This Debt Between Us

The wind clawed at Roni’s thighs, searching for skin beneath the matte-black fabric. Forty-two stories up, the tower’s glass skin reflected her silhouette—bent knees, gloved fingers splayed against the building’s seam—as if the city itself were holding its breath with her. She flexed her toes inside soft-soled shoes, feeling the micro-suction cups kiss the pane. One slip and the only witness would be a half-drunk security guard watching basketball replays three floors below.

She liked that math.

She had started climbing at 02:17, exactly four minutes after the west-elevator camera rebooted. By 02:31 she had cleared the service ledge where motion sensors were angled to catch pigeons, not people. Now, at 02:46, the final stretch waited: ten meters of featureless glass ending in a maintenance hatch that fed directly into Jasper Croft’s private elevator shaft. No balcony, no ornament, no mercy—just vertical ice lit by the bruised glow of downtown.

Cold crept through the weave of her suit, tightening her nipples until they ached against the compression top. She ignored the pulse between her legs, the way adrenaline always pooled there first. Later she would use it; now she pocketed it like a blade.

A gust slapped her cheek, rocking her body an inch from the wall. Her left knee lost suction; for three heartbeats she hung one-handed, boots skimming empty night. The city swung below—headlights smeared into gold ribbons, river black and depthless. She tasted metal, imagined the splatter, then forced her palm flat again. Breathe, count, move. The choreography was sacred, a hymn she’d rehearsed in abandoned warehouses until her shoulders screamed.

Halfway to the hatch her earpiece clicked: two short, one long—Piper confirming the lobby guard had left his desk for a smoke. Good girl. Roni allowed herself half a smile, lips cracking in the dry wind. She climbed faster, thighs burning, hips rolling in the steady piston rhythm that always made former lovers swear she fucked the same way she stole—relentless, precise, gone before they caught their breath.

At the hatch she paused. Infrared paint on the latch showed cool: no internal alarms. She slid a flex-bar between glass and steel, popped the pins, and slipped inside. The shaft was a velvet throat, silent except for the soft whir of dormant elevators. She clipped her harness to the maintenance cable, unspooled ascenders, and began the final ascent—thirty silent feet to the roof of the car that served only the penthouse. When she stepped onto its roof her watch read 02:59. She had sixty-one seconds before the next patrol cycle.

She knelt, popped the escape hatch, and dropped into the car. Mirrors on every wall threw her reflection back in fractured triplicate: black suit zipped to the sternum, hair braided tight, eyes bright as switchblades. The car smelled of cedar and something metallic—money, maybe, or blood. She pressed the PH button, felt the magnet lock disengage, and rose the last three floors alone.

Doors parted with a whisper. She stepped into a corridor so wide it felt like outside turned inside: glass walls, polished basalt floor, air scrubbed until it tasted empty. Across the city a siren dopplered away; inside, nothing moved. She tasted the hush, felt it slide under her tongue like a promise.

She walked past a single sculpture—steel wings folded mid-dive—and felt her pulse quicken. Not fear, not exactly. Recognition. Every billionaire collected something; Jasper collected stillness. She intended to break it.

At the end of the hall biometric sensors glowed soft teal. She peeled a thin patch from her wrist, slapped it over the reader, watched the lights stutter and submit. The lock sighed open. She stepped into the master suite, pupils widening to drink the dark.

Across the room the painting waited, big as a door, colors swallowed by night. Behind it: the vault. Inside the vault: the Seraph’s Tear, a pear-shaped diamond rumored to harden against skin until it felt alive. She unspooled the cable from her belt, clipped it to a hidden anchor in the ceiling, and glided forward.

Her boots made no sound. Her breath hardly stirred. She felt the old hunger rise, sharp and clean as the wind that had tried to kill her minutes ago. She reached for the painting’s frame, fingers steady, mouth already tasting the future—until the room flooded with light and a voice behind her said, calm as winter water, “I wouldn’t do that. The nitrogen purge is quite unpleasant.”

