Chapter 5
ELLIE
They send a black car to pick me up.
Well, dark is a more apt description. Whatever ultra-expensive paint they used on the thing seems to literally absorb light. I swear the afternoon light darkens as it pulls up to my building at two o’clock sharp.
I’m standing on the sidewalk with my purse pressed against my hip and my hair down, covering my neck.
The driver steps out. Dark suit. Earpiece.
He approaches to open the door, and I have to crane my neck to take him in. He has dark, intense eyes and a small, faded scar across his face. He’s well built, not too broad, but definitely muscular under the suit.
Despite the stoic — and hell, maybe even a little scary — energy coming off him, he’s not bad looking at all.
In fact, if I weren’t so nervous, I’d say he’s incredibly handsome.
I brush the thought away. There’s no room for that today.
“Thank you,” I whisper as he holds the door open for me.
I must have been too quiet, because I don’t get a word in response. Not even a polite smile .
“Hi!” I try again, nerves rising. “I’m Ellie. Ellie Calloway. I have an interview at the Belov?—”
“I know.” He gestures toward the open door. His face is professionally blank. The earpiece catches the light.
“Oh, okay. Uh, thank you.”
My cheeks threaten to flush with embarrassment, so I tilt my head down and get in.
The interior smells like leather. It’s not unpleasant, but clinical. The seats are cold despite the heating, and there’s a tinted glass partition between the driver and me. For a moment I have the disorienting sensation of being sealed inside a petri dish.
“Deep breaths, Ellie,” I mutter, gripping my purse tighter.
We pull away from the curb, and I watch my building shrink in the rear window. My stomach shrinks with it.
The drive takes just over thirty minutes. I’m a bundle of nerves the entire time, but it helps to take in the world outside the window. The neighborhoods change like chapters in a book. Dense and loud, then commercial, then residential, then green.
Trees appear, tall and evenly spaced. I imagine them as soldiers standing at attention along a road that gets progressively more private.
And then comes the gate.
It appears through the trees, and I sit up straighter. I expected wrought iron, maybe, or a stone wall with a buzzer that indicated private property .
Instead, I get a gate that screams, Turn Around.
It’s pure steel. Tall, ten feet, maybe twelve, and flanked by stone pillars with cameras mounted on top, angled to cover every approach.
There’s a guard station to the right, a concrete structure with tinted windows.
As the car slows, a man materializes.
He’s not what I’d call a security guard. Security guards wear polyester uniforms, carry flashlights, and say things like, “Do you have an appointment?”
This man is equipped with a tactical vest over a dark shirt, and there’s a bulge on his hip that I tell myself is a radio. He approaches the car with a measured gait as if the vehicle might explode at any moment.
The driver lowers his window. Words are exchanged in — what’s that, Russian? It’s fast, clipped. The guard leans down and checks the back seat. His eyes move across my face with the efficiency of a scanner searching for a threat.
My instinct is to wave. To say hello. But I remember how that went with the driver, so I keep my mouth shut and try to look as non-threatening as possible.
It’s not a difficult task. I’m five foot three on a good day. I weigh a hundred and eighteen pounds. And I’m carrying a purse with a broken zipper that contains a tube of lip balm, my phone, a wallet with eleven dollars in it, and a granola bar I brought in case I got hungry.
I am, by any reasonable metric, the least threatening person in a twenty-mile radius.
The guard doesn’t seem convinced. He steps back and talks into his wrist. His wrist , like a freaking spy movie.
As soon as he finishes his scene, the gate begins to open.
For a moment, I’m flooded with relief. One barrier crossed. One task successfully completed. Then the opening gate starts to groan, and a whole new thread of nerves tangles up inside of me.
“You belong here,” I quietly lie to myself.
I’m practically rocking in my seat as we pass through.
The drive beyond the gate is longer than I could have imagined. Gravel, white and clean, crunching under the tires. Trees on both sides, bare now, November having stripped them down to skeletons. Still, the branches form a canopy overhead that must be beautiful in the spring .
Then, I see it. Or the first glimpse of it.
The house doesn’t appear all at once. It reveals itself in stages, first the roofline, dark against the gray sky, then the upper windows, the stone facade, followed by the full scope of it, spreading across the landscape.
The job listing didn’t mention what the parents do. “Private family seeks live-in tutor for six-year-old daughter.” That’s all it said. I assumed business. Finance, maybe. Tech money.
