Run: 2026-02-19-01KHT0B1AP4R8SCS1SGXTSA6XD

The knock came at half past eleven on a Tuesday night, the sort of hour that meant nothing good. Eva's flat sat quiet except for the sound of Ptolemy's purring from somewhere in the kitchen. Rory had been sprawled across the sofa with her feet tucked beneath her, a cup of tea gone cold hours ago on the coffee table beside stacks of research that made no sense to anyone but Eva. She'd been reading the same paragraph for ten minutes when the knock interrupted her. She didn't move at first. Eva wasn't expecting anyone. The three deadbolts on the front door had been secured since dusk. The knock came again, sharper this time. Rory unfolded herself from the cushions and padded to the door, peering through the peephole. The hallway outside was dark except for the sodium glow of the street lamps bleeding through the landing window. She could see the silhouette of a man. Tall. Something about the set of his shoulders made her stomach clench. "Who is it?" She kept her voice level. "Open the door, Rory." That accent. French, smooth as aged brandy, with the faintest rasp beneath it that came from too many cigarettes and too few apologies. Her hand hovered over the deadbolts. The smart thing was to leave him standing in the hallway. The smart thing was to pretend she hadn't heard him. She unlocked all three. Lucien stood in the doorway with rain beading on his platinum hair, his tailored charcoal suit darkened at the shoulders where the October drizzle had caught him. Water dripped from the ivory handle of his cane. He looked exactly as he had three months ago, which was to say he looked like someone who knew every secret in London and found most of them tedious. His heterochromatic eyes—amber and black—fixed on hers and held. "That's better," he said. "What are you doing here?" "May I come inside? Your neighbours will begin to stare." Rory stepped back without thinking. That was always their problem, wasn't it? She reacted to him without engaging her brain first. He moved past her into the flat, bringing with him the smell of rain and something underneath it, something that had always been distinctly him. His cane tapped against the floorboards as he took in the chaos of Eva's living room—the books, the scrolls, the careful notes spread across every surface. "Eva's still looking, then," he said. "She never stopped." Rory closed the door behind him but didn't lock it. Some part of her was still deciding whether to throw him out. "What do you want?" He turned to face her, rain still clinging to his suit jacket. "To tell you something you need to hear." "If it's about the Ashworth job—" "It's not." He set his cane against the armrest of the sofa, a gesture so casual it felt like an insult. "But while we're here, you should know that Kessler's moved his operation. The warehouse on Canary Wharf is empty." Rory's shoulders went rigid. "How do you know that?" "The same way I know most things." He began to unbutton his suit jacket, seemingly unconcerned that she was staring at him like he'd grown a second head. "My sources are reliable." "Your sources are criminal informants." "Yes, well. We all have our burdens to bear." He draped his jacket carefully over the back of Eva's reading chair, and beneath it, she caught sight of the shoulder holster he wore like a second skin. "The information is good, though. Kessler out, someone new moving in. You should tell Eva." "I'll tell her when you tell me why you're really here." He moved toward her kitchen, and Ptolemy emerged from the shadows to twine around his ankles, purring like the cat had been waiting for him. "Betrayed already," Rory said. "The cat has better instincts than you do." Lucien crouched down to scratch behind Ptolemy's ears, and the gesture was so unexpected, so at odds with the lethal man who'd walked through her door, that Rory felt something shift in her chest. "I came because I wanted to see you." The words landed between them like a stone in still water. "That's not an answer." "No." He stood, and his eyes found hers again. They were impossible to read, those mismatched eyes. She'd spent three months trying not to think about them. "It's the truth." Three months ago, she'd told him to stop coming around. Three months ago, she'd said things that couldn't be unsaid—about his lies, his compartmentalized life, the way he could slip between roles like other people changed clothes. She'd said he was a man made of secrets and surfaces, and when he'd asked if that meant she was finished with him, she'd said yes. She hadn't meant it. "You shouldn't be here," she said. "No." His voice was quiet now, the French accent thicker somehow. "But here I am." He'd never been good at apologies. Lucien Moreau was fluent in four languages, but remorse wasn't one of them. She'd learned that the hard way, in the aftermath of discovering that an entire dimension of his life existed without her in it. A life he'd been content to keep hidden while they were tangled together in her bed, while he'd traced the crescent scar on her wrist and called her "mon coeur" like it meant something. "Eva's asleep," Rory said. It was a lie. Eva wasn't home. "You can't stay." "I'm not planning to." Then why did he stand so still, watching her like he was trying to memorize something? Like he was afraid she'd vanish if he looked away? The rain outside had grown heavier, pattering against the windows of the flat. The sound filled the space between them, the space that had grown wider and darker over three months of silence. "I made a mistake," Lucien said finally. Rory laughed—a sharp, bitter sound. "Which one? Lying to me, or getting caught?" "Both, probably." He picked up his jacket from the chair, and something in her chest cracked. He was leaving. Of course he was leaving. "But specifically, I meant leaving you without explaining why." "You explained it plenty. You said your work and my life didn't fit in the same sentence." "I said that because I was terrified." He turned back to her, and there was something raw in his expression now, something that looked like genuine feeling beneath all the polish. "You ask questions, Rory. Real questions, not the polite sort. You actually wanted to know me." "And?" "And I'm not sure there is a me underneath all this." He gestured vaguely at himself, at the tailored suit and the dangerous cane and the man who spoke four languages and lied in all of them. "I've been playing roles for so long that I can't remember which one is real." The vulnerability in his voice made her throat tight. This was the dangerous thing about Lucien Moreau—he could make you believe him even when you'd decided not to. "So this is goodbye, then?" she asked. He reached for his cane, and that's when she moved. She crossed the space between them in three strides and grabbed his wrist, the one that held his jacket. "Don't do this," she said. "Do what?" "Come here, tell me things I can't unhear, and then disappear again." His amber eye softened. The black one, the demonic side, never seemed to change—it remained sharp as cut glass. "I won't disappear." "You always do." "Not this time." He set his jacket down again, his hand still caught in hers. She could feel his pulse beneath her fingers, fast and human and real. "Stay angry with me if you need to. But don't send me away." Rory stood very still, her hand wrapped around his wrist, her bright blue eyes locked on his mismatched gaze. Every rational part of her brain screamed that this was a mistake. That Lucien Moreau was precisely the sort of beautiful disaster that could topple carefully rebuilt lives. The irrational part—the part that had always made her decisions—won out. She didn't let go.