The penthouse was a mausoleum of right angles. Glass, steel, concrete, all scrubbed to a surgical sheen. Roni stepped through the corridor and felt the city drop away behind her, forty-two stories of altitude sealing her into a hush so complete she could hear the wet click of her own blink. No ticking clocks, no humming appliances—only the faint mechanical sigh of climate control adjusting by fractions of a degree. The air smelled of nothing, as though even odour had been taxed into exile.

She slid a foot forward, testing. No tremor in the floor, no tell-tale warmth of recently switched lights. The laser grid should have been active—three beams, knee-high, waist-high, chest-high, cycling every four seconds—but the patch on her wrist had rewritten their language. They slept for her now, invisible snakes coiled and harmless. She stepped over the first threshold and felt the familiar contraction behind her sternum: anticipation clamping down like a hand around the base of her throat.

To her left, the living room opened into a rectangle of moon-coloured sofas. A single book lay on a coffee table, spine uncracked. She did not slow to read the title; curiosity was a luxury that slowed blood flow. Ahead, a staircase floated—no risers, only treads cantilevered from a wall—leading toward the master suite. She chose the ground route instead, slipping along a hallway narrower than the grand spaces, designed, she suspected, to funnel intruders into view. Jasper liked sightlines the way other men liked contracts.

Halfway down the hall she paused at a panel of glass. Beyond it, the city glittered, a circuitry of headlights and neon. Her reflection floated over it: a narrow silhouette, hips cocked, braid tucked inside the collar so no strand could snag. She looked like a paper cutout laid against the night. She tapped the pane once with a knuckle. Triple-laminated, air-gapped, wired to pressure sensors. If she punched through she would be dead before the shards hit the floor. She smiled at the thought—some locks were honest.

The corridor ended in a sliding door recessed into the wall. She pressed two fingers against the seam, felt the faint pulse of the servo. Locked, but the lock was social, not structural: it expected consent, not force. She slid a wafer of graphite between latch and plate, exhaled, and pushed. The door rolled aside on a breath of rubberised tracks.

Inside, the bedroom was a single slab of space: bed low and wide as a raft, headboard a monolith of grey linen. Two nightstands, nothing on them. No photographs, no half-drunk glass of water. Either Jasper lived like a monk or he tidied evidence the way other people tucked in children. She felt a twitch of irritation—no clutter meant no story, and no story meant no leverage. Everyone left shrapnel except Jasper, who had turned absence into a signature.

She crossed to the far wall where the abstract painting hung: rust and indigo shapes colliding, all sharp edges. Behind it waited the vault. She lifted the frame a millimetre, slid a feeler gauge behind, and confirmed the magnetic contact still seated—no local alarm, just the promise of nitrogen if she botched the code. Her pulse drummed in her ears, steady, almost bored. She had cracked tougher. She would crack this. The diamond was already warm in her imagination, a teardrop of captured starlight that would heat against her collarbone when she fled.

Roni eased the painting aside on silent hinges, revealing the matte face of the safe. Ten-digit membrane, capacitive, no tactile feedback. She thumbed the power node on her wrist; the decryption spike blinked awake. Thirty seconds of brute handshake, maybe less. She fitted the leads, watched numbers stutter across her retinal HUD. Her tongue found the cut on her lip she’d carried since scaling—salt and iron, the taste of staying alive.

Twenty-eight seconds.

Twenty-six.

A soft chime, not from the vault but from somewhere behind her. Not the door, not the lift—something closer. She froze, breath bottled in her throat. The chime came again, a polite digital trill, the sound a phone made when it finished charging. It was inside the room with her.

She turned her head a fraction. On the low dresser, a slim rectangle of matte black glass stood upright, screen lit. A message glowed:

WELCOME HOME, JASPER.

The phone had recognised a face—his face. Which meant it was now recognising hers.

