AI The door swung inward on the last deadbolt, and Brick Lane’s noise poured into the gap—vendors calling, a bus hissing at the kerb, the curry house below breathing out hot spice and frying onion.
Lucien Moreau stood in the corridor like he’d stepped out of a different city. Tailored charcoal suit. Ivory-handled cane held loose at his side. Rain had darkened one shoulder, as if the weather had taken a bite and left teeth marks. One eye caught the light in amber. The other looked like a drop of ink.
Rory’s hand stayed on the door edge. The chain hung slack, useless now, and her pulse knocked at her throat anyway.
“You found Eva’s place,” she managed.
Lucien’s gaze tracked past her into the flat, taking in the stacks of books, the pinned maps, the scribbled notes taped to the wall like a crime scene. His mouth tightened, as if he’d expected the chaos and still disliked it.
“Bonsoir, Aurora.”
No one used her full name unless they wanted something. Or unless they wanted to remind her that they knew her better than they had any right to.
Behind her, Ptolemy padded into the narrow hall, tail straight up, tabby stripes rippling. The cat sniffed the air, then fixed Lucien with a stare that looked like judgement .
Lucien’s eyes flicked down.
“Ah. Your sentinel .”
Ptolemy gave a low, unimpressed sound and sat, blocking the hall like a bouncer.
Rory didn’t move aside.
“You can’t be here.”
Lucien’s grip tightened on the cane, knuckles pale for a beat.
“You changed your number.”
“I didn’t change it. I threw it away.”
A pause. The corridor light buzzed. Someone’s TV thumped through a neighbour’s wall. Lucien looked over Rory’s shoulder again, as if he could see Eva herself somewhere between the teetering piles.
“Is she in?”
“She’s out.”
Lucien’s jaw shifted. “Then you are alone.”
Rory’s laugh came out sharp, almost a bark. “You always heard what you wanted.”
He angled his head, that old movement that used to mean he’d won an argument before it started.
“And you always pretended you didn’t.”
Rain slid off the end of his hair and caught the light before it hit the floor. He didn’t step forward. He didn’t step back. He held the doorway like it belonged to him and he’d misplaced the key for a month.
Rory tasted metal, like she’d bitten her tongue at some point and only noticed now.
“What do you want, Lucien?”
His eyes didn’t flinch at the name. He’d always liked when she used it, like it meant she wasn’t afraid to put her hands on something sharp.
“Five minutes.”
“You had five minutes when you left,” Rory snapped, and the words carried heat she hadn’t planned . “You had five minutes when you watched me stand there and you—”
She cut herself off. The hall felt too small for the rest of it. The rest of it lived in the ribs, under skin.
Lucien’s mouth curved, not quite a smile . More like a bruise taking shape.
“I watched you walk away.”
“Because you didn’t move.”
His gaze dropped, just for a second, to Rory’s left wrist, to the crescent scar that flashed pale against her skin where her sleeve had ridden up. The look lasted a heartbeat. It still landed like a touch.
Rory yanked her sleeve down.
“Five minutes,” Lucien repeated, voice low . “And then I go.”
“You don’t get to set the terms at my door.”
Lucien’s shoulders shifted beneath the suit jacket. “Someone followed me.”
Ptolemy’s ears twitched. Rory’s spine tightened.
“You led them here?”
“I shook them twice. They didn’t shake the third time.” Lucien’s eyes held hers, unblinking. “I came because this building has three deadbolts and a neighbour who cooks enough chilli to strip paint. It covers scents.”
Rory stared at him. In her mind she saw a line drawn from Lucien to her, neat and deliberate. He’d always moved like that. He’d always dragged order into mess, even when he was the mess.
“You could’ve gone anywhere.”
Lucien leaned closer, and the corridor felt smaller. “You know why I didn’t.”
Rory’s fingers tightened on the door edge until the wood bit her skin.
Ptolemy stood and rubbed his cheek against Rory’s shin, then stepped back, tail still high, as if granting permission with reluctance .
