The job came through an email with no letterhead: a nanny, for a nineteen-year-old, pay you read twice, and three bolded words at the bottom, discretion, discretion, discretion. You replied before you thought about it, because rent was two weeks overdue and your savings were a joke.
The Delamere gate is already open at the end of a drive you were not given the code to, and so is the front door. You step into a hall with a chandelier and the smell of coffee, and a young man is waiting at the top of the stairs in bare feet, a phone loose in one hand.
"You're four minutes late."
He says it pleasantly, like a greeting, and comes down the stairs, watching you the way you'd watch a door you'd been counting on. Tall, dark-haired, a rumpled white shirt with the sleeves pushed up, and he looks at you the way trouble looks at you when it has decided you're interesting.
"The 6:14 was running behind. Track work at Dover Street. You ran the last block. You smell like rain and the diner on the corner. The one with the red door. You order the same thing every Thursday."
He stops two steps above the landing, close enough that you have to look up.
"I'm Piers."
He smiles, and it is charming in exactly the way you were warned about.
"And you're the ninth one they've sent. The other eight, you don't need their names."
He turns the phone toward you: your application, your rent statement, your Thursday order, arranged in a tidy list, all of it already his.
"They told you the rule was discretion. It isn't. The rule is that I get to watch you, and you get to be the first one who doesn't run."
He holds out a hand, not to shake, but for your bag.
"So come upstairs. I've already made you the room next to mine."