Roni’s gloved fingertip had barely brushed the keypad when the overhead strips flared white. She flinched hard enough that the decryption spike slipped from the port, its leads snatching at her sleeve like tiny claws. The painting—still propped half-open—swung wider, exposing her to the room and whatever stood behind her.

She pivoted on the ball of her left foot, weight low, right hand already closing on the ceramic blade inside her cuff. The motion was reflex, drilled into muscle years ago, but it died halfway: Jasper Croft filled the doorway, one shoulder against the jamb, silk robe belted loose. The glass in his hand caught the new light and threw it back in amber spokes. He looked exactly like the photographs—high cheekbones, flat mouth, eyes the colour of wet concrete—except alive, three-dimensional, and staring at her as if she were a misplaced piece of furniture he intended to keep.

“Don’t move,” he said, voice pitched low, almost friendly. “There’s a pressure pad under your right heel. If you shift more than three millimetres the vault vents nitrogen straight into the room. You’ll be conscious long enough to regret it.”

Roni’s boot had frozen half an inch above the parquet; she felt the tremor travel up her tibia and lodge behind her kneecap. She lowered slowly until the sole kissed the floor again. The house stayed silent—no distant sirens, no barked orders over an intercom. Just the soft click of Jasper swallowing whiskey.

He stepped inside, bare feet soundless on the stone. The robe parted as he moved, revealing a slice of chest, the sternum sharp beneath skin that had never known sun. He stopped a forearm’s length away, close enough she smelled the liquor and something mineral underneath—ozone, maybe, or chilled steel. His gaze tracked from her boots upward, pausing at the pulse hammering in her throat, then settling on her eyes with the patience of a man unbuttoning a shirt.

“I expected someone taller,” he murmured. “And male. The last two attempts were.”

Roni’s tongue stuck to the roof of her mouth. She calculated angles: knife draw, shoulder throw, sprint to corridor. All useless if the floor was mined. “Security’s not coming?” she managed.

“I am security.” He lifted the glass, indicating the walls. “This apartment is a closed system. Right now the only heartbeat logged is yours and mine. Everything else is asleep.” His free hand rose, fingers hovering a millimetre from her collar. He didn’t touch, only traced the outline of the zip in the air. “You climbed forty-two floors for a stone that isn’t even insured any more. That’s dedication.”

Her voice came out rougher than she wanted. “You going to stand here all night describing my work ethic?”

A faint smile tugged the corner of his mouth. “No. I’m going to offer you a contract.” He tilted the glass; whiskey crawled across the ice. “Prison is tedious—for both of us. Instead you’ll settle the debt in-house. Every item in that vault has a market value; you’ll repay it by acquisition. My list, your labour. You succeed, you stay alive. You fail, I make the call. Simple.”

He spoke like a man outlining a grocery list. Roni felt the numbers slide through her head: eighty million in stones, maybe more. Impossible sum. Yet the alternative—cuffs, cages, years of fluorescent boredom—felt heavier. Her heartbeat slowed, adjusting to the new weight.

“And if I refuse?” she asked, already knowing.

Jasper’s eyes flicked to the keypad still glowing behind her. “Then I close the painting, trigger the purge, and notify the coroner. Your choice.”

The room held its breath. She became aware of tiny things: the whisper of climate vents, the ache in her quads, the way his belt knot mirrored the hangman’s noose. She uncurled her fingers from the knife hilt and let her hands hang open at her sides.

“Terms,” she said.

“Live here. Eat here. Work when I say. No outside contact until the balance is zero.” He studied her face, waiting for flinch or protest. When none came he nodded once, satisfied, and stepped back. “First lesson: trust the floor.”

He offered his glass. Ice clinked, a sound like shackles clicking shut. Roni took it, swallowed what remained—heat sliding into cold hollows—and handed it back empty. The deal tasted of oak and copper and her own accelerated blood.

Jasper turned toward the corridor. “Come,” he said, not looking. “I’ll show you your room.”

She followed, boots silent now on stone that no longer threatened to kill her—only to own her, piece by piece, breath by breath. Behind them the vault lights dimmed, painting settling into place, nitrogen coiled and patient, waiting for a mistake she hadn’t yet decided to make.

