The Collection
"He thought he was special. Then he met the others."
The first time I see her, I think she's a goddess.
The second time I see her, I know I'm right.
The third time I see her, she buys me.
My name is Eli Marchetti. Twenty-three years old, fresh off a failed music career and drowning in debt that I took on to fund a dream that died six months ago. I was playing piano in a high-end bar when Celeste Varre walked in—all black silk and diamond-sharp cheekbones, with eyes the color of champagne bubbles and a mouth that looked like it had never smiled at anything it couldn't buy.
She sat at the bar. Ordered something expensive. Watched me play for an hour without blinking.
When my set ended, she beckoned with one manicured finger. I went like I was on a string.
"You're good," she said. Her voice was low, accented with something European and something older. "Not good enough to make it, but good enough to be interesting."
"Thanks. I think."
"I'm offering you a job." She slid a card across the bar. "Private performances. Live-in position. All your debts erased within a year, plus a salary that would make your current employer weep."
"And the catch?"
Her smile was slow. Knowing. Dangerous.
"You'd be mine," she said. "Exclusively."
I should have asked more questions. Should have negotiated, investigated, run away screaming from the woman who looked at me like I was a piece of art she was considering acquiring.
Instead, I said yes.
The Varre estate is a palace of glass and old money.
It sprawls across a private island off the coast of Neo-Monaco, all clean lines and controlled gardens and a staff that moves like ghosts through hallways larger than my entire childhood apartment. My room—because I have a room, not a cell, not servants' quarters—overlooks the ocean, decorated in shades of navy and silver that somehow make me feel both welcomed and owned.
For the first week, I think I've stumbled into paradise.
I play for her every evening. Just her, in a private music room with acoustics that make my old bar look like a subway station. She sits in a chair by the window, swirling wine, watching me with those champagne eyes while my fingers dance across keys that probably cost more than my parents' house.
She never applauds. Never requests songs. Never says much of anything except "again" when I finish something she likes.
But she looks at me like I'm the most interesting thing in the world.
I start living for that look.
I meet them in the second week.
"Eli, right?" The voice comes from behind me, and I turn to find a man leaning in the doorway of the kitchen. He's gorgeous—tall, dark-skinned, with cheekbones that could cut glass and a smirk that says he knows exactly how beautiful he is. "The new one."
"New one?"
"Pianist." He pushes off the doorframe, extends a hand. "I'm Marcus. I paint."
I shake his hand, confused. "She has a painter too?"
"She has several of us." His smirk widens. "You didn't know? You're not special, darling. You're part of a collection."
There are five of them.
Marcus, the painter. His work hangs in galleries across three continents, and he's been with Celeste for four years.
Soren, the poet. Scandinavian, ice-blonde, with a voice like honey over broken glass. Three years.
Dante, the sculptor. Italian, built like the statues he carves, with hands that could probably crush my skull. Two years.
Yuki, the dancer. Japanese, lithe as smoke, with eyes that miss nothing and reveal less. Two years.
And now me.
The pianist.
The newest addition to Celeste Varre's gallery of beautiful, talented men.
I sit in the common room—because there's a common room, where her collection gathers when they're not performing—and feel my stomach drop through the floor.
"You look upset," Yuki says. He's stretched across a sofa, one leg dangling, watching me with faint amusement. "Let me guess. You thought you were special."
"I thought..." I trail off. I thought she wanted me. I thought there was something between us. I thought—
"We all thought that, at first." Marcus settles into an armchair, swirling a glass of something amber. "It's part of the game. She makes you feel like the center of the universe. Like you're the only one who matters. Then you meet the rest of us, and..."
"And reality sets in," Dante finishes. His voice is deep, rumbling. "She collects us, tesoro. Like art. Like beautiful things to be admired and enjoyed."
"Does she..." I can't finish the question. Can't ask if she touches them the way I've been imagining her touching me.
Soren laughs. It's not kind.
