the place. Somehow, that would have been less unnerving. He belonged too well everywhere, that was the problem. He wore a black coat over a dark suit, no tie, leather gloves in one hand. His presence adjusted the room around him without asking permission.
The librarian looked up. Then looked down quickly.
Sera stood before she meant to.
Milo saw the movement and crossed toward her.
“Ms. Walsh.”
“Sera,” she said.
Something unreadable passed through his eyes.
“Sera.”
The sound of her name in his voice was not intimate. Not yet. But it was careful, as if he had chosen where to place it.
He sat across from her.
She pushed the pages over.
“First chapter,” she said. “One hour.”
He removed his coat, folded it over the chair beside him, and took the manuscript. He did not flip through it. Did not perform interest. He simply began reading.
Sera had imagined many things. Questions. Criticism. A rich man’s careless praise. Condescension dressed as mentorship.
She had not imagined silence.
Milo read as if the world had been dismissed.
His eyes moved steadily. Once, near the bottom of page three, his thumb paused against the paper. On page six, his jaw tightened. On page twelve, he went back and reread a paragraph.
Sera tried not to watch him and failed completely.
No one had ever read her like that.
Not her college workshop classmates, who had skimmed and complimented the “voice.” Not her mother, who said romances were nice but teaching would be stable. Not the agents who had rejected her first manuscript with kind sentences that meant nothing.
Milo Strand read like words were evidence.
When he finished, forty-two minutes had passed.
He placed the pages neatly on the table between them.
“Well?” Sera asked, hating how young she sounded.
“It’s good.”
“You said that already.”
“It’s very good.”
Her throat tightened. She looked away toward the rain-blurred windows.
“Don’t say that unless you mean it.”
“I don’t usually say things I don’t mean.”
“I find that hard to believe, given your profession.”
His gaze remained steady.
“You researched me.”
“Of course.”
“And?”
“And I almost didn’t come.”
“Why did you?”
“Because I’m stupid.”
“No,” he said. “Because you’re hungry.”
She looked back at him.
The word should have insulted her. It did not. It struck too cleanly.
Milo leaned back slightly.
“Your heroine wants to be loved without being possessed. Your hero wants to possess without admitting it is a form of fear. That is the tension. But you keep softening him.”
Sera blinked.
“What?”
“You’re afraid readers won’t forgive him.”
“I’m writing romance. Forgiveness matters.”
“Not if it arrives too early.”
She narrowed her eyes. “You read one chapter.”
“I read enough to know you’re lying in the wrong places.”
Heat rose in her face.
“That’s an arrogant thing to say.”
“Yes.”
“You don’t even read romance.”
“No.”
“Then why should I care what you think?”
“Because you already do.”
She hated him for that. Briefly and completely.
Milo touched the edge of the manuscript.
“This line,” he said. “The one I saw on your phone. It’s the spine of the book. Everything should bend toward it. Instead, you keep letting your characters explain themselves before they have earned the right.”
“You’re telling me my book is too kind.”
“I’m telling you it is afraid of cruelty.”
“My book isn’t cruel.”
“Love often is.”
Sera stared at him.
Outside, a bus hissed to a stop at the curb. Rainwater streaked the glass like melted silver.
“That’s a bleak view,” she said.
“It’s an honest one.”
“No. It’s one kind of honest.”
For the first time, his expression shifted. Not much. A flicker around the eyes.
“Good,” he said.
“What does that mean?”
“It means you argued.”
“I’m not here to be tested.”
“No,” Milo said. “You’re here because you need three months of uninterrupted time to finish this book, and I can give it to you.”
The room seemed to tilt.
Sera’s fingers curled beneath the table.
“What?”
“Quit the café. Quit catering. I’ll pay your living expenses for three months. In exchange, you finish the manuscript.”
She laughed, but the sound came out wrong.
“That’s ridiculous.”
“It’s practical.”
“It’s insane.”
“It’s an investment.”
“In what?”
“You.”
The word hit harder than it should have.
Sera stood so abruptly that her chair scraped the floor. The sleeping man near the radiator startled awake.
“No,” she said.
Milo did not stand.
“You haven’t heard the terms.”
“I heard enough.”
“There would be a contract.”
“I’m sure.”
