So Close is the first book in the Blacklist series, with Sylvia Day's trademark emotional intensity, scorching sensuality, and powerful storytelling.
1
Witte
The party is a lively crush, yet I’m keenly aware of one singularly significant presence – my employer’s wife, a woman who has been dead for many years. Manhattan glitters in the vast night enfolding the penthouse tower. Clouds froth against the floor-to-ceiling windows, at turns obscuring then revealing the stygian spread of Central Park and its reservoir far below. The tower creaks as it sways ever so slightly in gusts of evening wind, the plaintive sound hidden beneath the music and sea of conversation.
Within the glass walls, tension seethes. Dangerous electricity charges the air, the inevitable result of confining rivals in a neutral space. Restrained by decorum and the fear of losing face, adversaries bristle, claws and fangs only briefly and resentfully sheathed.
The event is a black-tie reception in honour of a new cosmeceutical line. The attendees are the best known of Manhattan’s young elite, a collective pool of the too-beautiful and too-rich. Among them are celebrated friendships and infamous feuds. It’s a testament to Mr Black that he could bring such a diverse – and divisive – group together in his home.
Like chess players, the guests have chosen their positions for the best advantage. Mr Black’s longest-known friend, Ryan Landon, stands opposite the spacious living room from Mr Black’s business partner, Gideon Cross, the two men perpetuating an enmity passed down from their fathers. As regretful as their discord is, I can still admire the purity of their open dislike of one another.
In contrast, Mr Black’s main adversaries – his half-brothers Ramin and Darius – undermine him whenever it benefits them. And then there is Amy, Darius’s wife, the only woman in the room who won’t look at Mr Black. Not even a surreptitious peek.
The spaces between these key players are filled with reality television personalities and influencers, models and musicians. Bursts of light bounce off the glittering dresses and wide windows as mobiles capture a seemingly endless number of selfies that will be shared with millions of followers. Most companies pay exorbitant fees for such photographic endorsements, but that is not the case tonight. An invitation to the penthouse is a social coup, as is proximity to Cross and his wife, Eva, seemingly the world’s most popular couple, if measured by media coverage.
I glance around the living room, assuring myself that the waiting staff are present but unobtrusive, supplying canapés and beverages while clearing away the discarded Baccarat glasses and Limoges plates.
Extravagant bouquets of Blacklist lilies decorate the sterling-silver tops of African blackwood tables, adding texture and glamour without colour or fragrance. Music weaves through the room, effervescent and of the moment. The singer is present, slouched against a wall with his arm around a woman’s waist and his lips to her jaw. His eyes are on Mr Black, but they shift to me just as the smartwatch on my wrist gives a haptic signal announcing the arrival of new guests.
I move to the foyer.
The moment the sleek brunette glides through the front door on limousine heels, I know my employer will seduce her. She’s arrived on the arm of an attractive gentleman, but that’s irrelevant. She’ll succumb; they all do.
The lady resembles the late Mrs Black: inky hair, sultry green eyes, crimson lips. A beauty, yes, but a pale imitation of the woman immortalized in the portrait Mr Black treasures. They all are.
I greet them both with a nod and offer to take her wrap, standing by as her attentive escort assists her instead.
‘Thank you,’ she says as her companion hands me her shimmery wrap. She’s speaking to me, but Mr Black has already captured her attention and her gaze is on him. Despite his deliberate withdrawal to the fringes of the room, his towering height makes him impossible to ignore. His energy is a lashing inferno checked only by a tremendous force of will. He is a man who composes himself with a stark economy of movement yet somehow gives the impression of furore. I can see the effort it takes for our new guest to look away from him and take stock of the festivity.
Mr Black’s sister, Rosana, holds the command position in front of the windows. She is a tall, dark beauty in a beaded turquoise dress. Gleaming hair the colour of mahogany drapes her shoulders, a striking contrast to the silvery blond of Eva Cross, who stands beside her, petite and curvaceous and dressed in elegant blush-hued silk. Eva is Rosana’s co-ambassador in the new venture; the two women so very different, yet both are tabloid and social media darlings.
I look at Mr Black, searching for his reaction to the latest arrival. I see what I expected: a focused gaze. As he scrutinizes her, his jaw tightens. The signs are subtle, but I sense his terrible disappointment and the resulting surge of self-recrimination.
“She is fire-bright in a crimson dress, but she is the moth, and he is the flame.”