"Oh, she does," he says. "Each of us. When the mood strikes her. She rotates through, depending on what she's hungry for." He leans forward, pale eyes gleaming. "The question isn't whether you'll share her, little pianist. The question is whether you can stand it."
I tell myself I can.
For two weeks, I try. I play my evening performances. I spend time in the common room with the others, learning the rhythms of this strange shared existence. I tell myself that I'm lucky—lucky to have my debts paid, lucky to have this life, lucky to be wanted at all by a woman like her.
But every time I see Marcus leaving her private wing with that satisfied smirk, something ugly twists in my gut.
Every time Yuki slips out of her bedroom at dawn, graceful as a shadow, I want to break things.
Every time she looks at one of them the way she looked at me that first night, I feel my heart splinter into smaller and smaller pieces.
"You're letting it eat you," Dante says one night.
We're in the sculpture garden, surrounded by his work. He's chiseling at a new piece, marble dust coating his forearms, and I'm sitting on a bench pretending I'm not falling apart.
"I don't know what you're talking about."
"You do." He doesn't stop working. "The jealousy. The wanting to be the only one. We all go through it."
"And? What's the cure?"
"Acceptance." He looks at me finally, dark eyes knowing. "Or obsession. The ones who accept it stay for years. The ones who obsess..." He shrugs. "They either win or they burn out."
"What do you mean, win?"
"Once—just once—a man in the collection became her only one. Her favorite. She stopped taking others. Kept him for herself." His chisel pauses. "But it took years. And he had to earn it."
Something fierce lights up in my chest.
"How?"
Dante smiles. It's not entirely kind.
"By being impossible to replace."
I change strategies.
No more passive performances. No more playing it safe, hoping she'll notice me on her own. If I want to be her only one, I need to make her forget the others exist.
I learn her schedule. Her habits. The subtle shifts in her mood that the others miss because they're too comfortable, too complacent. I learn what wine she drinks when she's stressed (the 2087 Bordeaux). What music she plays when she's melancholy (old Earth jazz, pre-Collapse). What art she lingers on when she walks through the gallery (the darker pieces, the ones that hint at violence beneath beauty).
I compose for her.
Not the classics she's heard a thousand times. New pieces, written specifically for her ears, tailored to her moods. When she's had a hard day, I play something soft and aching. When she's restless, I play something fierce.
And when she looks at me differently—when I catch something in her eyes that wasn't there before—I push harder.
"You're bold," she says one night.
We're in the music room, alone. I've just played a piece I wrote that morning, something raw and desperate and far too honest about what I'm feeling.
"I know what I want," I say.
"And what's that?"
"To be your favorite."
She laughs. It's not mocking—more surprised, like I've done something unexpected.
"I don't have favorites, Eli. I have a collection."
"Then make me an exception."
Her eyes narrow. "Why should I?"
I stand. Cross to her chair. Kneel at her feet, looking up at her with everything I feel burning in my eyes.
"Because I'll give you what they can't," I say. "Total devotion. Absolute obsession. I won't share you with anyone, Celeste. Not in my heart. Not in my soul. If you want someone who loves you like you're the only thing in the universe—that's me. If you want someone who'll burn the world down to keep you—that's me."
Her breath catches. Something flickers in those champagne eyes—surprise, maybe, or recognition.
"And if I don't choose you?"
"Then I'll spend every day convincing you to." I press my lips to her knee, a benediction and a threat. "I told you. I know what I want."
The competition gets ugly.
The others notice the shift. They see her looking at me differently, calling for me more often, lingering after my performances instead of sending me away. They see me kneeling at her feet, whispering in her ear, giving her a devotion that borders on worship.
And they fight back.
Marcus paints her a masterpiece—a portrait that captures something private, something I've never seen. Soren writes her poems that make her cry. Dante carves a statue of her that's so beautiful it hurts to look at.
But Yuki is the worst.
He understands what I'm doing, because he's the only one who truly sees. And he decides to destroy me.
