The marginalia was extraordinary. Dense, furious handwriting, the work of someone for whom writing was both passion and weapon. Entire passages had been marked with emphatic annotations - agreements underlined with exclamation marks, objections scrawled in furious script across the margins.
"Johnathan Thrace," Sage whispered, running her fingers over the faded signature with the tenderness usually reserved for lovers. "He was an economist. A radical one. He published papers arguing for labour rights when most of his contemporaries were defending exploitation."
"You know who he is," Elizabeth observed. It wasn't a question.
"I've been collecting his bibliography for two years," Sage admitted. "I have three of his original publications, but they were printed works. I've never seen his personal annotations. His actual thoughts, preserved like this…"
She looked at Elizabeth, and for a moment, her carefully maintained composure cracked entirely. There was gratitude in that look, yes, but also something more vulnerable, the look of someone who'd just been given something irreplaceable by someone they desperately wanted to believe actually cared about their happiness.
Elizabeth felt nothing in response except the cold satisfaction of manipulation executed perfectly.
"We should have dinner," Sage said suddenly, her voice trembling with excitement. "To celebrate. This is, you don't understand what you've done. You've given me the missing piece to something I've been researching for years."
"I understand exactly what I've done," Elizabeth said. "I've ensured that you'll feel indebted to me. I've ensured that you'll associate me with your greatest desires being fulfilled. I've ensured that you'll want to please me, accommodate me, give me access to your world and your resources."
She didn't say those things aloud, obviously. Instead, she smiled and said, "I'm glad it matters to you."
They had dinner in a small Italian restaurant tucked into a Soho side street, the kind of place where the lighting was low, and the wine list was surprisingly sophisticated. Sage handled the Johnathan Thrace manuscript like it might dissolve if she were careless, discussing the economist's theories with a passion that Elizabeth found intellectually engaging and personally tedious.
"He was brilliant," Sage said, her eyes bright with genuine reverence. "But he was also broke. He published at his own expense, and most of his papers disappeared. Academic history largely forgot him because he didn't have institutional backing."
"Then he failed," Elizabeth said bluntly. "His ideas weren't radical enough to inspire revolution and weren't conservative enough to be accepted by the establishment. He occupied a useless middle ground. The world doesn't remember people like that. It remembers winners."
Sage looked hurt by this assessment, which Elizabeth found slightly more engaging than Sage's typical emotional responses. "Is that really how you see the world? As winners and failures?"
"It's how the world actually is," Elizabeth replied. "People pretend otherwise because it makes them feel better about their own mediocrity. But power is binary. You either have it, or you don't. You either control outcomes or you're controlled by them."
"And which are you?" Sage asked softly.
"I control outcomes," Elizabeth said with the certainty of someone who'd never encountered serious resistance. "Always."
They walked afterwards, letting the London night wrap around them. Elizabeth maintained a carefully calculated distance, close enough to establish intimacy, far enough to maintain control. When Sage eventually worked up the courage to reach for her hand, Elizabeth allowed it, understanding this as Sage's need to feel connected to something powerful.
Sage talked about her childhood, her parents' expectations, and her secret hobby of book collecting that had become her only genuine passion. Elizabeth listened with the focused attention of someone cataloguing useful information. Neglectful parents. Need for validation. Compensates through the acquisition of objects. Seeks meaning through connection to dead intellectuals.
All excellent tools for manipulation.
"I'm supposed to want what my family wants," Sage said as they found themselves on the Thames embankment, the water black and reflecting scattered city lights. "Corporate expansion, market dominance, more money than we could spend in ten lifetimes. And I want those things sometimes, I think. But mostly, I just want to understand people. To collect their thoughts and their arguments and their moments of brilliance written in book margins."
"That's collecting people," Elizabeth said softly, understanding exactly what Sage was doing. She was admitting to being a collector of human connection, seeking understanding through dead voices because she was incapable of achieving genuine intimacy with living people.
It was the most honest thing Elizabeth had heard anyone say all year.
"Is that what you're doing?" Sage asked hesitantly. "Collecting me?"
The question hung in the October air, loaded with implications. Elizabeth could have answered honestly - yes, I'm collecting you, cataloguing your vulnerabilities, preparing to exploit them systematically for as long as you're useful to me. But that wouldn't maintain control.
"No," Elizabeth lied smoothly. "I'm trying to build something with you. Something real."
Sage's hand tightened around Elizabeth's, and Elizabeth felt the satisfaction of successful manipulation. Sage wanted to believe that this connection mattered, that Elizabeth's interest was genuine rather than transactional. Elizabeth was happy to let her believe that, for now.
When Elizabeth kissed her, it tasted like victory and dominance. Sage's mouth was soft and hesitant, seeking reassurance, and Elizabeth took what she wanted with the casual certainty of someone who'd never been refused anything important.
They stayed on the embankment until the city began to blur into grey dawn. Sage talked about her dreams and fears and the loneliness of being surrounded by people who wanted her for her name rather than herself. Elizabeth listened and filed away every vulnerability for future use.
And when Sage finally gave Elizabeth her mobile number, Elizabeth accepted it with the casual indifference of someone collecting tribute.
The Johnathan Thrace manuscript would become the cornerstone of Sage's collection. Years later, she would publish an academic paper rehabilitating his reputation. But on that October night, holding Elizabeth's hand and feeling like the world had realigned around the possibility of them, Sage would remember this moment as the point where her life became precious to her, because someone brilliant had chosen her.
She didn't understand that she'd been chosen the way a predator chooses prey.
And Elizabeth, watching her walk away into dawn, felt nothing except satisfaction. She'd successfully acquired a significant asset, someone intelligent enough to be useful, emotionally vulnerable enough to be controlled, aesthetically appealing enough to keep in her orbit indefinitely.
It was, she thought, a perfect acquisition.
That Sage might eventually matter to her, might eventually crack through the absolute impermeability of her narcissism, wasn't something Elizabeth could have predicted. Narcissists don't improve; they just encounter obstacles that force them to develop more sophisticated strategies.
But that epiphany was still years away, years of illness and loss and the slow erosion of everything she'd built. For now, Elizabeth Wynsor was a force of pure ambition, untethered by empathy, absolutely certain that the world existed to be dominated and shaped according to her specifications.
And she had just acquired the most dangerous acquisition of all: someone she would eventually care about enough to want to change, but for whom her change would come too late to prevent significant harm.
She didn't know this yet. She wouldn't know it for years.
But Sage Sterling had just become the most important person in Elizabeth's life, not because Elizabeth was capable of love, but because losing Sage would eventually teach Elizabeth that she was capable of losing.
That would change everything.