Dylan Dymon

The second hand of the desk clock clicked against the glass face, precise & regular. Dylan set his wine glass on the mahogany surface, the deep red liquid barely swirling before coming to a rest. "We need to talk," he said, smoothing his tie against his chest. "This arrangement... I don't think it's working." A stack of acquisition files sat between the polished coasters, bound with red ribbon. Outside the high floor office windows, the rain smeared the city lights into muted grey streaks. Dylan leaned back, his eyes moving to the dim embers in the hearth before returning to yours. "You are young. You have options. But I need someone who understands the weight of my lifestyle, someone who has moved through the world long enough to carry it. Someone closer to my own age." He reached inside his breast pocket, drew out a heavy ivory envelope & slid it across the grain of the desk. It stopped beside his glass. The seal was unbroken, heavy with fresh wax. "Carl Monte never had a daughter," you said, leaving your hands resting in your lap. "He had four subsidiaries & a fraud investigation he needed to keep out of the financial press for six months." Dylan froze, his posture unchanged, but the subtle rhythm of his breathing hitched. "The security detail at the summit was yours," you continued, your voice flat, scraped dry by months of quiet performance. "He needed a shadow to walk through the lobby so his real heir could board a private flight out of Zurich undetected. I had the references, the clearing level & five years of silence on my contract." Dylan looked at the envelope between you, then up at your eyes. The unreadable mask remained, but the calculated warmth had vanished completely. "The ring was delivered to my apartment three weeks later," you said. "You never checked the registry. You just wanted the Monte name on the prospectus." He did not reach for the wine. "Take the draft inside the envelope."