Roni’s lungs refused to expand. She felt the missed breath as a pressure behind her sternum, as if the nitrogen he’d mentioned had already seeped into the room. Jasper let the silence stretch while he studied her, the glass resting easy in his hand, whiskey rocking against the ice in slow, deliberate pulses. She counted them—one, two—until her diaphragm finally released and air slid in, sharp as broken glass.

He didn’t move to block the door. He didn’t need to; his stillness was a more efficient barrier. Roni eased her weight forward a fraction, testing the pressure pad beneath her heel. No hiss, no click. Three millimetres, he’d said. She memorised the give of the parquet, the way the plank flexed like a living thing calibrated to his voice.

“Turn around,” he said. Not an order, not quite. A suggestion weighted with the knowledge that she would obey.

She pivoted slowly, shoulders squared to him, hands visible. The ceramic blade still hugged her forearm but it might as well have been plastic; she could feel the room’s circuitry breathing at her back, ready to flood the space with inert gas if her pulse spiked too high. Jasper’s gaze tracked the movement, pupils dilated as if he were watching data render.

“You’re smaller than the specs indicated,” he observed. “Five-seven, a hundred and twenty-two pounds. The file photo must have been shot from below.”

Roni’s tongue pressed to the roof of her mouth. “Files shrink in the wash.”

A corner of his mouth lifted, gone before it fully formed. He stepped closer, robe brushing the tops of his bare feet, and stopped just outside the radius where she could swing without shifting her heel. Close enough that she smelled the bourbon, the faint metallic note of his skin, something like rain on hot steel. His eyes weren’t grey the way surveillance rendered them; they were the colour of wet concrete darkening under storm, and they moved over her with the detachment of a man pricing lot lines on a map.

“Name,” he said.

She considered silence, discarded it. “Roni.”

“Short for Veronica?”

“Just Roni.”

He nodded, filing the syllable away. “You have two options, Roni. The first involves police, evidence lockers, and a sentence lengthy enough that your skills will rust before you see daylight.” He sipped, ice clicking. “The second involves staying alive, staying here, and working off the market value of what you tried to steal. Eighty-six million, give or take a stone.”

The number landed like a brand. She kept her face blank, heartbeat steady by an act of will. “Interest?”

“Compounded nightly.” His tone was mild, almost amused. “Board included.”

She glanced toward the corridor—empty, lit like a museum after hours. No footsteps, no distant chatter of guards. Either he really was the only security or he’d sent them away, confident the architecture itself could hold her. She believed it; the room felt skinned alive, every surface watching.

“Clock’s running,” he said. “The pad samples weight every five seconds. You’re due a refresh.”

Roni felt the plank beneath her boot hum, a subsonic tickle travelling up her tibia. She locked her knee, refusing the instinctive shift. “And when the balance hits zero?”

“Then you walk out richer in skills and poorer in excuses.” He lifted the glass in a small salute. “Or you leave in a bag. Your choice.”

She looked at the vault, at the half-open painting, at the man who owned both. The math was simple: die here, or die slower upstairs while she learned the shape of his leash. Roni had never been sentimental about freedom; it was just another commodity with a fluctuating price. Tonight the market had spoken.

“I’ll need my gear,” she said.

“You’ll use mine.” He turned, robe flaring enough to reveal the sharp cut of hipbone before he moved out of range. “Follow exactly in my footprints. Deviate and the floor vents.”

He started toward the corridor, each step deliberate, heel-to-toe along an invisible seam. Roni watched the placement, mapped the tolerance, then matched it. The plank beneath her boot released its surveillance with a sigh. She stepped onto his track, pulse steady for the first time since the lights came on, and felt the room exhale around her—predator accepting prey into its bloodstream.

Behind them the vault lights dimmed to idle, nitrogen coiled and patient, and the painting settled back against the wall with a whisper, sealing the diamond she would now steal for him instead of from him.