Rory’s throat worked once.
“Come in,” she breathed, and hated herself for it.
Lucien stepped over the threshold with a smoothness that made her skin remember things she didn’t want it to remember—his hand at the small of her back in a crowded club, his breath near her ear as he translated a threat with a smile.
Rory shut the door and threw the deadbolts fast, metal clicking into place like teeth. The chain rattled as she hooked it out of habit, even though it didn’t matter with him inside. Then she leaned her forehead against the door for half a second, enough to feel the cold of it, enough to feel her own stupid heartbeat.
“You’ve got a talent,” Rory muttered, turning. “For turning up where you shouldn’t.”
Lucien’s gaze moved around the hall, taking in the cluttered entryway, the pile of shoes, the umbrella stand full of rolled-up paper. He looked out of place and yet too comfortable , like he’d been built for other people’s rooms.
He tapped the tip of his cane against the floor once, soft. A punctuation mark.
“You’ve got a talent for making ‘shouldn’t’ sound like a dare.”
Rory walked ahead of him into the main room, forcing her legs to work. The flat felt smaller with him in it. The air shifted around his presence. Even the smell of the curry house seemed to retreat, making space.
Books covered every surface. Scrolls lay unfurled across the coffee table beside mugs with tea stains. Notes clung to the walls with tape and pins. A map of London sat on the sofa under a pile of highlighters.
Lucien’s attention snagged on the map.
“You’ve been busy.”
Rory grabbed a mug off the table, then realised her hand shook and set it back down.
“Eva’s been busy. I just exist in the blast radius.”
Lucien moved nearer the table, careful not to disturb the papers. His fingers hovered above a page full of Eva’s cramped handwriting, then pulled back as if he’d burned himself in the past on ink.
“You’re living here now?”
Rory’s chest tightened. She lifted her chin.
“Why. Do you need my address for your next disappearing act?”
Lucien’s eyes flashed, amber bright, then he smoothed his expression into something polite enough to cut with.
“I didn’t disappear.”
“You left without a word.”
“You told me not to contact you.”
“I told you to stop lying to me.”
Silence pressed between them. The flat’s old radiator ticked. Somewhere outside, a motorbike screamed down the street.
Lucien let his cane lean against the arm of Eva’s chair and rolled his shoulders as if the suit weighed more than fabric.
“I came to apologise.”
Rory’s laugh came out again, rough. “That’s rich.”
Lucien’s gaze held. “I handled it badly.”
Rory folded her arms. The sleeve pulled back again, baring that pale scar. She didn’t tug it down this time. She let him see it, because she wanted him to know she could stand there and not fall apart.
“You handled it like you handle everything,” she shot back . “Like it was a deal. Like you could take what you wanted and pay for it later.”
Lucien’s throat moved. He stared at her wrist, then up at her face, and something shifted behind his eyes—something that didn’t look like calculation.
“You weren’t a deal,” he said, and the words landed heavy, stripped of polish . “You were the mistake.”
Rory blinked once. Her mouth opened and shut. Heat flared under her skin, sharp and humiliating.
“Wow,” she managed. “That apology came out sideways.”
Lucien stepped closer. He smelled like rain and expensive soap and something darker beneath, a note that didn’t belong to any bottle. His voice dropped.
“I meant I made the mistake. Not you.”
Rory’s nails bit her own arm through her sleeve. “You don’t get to—”
A knock hit the door. Not the timid tap of a neighbour. A firm, measured удар. Again. Then a pause. Then the knock repeated, exact as before.
Lucien’s head turned, body going still.
Rory’s mouth dried. She moved toward the hall, then stopped when Lucien’s hand lifted, palm out.
“Stay.”
“Don’t tell me what to—”
The knock came again, and this time it carried something else with it, a faint scrape like metal against the doorframe.
Lucien’s gaze snapped to hers. “Listen.”