For a moment, he’d hoped it was her. Lily. A woman whose exquisite beauty is immortalized in a single image that hangs in his private rooms but whose profound significance haunts this home and the man who is its master. That he continues to search for her in every woman is heartbreaking.
Lily was absent from Mr Black’s life before he acquired my services, so I know her only posthumously, but I’m in the position of overhearing a great deal. That she was incredibly lovely is universally acknowledged; many say she remains the greatest beauty they’ve ever seen. Though her given name suggests delicacy and fragility, acquaintances describe her as independent, sharp-witted and bold. She’s remembered as being kind and encouraging, entertaining and deeply interested in others, a quality which I would argue is far better than being interesting.
For some time, I had only those scant impressions and opinions until a tormented night, when Mr Black was wild with drink and half-mad, no longer able to suppress the furious grief inside him. I understood then the extraordinary hold she continues to have on him; I can sense her power when I look at the massive portrait of her that dominates the wall opposite his bed.
In his room, her image is the only spot of colour, but that isn’t what makes the photograph so striking. It is the look in her eyes, feverish and incisive.
Whoever Lily was, her love for Kane Black consumed them both. That obsession remains the most perilous element of his life to this day.
I watch as our newest guest wades through the others, separating from her escort as she moves towards Mr Black. She is fire-bright in a crimson dress, but she is the moth, and he is the flame.
A popular periodical recently declared him one of the sexiest men alive. Mr Black is nearing thirty-three and wealthy enough to afford me, a seventh-generation majordomo of British lineage, impeccably trained to handle any situation from mundanity to extreme crises. He is remote and unreadable, yet women are drawn to him without any thought of self-preservation. Despite their best efforts, he remains staunchly unavailable. He is a widower who remains deeply, thoroughly married.
His most frequent escort, the slender blonde who hovers nearby, gleams in ivory and pearls. She’s his mother, although no one would suspect the relationship if it weren’t widely known. Age isn’t the only thing Aliyah hides well. The lone clue to her nature is her manicure, the long nails filed into a modish almond shape resembling talons.
As I turn away from the coat cupboard, I hear the pop of a champagne cork. Crystal flutes clink merrily, and conversation hums. A small fortune in designer shoes clicks and taps across obsidian floor tiles so liquid-like in their pristine reflectiveness one is reminded of the calmest of nocturnal waters. Mr Black’s residence is a study in maximalism: dark woods, natural stone, rich leathers and hides . . . all in the darkest of shades, creating a space as elegant and masculine as its owner.
My daughter assures me he is blessed with uncommonly good looks and cursed with something she claims is even more compelling: a brooding, edgy torridity. The fact that he once loved so deeply and remains so shrouded in private grief has potent allure. His air of unattainability is irresistible, she says.
It’s not artifice. His many sexual liaisons aside, Mr Black is taken in the most profound sense of the word. Lily’s memory hollows him. He is a husk of a man, yet I’ve come to love him as a father would his son.
A woman laughs too loudly. Too much to drink, clearly. And she’s not alone in over-indulging. A flute falls from someone’s careless grip and shatters, with the unmistakable discordant music of tinkling shards of glass.
2
Witte
‘Did you show her out, Witte?’
Mr Black enters the kitchen the next morning dressed for the day in a Savile Row business suit and perfectly knotted tie, neither being part of his attire prior to my employ. I schooled him in the fine points of bespoke clothing for gentlemen, and he was an avid learner.
On the exterior, I can scarcely see the unpolished young man who hired me six years ago, so recently widowed and paralysed with grief that my first task was managing anyone who approached with queries or condolences. In time, he harnessed his pain into fiery ambition. That – and his singular intelligence – revived the pharmaceutical company his father had made insolvent through embezzlement.
Against all odds, he succeeded – brilliantly.
I turn and set his breakfast on the black marble-topped island, positioning it perfectly between the silverware already set out. Eggs, bacon, fresh fruit – his staples. ‘Yes, Ms Ferrari left while you were in the shower.’
One dark brow lifts. ‘Ferrari? Really?’
I’m not surprised that he never asked for her name, only saddened. Who the women are means nothing; only that they bring Lily to his mind.
“Deep grooves on either side of his mouth shouldn’t be there on one so young. I’ve seen him smile and have even heard him laugh, but the amusement never reaches his eyes. He suffers life; he does not live it.”