Whatever the source of income, it managed to buy an absolutely gorgeous home. There’s no denying the beauty of it, but there’s also something… off.
It takes me a moment to understand what feels wrong.
Home . The word doesn’t fit. This doesn’t look like a home.
The owner probably invested an enormous amount of resources in making sure not a single thing is out of place, but that sort of investment isn’t about aesthetics.
It’s about control.
Political , I think, trying to find a category that makes sense. Maybe diplomatic. Embassy adjacent. Something like that.
The car pulls up, and I realize I almost wasn’t nervous for the few minutes I was trying to figure this place out. If only I could hold onto that curiosity. But it slips away as the driver opens my door.
With a shaky breath, I shuffle out and step onto the immaculately kept gravel.
“So, this is it, huh?” I awkwardly smile before I can stop myself.
Predictably, the driver doesn’t react.
Oops .
Gathering myself, I straighten my blouse and double-check to make sure my portfolio is in my bag.
Then I look at the darkly handsome, dangerously mute driver for instructions on what to do next.
He gives the slightest nod toward the front doors .
“Yes, of course,” I mumble, starting for the door. “Thank you for the ride…”
Silence stretches over the enormous property as I walk by myself up to the front entrance. I’ve never felt so small in my life. And my heart is beating so hard I feel it in my wrists.
Before I ascend the final front step, one of the towering double-wide doors opens, and a woman in a clean gray dress steps out.
“Welcome,” she says, bowing ever so slightly.
“Thank you, I’m happy to?—”
“This way, please.” She turns back inside, and I’m left standing there for a moment.
“I guess the workers here aren’t much for small talk,” I shrug to myself. For some reason, another employee giving me the cold shoulder almost provides a modicum of confidence.
Somewhere in these halls, there’s a little girl who probably needs some warmth. I may not have many other qualifications, but warmth? That I can provide.
I cough a little to cover up my little quip and hurry after the woman. She’s already halfway down a foyer that could swallow my entire apartment. Marble floors. A staircase that curves upward with an iron railing. Fresh flowers on a table that probably costs more than everything I own combined.
“Wow,” I sigh, repeatedly.
It’s like something out of a movie.
Well, a silent movie.
Because it isn’t just quiet here. It’s dead silent. So silent that it makes me conscious of every sound I make. My shoes on the marble. My breathing. The whisper of my hair against my collar.
I’ve been in expensive homes before. During college, I babysat for families in Brookline and Newton. Lawyers, doctors, people with money and taste. Those homes were nice. They had good furniture and clean kitchens. Sometimes a piano that nobody played.
This, though…
This is on another level.
Everything is so beautiful and precise. There doesn’t seem to be a single object in sight that hasn’t been chosen, placed, and approved by someone whose standards I cannot begin to imagine.
I start to wonder what I’d have to do to meet those standards, and a cold shiver runs down my spine.
Eventually, we reach a waiting room, though the word room feels inadequate. It’s a wide, sunlit space with leather chairs and a low table with a crystal water pitcher. Three other women are already seated.
And that’s where I’m hit with another reminder that I don’t belong here.
They’re older. All of them. Mid-thirties, maybe forties. And dressed exactly for the job description. Structured blazers, quality fabrics, shoes that don’t have scuff marks.
One woman has a leather portfolio monogrammed with her initials. Another is reading from a tablet, scrolling through a digital teaching portfolio with photographs, graphs, and progress reports.
Shit .
I sit down, cross my ankles, and place my hands in my lap, trying to control the increasingly intense imposter syndrome.
You passed the first round , I tell myself. You’re here. That means a lot.
The self-motivation only helps a little. The tension in the room doesn’t help at all.
None of the women speak to each other. I watch them from behind my eyelashes, noticing how they sit. Confident, composed.
I sit up straighter .
They call us one at a time.
The first woman goes in and comes out twelve minutes later. Her face reveals nothing as she gathers her things and leaves without turning to any of us.
The second follows. Each one disappears through a heavy door into a room I can’t see, returning minutes later with the same composed mask.
The tension builds until I’d rather be anywhere else.
I’m last.
By the time the door opens and a man’s voice says, “Miss Calloway,” my palms are damp, and my stomach is a fist. I’ve read the same line on my resume fourteen times without registering a single word.
I stand, smooth my dress, and walk through the door.