"She'll get bored," he says one night, finding me alone in the garden. "She always does. The obsessive ones burn bright, then burn out. You'll be gone in six months, and I'll still be here."
"We'll see."
"No." He steps closer, and there's something cold in his eyes. "You won't. Because I'm going to make sure she sees exactly who you are. A desperate, clingy little boy playing at devotion. You think she wants obsession? She wants art. And you're just noise."
He strikes the next night.
During my performance, he appears in the doorway. Whispers something to Celeste that makes her face go hard. When I finish playing, she dismisses me without a word.
Three days later, I find out what he told her.
A lie. A fabrication about me selling her secrets, betraying her trust. Yuki wove it carefully, seeding it with just enough truth to be believable.
And Celeste believed him.
I'm summoned to her private office.
She's sitting behind a desk that looks like it belongs in a museum, her face carved from stone. The dismissal papers are already prepared. I can see them, crisp and damning, waiting for my signature.
"Yuki told me what you did," she says. Her voice is ice.
"Yuki lied."
"He showed me proof."
"Fabricated." I step forward, and she tenses. "Celeste. Look at me. Look at who I've been since I got here. Have I ever done anything to betray you?"
"The proof—"
"Is fake. I can prove it." I take another step. "But that's not what this is about, is it? It's not about secrets or betrayal. It's about Yuki seeing what I am to you and being afraid."
Her expression flickers. "What you are to me?"
"Different." I kneel in front of her desk, just like I knelt in the music room. "The others are comfortable. They've accepted their place in the collection. They don't want more. But I do. I want all of you. And Yuki knows that if you give me a chance—a real chance—everything changes."
Silence. Her champagne eyes search my face for lies, for deceit, for anything that confirms Yuki's story.
"Prove it," she says finally. "If the evidence is fabricated, prove it."
I do.
It takes three hours. Tracing the data, exposing the falsifications, showing her the digital fingerprints Yuki left behind. By the end, her face is white with fury—but it's not directed at me.
"He lied to me."
"Yes."
"He tried to take you from me."
Something warm blooms in my chest at the possessiveness in her voice. "Yes."
She's quiet for a long moment. Then she looks at me, and there's something new in her eyes. Something fierce and fragile and entirely focused on me.
"What do you want, Eli?"
"I already told you."
"Tell me again."
I stand. Move around the desk. Take her hand in mine and press it to my chest, over my racing heart.
"I want to be the only one," I say. "I want you to look at me and forget they exist. I want to be the last thing you see at night and the first thing you think of in the morning. I want to be your obsession, Celeste. The way you're mine."
She rises. Her hand stays pressed against my heart.
"And if I say yes?" she whispers. "If I keep you and let the others go?"
"Then I'll spend the rest of my life making sure you never regret it."
She kisses me like she's sealing a contract.
Yuki leaves that night.
The others follow over the next month—not fired, but released. Given generous severance, glowing references, everything they need to start fresh somewhere else. Celeste handles it gracefully, but her message is clear.
The collection is closed.
"Do you regret it?" I ask her one night.
We're in her bedroom—our bedroom now—tangled in sheets that cost more than my old life. Her head rests on my chest, her fingers tracing patterns over my skin.
"Regret what?"
"Keeping just one. Having just me. The variety, the options—"
"No." She props herself up to look at me, and her eyes are soft in a way I've never seen them. "I collected beautiful things because I was afraid of choosing. Afraid of committing. Afraid of loving one thing so much that losing it would destroy me."
"And now?"
"Now I'm not afraid." She leans down, brushes her lips against mine. "You didn't win me by being the best artist, Eli. You won me by being willing to risk everything. By wanting me more than you wanted safety."
"I still want you more than safety."
"I know." She smiles—soft, real, hers. "That's why I keep you."
Outside the window, the Neo-Monaco skyline glitters like a promise. And somewhere in that vast estate, a music room sits empty, waiting for the pianist who's no longer part of a collection.
The pianist who became everything instead.
I used to dream about being special.
Now I am.
And it's worth every battle it took to get here.