I have never seen him show genuine affection to any woman but his sister, Rosana. He is polite to paramours, always. Attentive when in pursuit. But liaisons are limited to a single evening. He has never sent flowers to a lover, never indulged in a flirtatious phone call, nor invited or escorted a woman to dinner. I’ve no knowledge of how he treats a lady with whom he is intimately entangled. It is a gap in my understanding of him that may never be filled.
He reaches for the coffee I set in front of him, his mind clearly running through his agenda for the day, his latest lover dismissed from his thoughts for ever. He rarely sleeps and works far too much. Deep grooves on either side of his mouth shouldn’t be there on one so young. I’ve seen him smile and have even heard him laugh, but the amusement never reaches his eyes. He suffers life; he does not live it.
I have urged him to take a moment to enjoy his accomplishments. He tells me he’ll enjoy life better when he’s dead. Reuniting with Lily is his only true aspiration. Everything else is simply killing time.
‘You did an excellent job with the party last night, Witte,’ he says, rather absent-mindedly. ‘You always do, but still. Never hurts to say I appreciate you, does it?’
‘No. Thank you.’
I leave him to eat and read the day’s paper, heading down a long hallway with its mirrored walls to the private side of the residence he shares with no one. The lovely Ms Ferrari spent the night in a bedroom on the opposite end of the penthouse, in a starkly white and sterile suite methodically designed to be nothing like the rest of the home. It’s a space Lily would not favour, as if that alone would be enough to prevent her spectre from watching and knowing.
Shortly after hiring me, Mr Black purchased the penthouse while the tower was still under construction. He oversaw the design of the raw interior minutely, from the positioning of the walls and doors to the selection of materials. Yet, I can’t say the space reflects his personal style. He chose every piece of furniture and accessory with his beloved Lily’s tastes in mind. He didn’t want a fresh start, free of her memory; he simply wanted a residence in the city, and he made certain to include his late wife. There are reminders of her everywhere, on nearly everything. In that respect, I feel I know her.
Elegant. Dramatic. Sensual. Dark, always dark.
I pause on the threshold of Mr Black’s bedroom, sensing the lingering humidity of his recent shower. The his-and-her suites occupy one entire side of the residence, with walkthrough wardrobes, matching marble-slab bathrooms and a shared sitting room.
The lady’s suite has a view of Billionaires’ Row and the Hudson from the foot of the wide, deep bed and of Lower Manhattan to the right. Sunsets spread fire through the sumptuously appointed and lavishly furnished room, warming the subaqueous decor that I refresh with exuberant bouquets every few days at my employer’s request. Her room is ever in readiness, waiting for a woman who was gone before it became hers. Her LRB monogram is embossed or embroidered on nearly everything as if to assure Lily that the space belongs only to her. Her garments fill the wardrobe and drawers. Her private bathroom is fully stocked.
By rights, the empty echo of abandonment should mar the beautiful suite, yet there is a strange energy here, a precursor to life itself.
Lily lingers, unseen but felt.
The master suite is spare in comparison. Mr Black sleeps atop a slender platform chosen to diminish any possible distractions from the immense image commanding the wall directly across from where he rests his head at night. Fleurs-de-lis decorate his drawer pulls and are embroidered on his sheets. New York is laid out like a gift at his feet beyond the windows, but he’s positioned his bed with the view behind him and Lily’s picture in front of him. It’s emblematic of how he lives his life: indifferent to the world and possessed by a woman long departed.
Mr Black ends his days with Lily. Her portrait is the last thing he sees, and he wakes to the sight of her. Unlike her room, his is tomblike, cool and eerily quiet, devoid of animation.
Turning away from the north-eastern views over Central Park, the woman whose immortal perfection dominates one’s attention draws my gaze. It’s an intimate, earthy picture. A life-size Lily reclines across a dishevelled bed; her torso draped in a white sheet and her slender limbs tangled in her long black hair. Her lips are swollen from kisses, her cheeks flushed, her eyes heavy-lidded with desire and possessiveness. Against the ashen wall colour, she beckons with a siren’s song of beauty, obsession and destruction.
I’ve caught myself staring more than once, arrested by her flawless face and potent sensuality. Some women entrap men in webs by the simple act of existing.
She was so young, barely in her twenties, yet she left a profound impression on everyone who met her. And she left her husband in torment, destroyed by doubt, guilt and heart-breaking questions . . . the answers to which she took to her watery grave.
Extracted from So Close by Sylvia Day, out now.
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