AI Rory undid the first deadbolt, then the second, then the third with the flat of her thumb against the cold metal.
Ptolemy mewed from somewhere behind her legs and threaded through her ankles as she pulled the door open.
Lucien Moreau stood on the landing with rain on his shoulders and his charcoal coat dark at the seams. His platinum hair sat slicked back, but the ends had lost their polish. One amber eye fixed on her face. The other, black as a bruised pit, moved to the cat, then back to her.
“Of course it was you,” Rory muttered.
His mouth twitched once, like he wanted to call it a smile and did not trust himself with the shape of it.
“I could say the same.”
She kept one hand on the door. Kept the other on the chain, though it rattled uselessly against the frame because she had not put it on. “You turned up unannounced at my sister’s flat, in the rain, like a lost solicitor with excellent tailoring. Start talking before I shut this on your shoes.”
His gaze dropped to her knuckles on the edge of the wood. “You always did favour threats over greetings.”
“Only with men who thought they could surprise me.”
That landed. It showed in the smallest shift at his jaw, the brief tightening near his mouth. He looked past her into the cramped flat: the stacked books, the folded maps on the table, the scrolls shoved beneath a lamp, the heap of papers that had taken over half the sofa.
“Still living in a paper nest,” he said.
“Still stalking people who don’t want to see you.”
Ptolemy, traitor that she was, rubbed against Lucien’s trouser leg and chirped.
Lucien looked down at the cat. “She remembers me.”
“She remembers anyone with pockets.”
His gloved fingers lifted, slow enough to ask permission without words. Ptolemy pushed into his hand before Rory could decide whether to stop it.
Lucien’s expression changed then. Not much. Just enough for Rory to notice, because she always noticed the things he tried to hide. His shoulders eased. The hand with the cane stayed steady, but the fingers of the other hand moved over the cat’s fur with an absent, careful stroke.
Rory stared at that hand. Long fingers. Pale knuckles. A small scar along one joint she had traced with her thumb once, in a flat not unlike this one, after a night that had ended with both of them breathing too fast for reasons neither of them had named.
She shoved the memory back so hard it almost hurt.
“Well?” she said. “You’re here. That’s the first miracle. What do you want?”
He lifted his head. Rainwater clung to his lashes. “May I come in?”
“No.”
A beat.
He glanced at the chain. “That sounded final.”
“It was meant to.”
“Then I should leave.”
“Your shoes are already wet. I’m not sure how much further you can go without sulking.”
That earned her a real smile, brief and sharp, gone as fast as it came. It had once made her angry because it worked on her every time. It still did.
He angled his head. “Your sister asked me to come.”
Rory stared at him. “Eva did what?”
“Invited me.”
“Into her flat?”
“Yes.”
“Why would she do that?”
His amber eye cut to hers. “Because she’s concerned for you.”
Rory barked out a laugh that held no humour. “She talks to me every day.”
“Apparently not enough.”
“That’s rich, coming from you.”
His mouth flattened. “May I enter before the entire corridor gets a performance?”
She should have shut the door in his face. It would have solved nothing and offended him, which had its own charm .
Instead she stepped back and unhooked the chain.
Lucien came in like a man who had learned to make his own space in rooms that did not want him. Not loud. Not swaggering. Just clean lines, damp wool, and that expensive, impossible composure he wore like armour. The scent of rain came with him, and something darker underneath it, metallic and warm, like a struck match.
Ptolemy leapt to the radiator and sat, tail curled tight, watching both of them.
Rory shut the door and leaned her shoulder against it. “You’ve got ten seconds before I start asking why my sister thinks I need a visit from the Frenchman with murder in his pocket.”
Lucien’s brows rose. “Murder?”
“You know what I mean.”
“I’m afraid I don’t.”
“You always liked being difficult when it served you.”
“And you always liked being sharp when you were nervous.”
She pushed off the door. “I’m not nervous.”
His gaze went to the little crescent scar on her wrist when she crossed her arms. He had looked at that scar before like he had wanted to ask about it, then never had. This time, he let his eyes linger only a second.
“No,” he said. “You’re angry.”
“That’s closer.”
He set the cane against the arm of the chair nearest the door and removed his gloves finger by finger. The room seemed to shrink around the small, deliberate motions. Rory hated that her attention kept snagging on him. On the shape of his hands. On the cut of his coat. On the line of his throat above his collar when he tipped his head.
“Eva told me you’d been asking questions,” he said.
“I asked her if she’d seen a man named Rook.”
He looked at her as if she had slipped a blade between his ribs. “You went to Eva with that?”
“I went to Eva because I couldn’t reach you.”
“You did not try very hard.”