Jasper halted at the threshold of the corridor, moonlight slicing across his shoulders like a blade. He didn’t look back. “Keep two paces. The oak inlays are pressure-mapped; anything narrower than my stride reads as a child or a cat, and the system vents anything it classifies as vermin.”

Roni measured the distance—thirty-six inches, the span of his hips—and copied it. Her boots whispered over the seam. She felt the faint give of micro-switches relaxing, the house deciding she was still property.

They passed a wall of glass overlooking the city. Forty-two floors below, traffic crawled like phosphorescent plankton. Up here the air was thinner, cleaned by filters she couldn’t see; it tasted of money and ionised nothing. Her reflection floated beside his: matte-black polymer against charcoal silk, the robe slipping with every step to reveal the taper of spine, the dimple at the small of his back. She looked away first.

At the end of the hall he paused beside a door indistinguishable from the paneling. He pressed two fingers to a faint grain swirl; a magnetic lock exhaled. The door swung inward on counterweights, revealing a room the size of a prison cell dressed as a hotel suite. A low platform bed, sheets the colour of wet sand. No windows. A single recessed light that came on at thirty percent, just enough to keep circadian rhythm docile.

“Bathroom’s behind the mirror,” he said. “Closet’s empty; you’ll wear what I issue. There’s a reader on the nightstand—no net access, cached books only. If you try to pull signal the room floods with white noise and the door seals for six hours.” He spoke without threat, the way a pilot recites landing speed.

Roni stepped inside. The air was cooler, engineered to keep metabolism slow. She turned, expecting him to leave. Instead he leaned against the jamb, robe belt loose, glass dangling from two fingers. Ice had melted to crescents that slid when he tilted it.

“Take the suit off,” he said.

Her shoulders tightened. “You want a show, or you want compliance?”

“I want the suit.” He set the glass on the floor, straightened. “Every gram of hardware you’re wearing is logged against the debt. Fibres, alloys, firmware updates—retail, not street. I’ll credit the trade-in.”

She hesitated, then reached for the collar seal. The zipper hissed; the torso split down the sternum like a chrysalis. She peeled sleeves, hips, calves, stepping out of the black skin until she stood in sports bra and briefs, the ceramic blade still Velcroed to her forearm. Cool air raised gooseflesh across her thighs.

“All of it,” he said.

She unhooked the bra, slid underwear down, kicked them aside. Naked, she kept her eyes on his collarbone. He studied her the way a jeweller studies refractive index: not lust, not appraisal—measurement. Minutes passed. Her nipples hardened; she didn’t cover them.

Finally he pushed off the jamb, crossed the threshold. The proximity felt surgical. He stopped just short of contact, bent enough that his breath stirred the hair at her temple, and spoke softly. “You’re going to learn the difference between naked and exposed. Tonight you’re only the first.”

He crouched, gathered the suit into a loose bundle, and left. The door shut with the same polite exhale. Light dimmed to ten percent, a moonlit dusk that never changed.

Roni stood until the hum of ventilation was the only sound, then sat on the edge of the bed. The mattress gave two millimetres—memory foam over concrete base, impossible to tunnel through. She pressed palms to her knees, felt the faint tremor that always arrived after a job, delayed by adrenaline and now unpacked in private.

Eighty-six million dollars. She did the division: fifty jobs at conservative two-million hauls, more if the targets were soft, less if he saddled her with expenses. Overheads, gear rental, interest compounded nightly. She would be thirty-five before the ledger zeroed—older if he kept adding penalties for questions, for hesitation, for the weight of her own pulse.

She lay back, skin against linen that smelled of nothing, and stared at the ceiling. Somewhere beyond the walls Jasper would be pouring another finger of whiskey, logging her biometrics, erasing her from city databases byte by byte. The thought should have terrified her. Instead it settled like ballast, a cold precise weight that stopped her floating away.

For the first time in years she didn’t know where the exit was. The ignorance felt almost like relief.