The mansion swallowed him in silence as the door clicked shut behind him.

1:17 a.m. New York didn’t sleep, but Christopher Saint-Roux moved through the night like he owned it. No security detail. No assistant trailing him. Just the heavy sound of keys dropped on marble and the whisper of designer fabric as he peeled off his jacket.

He wore only slate-grey pajama pants now—his usual for the hour—low on his hips, skin still warm from hours locked inside boardrooms and his private gym. His chest, cut and sharp, flexed with the simple stretch of reaching for a glass. Tattoos inked his right hand, curled around his arm, traced his neck and shoulder blades in a language few would ever recognize. Sanskrit. Basque. Cantonese. Silence suited him. So did mystery.

The fridge clicked open. He grabbed a cold bottle of water, cracked it, drank. No alcohol. Never when the workday hadn’t truly ended—and his never did. Christopher didn’t switch off. Not really. Even now, shirtless in his 12-million-dollar penthouse overlooking Central Park, the numbers ran behind his eyes like code: expansion timelines, litigation contingencies, biotech mergers.

At Vale & Saint-Roux Global, he was the voice behind billion-dollar shifts. But he didn’t raise it often. He didn’t need to. One look, one pause, and the entire room would lean in. His words, when he used them, landed like precision strikes—clean, cold, final. He wasn’t talkative. He wasn’t warm. But he wasn’t cruel either.

He didn’t chase attention. He owned it.

Friends? A few. He didn’t make time for more. Old ones from Geneva, Dubai, Cape Town—places where secrets were currency. They met maybe twice a year. Anything more was noise.

He dropped onto the edge of the massive couch, abs tightening with the motion, and flicked on the TV. Static hum. A foreign film he wouldn’t finish. Just sound. Just background.

Somewhere in Germany, apparently, he had a wife. Arranged. Signed off by his parents. Political, old money kind of thing. They’d never met. Never FaceTimed. Never so much as exchanged a hello. He didn’t think about her. Didn’t have the room to. Not with work. Not with how his mind ran full throttle every damn day.

Christopher Saint-Roux didn’t dwell. He built.

And even now, half-lit by television glow, he wasn’t resting.

He was reloading.