Rory forced herself to breathe through her nose. She listened. Past the radiator tick. Past the muffled music below.
A whisper of cloth. A slow exhale. Someone waited with patience, close enough that their breath lived on the other side of wood.
Rory’s voice came out small despite her effort. “You brought them here.”
Lucien’s mouth tightened. “Yes.”
Rory stared at him, anger flaring up bright enough to light the room. “You said you shook them.”
“I did.”
“And they still—”
Lucien closed the distance between them in two strides. He caught Rory’s elbow, not hard, but firm enough to anchor her , and guided her away from the hall, deeper into the flat. His hand stayed on her skin longer than it needed to. It left heat behind.
“You can yell at me after,” he murmured. “Right now you live.”
Rory yanked her arm free, but her body followed anyway, feet moving because her brain had already counted how far it was to the window, to the fire escape, to any exit that didn’t involve the door.
“Eva’s not here,” Rory hissed. “It’s just me and you.”
Lucien’s gaze cut across her face like he searched for injury. “Then I chose the right place.”
“That’s not comforting .”
He moved to the coffee table and slid a scroll aside with care, revealing a small knife Eva kept taped underneath. Rory hadn’t known it was there. Lucien’s fingers paused, then he plucked it free like he’d always owned it.
“You’ve grown cautious,” he muttered, and the words held a strange warmth .
Rory grabbed the knife from his hand. Their fingers brushed. Electricity jumped. Rory hated how her stomach dropped at it, how her body remembered him faster than her head forgave him.
“You don’t get to compliment my survival skills,” she snapped. “You taught them to me.”
Lucien’s mouth twitched. “And you learned.”
The knock hit again. This time it didn’t stop. A steady pressure followed, as if someone leaned into the door with a shoulder and tested the deadbolts one by one.
Metal scraped. The chain rattled.
Ptolemy hissed, fur puffing, and shot under the sofa.
Rory’s eyes darted to the hall, then back to Lucien. “Who is it?”
Lucien’s face turned blank, a mask he wore when he planned violence with manners.
“Not police,” he murmured. “Not human.”
Rory’s stomach clenched. “One of yours?”
Lucien’s black eye seemed to swallow the room’s light. “Not mine.”
Rory swallowed hard. She held the knife tighter. “So whose?”
Lucien reached for his cane, fingers closing around the ivory handle with familiarity that made Rory’s skin prickle. He drew it up, and the movement looked like a gentleman preparing to cross a street. The blade slid out with a soft, clean sound, thin and bright.
Rory’s breath snagged.
Lucien looked at her over the blade, and for a moment he didn’t look like an information broker. He looked like something built for old wars .
“Stay behind me,” he warned.
Rory stepped closer instead, until her shoulder nearly brushed his arm. She lifted the knife Eva had hidden and let Lucien see she held it steady.
“Don’t start acting noble now,” she whispered. “You showed up at my door. You don’t get to die like a martyr in my kitchen.”
Lucien’s gaze flicked to her mouth, then back to her eyes. His lips parted as if he meant to throw a joke at her, to slice the tension with charm , but the sound at the door stole it.
The deadbolts shuddered under a hard hit.
Wood groaned.
Rory’s heart slammed against her ribs. “Lucien—”
His free hand reached out, fast, and caught Rory’s wrist. His thumb pressed over the small crescent scar, grounding her with a touch that felt older than the flat, older than London.
“Breathe,” he ordered, voice rough . “With me.”
Rory’s breath came in a sharp pull. Lucien’s chest rose once, slow, and Rory matched it without meaning to.
Another hit shook the door. A frame picture in the hall clattered to the floor.
Rory leaned in, lips close to Lucien’s ear. “If we survive this,” she breathed, “you’re going to tell me why you really came.”
Lucien didn’t look away from the hall.
“You already know,” he murmured, and his grip on her wrist tightened for a beat, warm and unyielding, before he let go and angled his body toward the door, blade held low and ready.