November 1st, 2017 – Night
By the time Asher stepped into his mother's penthouse, it was almost midnight.
The building security guard had recognized his last name, called upstairs, and practically bowed him in. The elevator ride to the top floor felt like ascending into some alternate reality where people had doormen and concierge services and didn't get fired from their jobs for circumstances beyond their control.
The penthouse smelled faintly of coffee, paper, and his mother's perfume—something sharp and clean with a hint of smoke.
"Welcome home, I guess," he muttered to no one.
He dropped his backpack by the door and toed off his shoes, suddenly hyper-aware that his socks had a hole in one heel.
The living room was all glass and dark wood, the city glittering beyond the windows like someone had spilled a box of LEDs. Art on the walls, shelves full of books and neat binders, a massive desk with two monitors and three paper trays labelled IN, OUT, and ABSOLUTELY NOT.
He gravitated to the desk like it might explain something.
The bottom of the ABSOLUTELY NOT tray contained a single file folder turned upside down. He left it alone for a full thirty seconds.
Then he picked it up.
Inside were contracts. Investment proposals. A thick one from a "strategic partner" that promised to "unlock synergies between Clandestine Cleaning and a global risk management consortium."
He skimmed.
The language was all about "joint ventures," "talent integration," and "shared operational pipelines."
In the margins, in neat, precise handwriting, his mother had written:
NO.
No to control clauses.
No to "succession planning" outside my terms.
No external leash on kill list.
If they bring this to the Board without me, I walk.
At the bottom, in slightly messier handwriting:
If I'm dead or incapacitated, they'll wave this at you.
They don't need you to run it. They just need you to bless the theft. Don't.
His fingers tightened on the page.
"She really doesn't know how to write reassuring notes," he muttered.
There was a post-it stuck to the inside back cover, written in Sandra's precise, unhurried script:
This is the one they'll slide across the table first.
Smile, nod, stall.
They want your signature, not your opinion. – SW
That, somehow, was worse.
"They don't even want my opinion," he told the empty room. "Just my handwriting."
He put the folder back exactly where he'd found it.
---
He showered in a bathroom that was bigger than his entire old studio apartment and changed into one of the spare T-shirts his mother kept "for when you finally visit like a proper son."
The guest room bed was too soft. The sheets smelled like fabric softener and the faint ghost of his mother's perfume.
He lay there staring at the ceiling, listening to the hum of the building.
At some point, he drifted into a thin, restless sleep.
He dreamed of hospital corridors, endless and twisting, lined with doors that opened into boardrooms. Every board member he passed left a streak of yellow on the floor. When he looked back, the streaks formed words he couldn't quite read.
He woke with his heart racing and the taste of copper in his mouth.
The clock said 3:12 a.m.
He swung his legs out of bed and padded to the living room.
The city outside was quieter, but not by much. Cars moved along arterial roads, a steady stream of red and white lights.
He walked over to his mother's desk again.
The ABSOLUTELY NOT folder sat there like a dare.
He left it closed this time and pulled out his phone instead.
The whole day felt wrong in his head. Not just the hospital. Not just the contracts. The people.
Dr. Wade had felt one way. Sandra another. The Board members he only remembered from magazine photos had always felt… off.
As a kid, he'd thought of numbers as personalities. Four was calm. Seven was aggressive. His teacher had laughed when he tried to explain it. The class had laughed too. He'd learned to keep it to himself.
As a teenager, he'd known when his mother was about to cancel a trip before she said anything, just by the way the air around her felt. He'd always chalked it up to being observant.
This, though… this was sharper.
On the subway to work that morning—before everything went wrong—he'd watched a man in a suit talk loudly into his phone about "family matters." The man had glowed, faintly, in a mustard yellow he now associated with spin. With the way people's mouths wrapped around lies.
He opened a notes app.
His thumbs hovered.
He typed, deleted, typed again.
Finally, he wrote:
Weird things – 11/1
Wade – steady blue, tired red, no yellow on "we didn't order that."
Mom – gold + silver + something sharp. Flared dark when she said "investors."
Sandra – steel-blue. Knife-sky.
Board (from memory/articles) – Azad = sunset + something oily? Might be bias.
He stared at it.
If anyone else read this, they'd think he'd started a bad poetry journal or joined a cult.
He saved it anyway.
His phone buzzed.
It was a message from Sandra.
Board called an emergency session for tomorrow – 10:00 a.m.
They want to "update succession protocols" and "ensure continuity for key contracts."
I'll pick you up at 9:15. Wear something that buttons.
He typed back:
Do they know I got fired today?
Three dots.
They don't care about your employment history. They care about your last name. Sleep. Big day watching liars tomorrow.
His throat tightened.
He typed:
Are you lying to me right now?
Three dots again. Then:
No.
He stared at the message.
Weirdly, the absence of any joke or deflection made it easier to believe her.
He put the phone down.
For a moment, he thought he saw a faint, steel-blue outline around the message bubble—absurd, since that wasn't how anything worked.
He pressed his palms into his eyes until colors bloomed behind his eyelids that had nothing to do with people and everything to do with tired retinas.
"Smile, nod, stall," he muttered. "Try not to die."
He went back to bed.
Eventually, the city's glow and the steady background hum lulled him into something like rest, his mind looping quietly around four words:
Smile.
Nod.
Stall.
Hide.