The city lights of London glittered like a spilled diamond necklace below the penthouse suite. Inside, the silence was a presence. Not an empty silence, but a curated one, as expensive and deliberate as the Eames chair in the corner or the single, vast orchid on the glass coffee table.
Her name was Elara. Not the one on her passport, but the one that existed only in this rarefied space between dusk and dawn. She stood by the floor-to-ceiling window, a silhouette against the urban galaxy. She wasn’t waiting. Waiting implied uncertainty, and in Elara’s world, there was none.
Her dress was the colour of crushed midnight, a simple sheath that clung in a way that whispered, never shouted. Her jewellery was minimal: a single platinum band on her right hand. The only tools of her trade were her wit, her preternatural ability to listen, and an emotional calculus so precise it could disarm kings and captains of industry.
The discreet chime of the private elevator announced his arrival. She didn’t turn, not immediately. The art was in the reveal, the careful construction of a moment.
When she did turn, her smile was not one of warmth, but of flawless recognition. “Mr. Thorne.”
“Alexander, please,” he said, shedding his overcoat, a garment that cost more than most cars. He was exactly as his dossier suggested: mid-fifties, the lean build of a man who feared decay more than bankruptcy, with eyes that had seen too many corporate battles and not enough sunsets.
“Alexander,” she amended, her voice a low, smooth contralto. She moved to the drinks cabinet. “Macallam, neat. As I recall.”
A flicker of genuine surprise crossed his face. It was their first meeting. Her research had been exhaustive. His favourite drink, his preferred temperature for the pool at his Swiss chalet, the name of his first dog (Buster, a Labrador), the lingering resentment towards a father who had loved his business more than his son. This was the true currency here. Not the body, but the intimacy of information.
The next two hours were a meticulously choreographed ballet. They spoke of art, of the recent auction at Sotheby’s, of the absurdities of politics. She laughed at his jokes with a perfect, throaty sincerity. She challenged his opinions just enough to make him feel intelligent when he defended them. She was the perfect conversational mirror, reflecting back the man he wished to be: not the ruthless CEO, but the erudite, powerful connoisseur.
The physical transaction, when it inevitably came, was the least of it. It was perfunctory, almost ceremonial. A confirmation of the contract. For men like Alexander, the real hunger wasn’t for flesh, but for connection without consequence. For a space where the mask could be taken off without fear of it being used against him. Elara was a vault. Her professionalism was measured in her absolute discretion and her ability to make a man feel, for a few hours, truly seen, without being truly known.
Afterwards, he slept the deep, untroubled sleep of the emotionally unburdened. Elara did not sleep. She sat again by the window, wrapped in a silk robe, watching the first hints of dawn bleed into the sky over the Thames. This was her time. The space between performances.
She felt the familiar hollowing-out sensation. It wasn’t sadness, exactly. It was the necessary decompression after being a full-time fantasy. She had been a therapist, a status symbol, a confessor, and a lover. She had absorbed his anxieties and reflected back nothing but calm assurance.
On the glass table, beside a folder containing his discreet payment, he had left a handwritten note on heavy stock paper. ‘Thank you. For the conversation.’
Elara allowed herself a small, private smile. That was the real compliment. That was the five-star review in her world.
She picked up her phone, not the sleek, anonymous one for her work, but her personal one. There was a message from her sister, a picture of her newborn nephew, his face a squishy, innocent moon. The chasm between her two lives was so vast it could induce vertigo. In one, she was Elara, a phantom of luxury and desire. In the other, she was Sarah, who worried about her sister’s dating life and whether she’d remembered to water her plants.
She looked from the gurgling baby on the screen to the sleeping titan of industry in the bedroom, and then back to the awakening city. She was a ghost in the machine of power, a whispered secret in a world of roars. She provided the most exclusive service in the world: not sex, but a temporary sanctuary from the crushing loneliness that came with the view from the top.
And as the sun finally broke the horizon, turning the skyscrapers to gold, Elara stood up. The performance was over. It was time for Sarah to go home.