“No ownership of the book. No claim to royalties. No creative control.”
“That makes it worse.”
“Why?”
“Because then I don’t know what you want.”
His silence answered too slowly.
Sera gathered the pages with hands that were not quite steady.
Milo finally stood.
“I want to see what happens when you stop surviving long enough to write.”
She froze.
No one had ever said it like that.
Not chasing a dream. Not pursuing art. Not believing in herself.
Surviving.
The ugly, accurate word.
Milo reached into the inside pocket of his coat and placed a cream-colored card on the table.
“My attorney can send the agreement. Have someone review it.”
“I can’t afford someone.”
“I’ll pay for independent counsel.”
She laughed again, sharper this time.
“Do you hear yourself?”
“Yes.”
“And that sounds normal to you?”
“No.”
She looked at the card as if it might move.
“Why me?”
Milo’s face went very still.
For a moment, Sera thought he would deflect. Men like him always had rooms inside rooms, doors behind doors, no direct path to anything true.
Then he said, “Because three years ago, my wife died.”
The words entered the space between them and changed its temperature.
Sera’s anger faltered.
“I’m sorry.”
“I don’t want sympathy.”
“All right.”
“I haven’t been interested in anything unfinished since.”
She did not know what to say.
Milo glanced down at her manuscript.
“Your book is unfinished. But it’s alive.”
There was no softness in his voice. That made it worse. Softness could be distrusted. This sounded like a diagnosis.
Sera tucked the manuscript against her chest.
“I don’t know you.”
“No.”
“And I don’t trust you.”
“You shouldn’t.”
That startled her into looking at him again.
Milo picked up his coat.
“But you should trust the contract. Trust your own attorney. Trust the fact that I don’t need to trick you to take something from you.”
“That is not as reassuring as you think.”
“I know.”
He put on his coat, then paused.
“If you decide no, you’ll never hear from me again.”
“And if I decide yes?”
“Then you write.”
He left without looking back.
Sera stood in the reading room long after he was gone, her manuscript clutched to her chest, his card still lying on the table.
She did not take it.
She walked halfway to the exit.
Then she turned around and slipped the card into her pocket.
For two days, she told herself she would throw it away.
On the third, an eviction notice appeared taped to the apartment door.
Nina found her sitting on the hallway floor beneath it, still wearing her café apron, the paper in her lap.
“How bad?” Nina asked quietly.
Sera handed it over.
Nina read. Her face crumpled with exhaustion more than surprise.
“We can ask my sister.”
“We already did.”
“I can take extra shifts.”
“You already are.”
“So can you.”
“I already am.”
The silence that followed was not hopeless. It was worse. It was arithmetic.
That night, Sera opened her laptop and tried to write. The cursor blinked. The fan whined. Her heroine stood in a fictional doorway, waiting to say something brave.
Sera wrote one sentence.
Deleted it.
Wrote another.
Deleted that too.
At 1:17 a.m., she took Milo’s card from her coat pocket.
The email address was embossed beneath his name.
She typed only one line.
Send the contract.
His reply arrived nine minutes later.
You’ll have it by morning.
No greeting. No triumph. No surprise.
By noon, a law firm contacted her. By evening, another attorney — one not connected to Milo, according to her extremely suspicious tone — called Sera and explained that Mr. Strand had deposited a retainer in Sera’s name.
“It’s unusual,” the attorney said.
“That’s one word for it,” Sera replied.
“It is also surprisingly clean. He gets nothing from the book. Not legally. You are required only to deliver a complete manuscript draft within ninety days and attend one weekly review meeting with him.”
“With him?”
“Yes.”
Sera closed her eyes.
Of course.
The attorney continued, “There’s a confidentiality clause concerning the meetings and his involvement. Standard penalties, though aggressive.”
“How aggressive?”
“Don’t post about him. Don’t sell a tell-all. Don’t leak private details. You’ll be fine.”
“And the money?”
“Three monthly payments. Enough for rent, utilities, food, and what he calls ‘lost wages.’”
Sera almost asked the amount again. She had already heard it once and thought she had misunderstood.
It was more than she made in four months.
That should have made saying yes easier.
It made it terrifying.
Because money that large did not feel like help. It felt like gravity.
She signed two days later.
ADVERTISEMENT