The words came out mild. The kind of mild that hid steel.
Rory felt heat move up her neck. “I rang your office.”
“That is not the same thing.”
“It was enough to make your assistant sound terrified. Which, for your information, is a little rude.”
His eyes narrowed . “You called my office after everything that happened and expected me to answer?”
“I expected some sign you hadn’t been swallowed by your own ego.”
For the first time since he stepped inside, the air in the flat turned thin.
Lucien took a slow breath through his nose. His black eye fixed on her face with such focus that Rory felt pinned to the door behind her.
“And after everything that happened,” he said, “you still assume I would ignore you.”
The room went quiet except for the radiator ticking and Ptolemy’s tail thumping once against painted wood.
Rory looked away first. She hated that too.
“I didn’t come here for a lesson in your disappointment.”
“Did you come here at all?” he asked. “Or did Eva send you to ask me for help without having to admit she was worried?”
That hit too close, and she heard her own temper sharpen in reply. “I came here because I have a problem, and you have contacts. Don’t flatter yourself.”
He tilted his head, studying her like he was reading the seams in a document. “You would rather ask favours from a stranger than ask me directly.”
“Strangers don’t have a habit of leaving.”
The words hung there, raw enough to bruise.
Lucien’s face changed. Not by much. A flicker at the edge of his mouth. Something pained passing through his eyes before the mask settled back over it.
Rory hated herself for saying it. Hated that he had brought her to it with one question, one neat little line, and that she still wanted to keep going just to see if she could make him crack first.
His voice dropped. “I did not leave.”
“You disappeared.”
“I kept you out of it.”
“I didn’t ask you to.”
“No,” he said, and now there was heat in the word. “You did not. That was the pattern, wasn’t it? You never asked, Rory. You decided, and then you stared at me as if I had failed a test I did not know I was taking.”
Her stomach tightened at the sound of her name in his mouth. Not Lucien. Not Carter. Rory, stripped bare and familiar .
“That is rich,” she snapped. “You vanished for three months, came back once with a bruise on your throat and a lie in your mouth, then acted surprised when I stopped waiting by the phone.”
His jaw flexed. He looked at the wall over her shoulder, not at her, like the sight of her had become a point of pain he could not quite bear .
“I came back because I needed something,” he said.
“I remember.”
He looked back then. “No, you do not.”
The flat seemed too small to hold the silence after that.
Rory let out a slow breath. “You want to rewrite it now?”
“No.”
“Then don’t stand there and tell me I missed the important parts.”
“Fine.” His voice thinned. “You want the important part? I came back because I had not stopped thinking about you, and I hated that more than I hated the bruise.”
Her pulse kicked hard enough to make her fingers curl into her sleeves.
Lucien’s expression didn’t soften. That was the worst part. He looked as composed as ever, but his hand had tightened around the edge of the chair until his knuckles stood white.
Rory stared at him. “That’s your opening move?”
“It is not a move.”
“Lucien.”
He let her say his name. Let it settle between them like a debt.
Rory swallowed. “Eva said you could help with Rook.”
He nodded once. “Yes.”
“You know where he is.”
“I know where he was seen.”
“That’s not the same thing.”
“No.”
She rubbed at her forehead, pushing hair away from her face. Her black hair fell back in a blunt curtain against her cheeks. “Then say the actual thing. Why are you here? Why didn’t you just send me a message?”
He glanced at the table buried under notes, at the map pinned under a stack of books, at the cramped life she had built in spite of everything. Then his gaze settled on her again.
“Because messages can be intercepted,” he said. “And because if I sent one, you might refuse to open it. I had no intention of leaving this to chance.”
She gave him a hard look. “You always did like control.”
“Not always.”
“No?”
“No,” he said, and there it was again, that quiet edge. “Only when it kept you alive.”
Rory’s mouth opened, shut. She hated how fast he could turn the air around, how one sentence from him could pull her back to all the times he had stepped between her and something sharp, all the times she had seen that blade hidden in his cane and known he’d use it for her before himself. Hated that she still remembered the weight of his hand at the small of her back in crowded rooms, steering her clear of threats she had not seen yet. Hated that her body remembered before her pride could.
Ptolemy hopped down from the radiator and wound around Lucien’s ankle again.
He looked down, then back at Rory. “Your cat is making my case for me.”
“She likes men with foreign accents and excellent coats.”
“I have both.”
“You also have a talent for irritating me.”
“That, too.”
Rory pushed away from the door and crossed the flat in three quick steps, stopping only when she reached the table and planted both palms on the mess of papers. “Tell me what you know about Rook.”
Lucien did not move right away. He watched her the way he had when she had once stood on the edge of a rooftop in Soho, furious and ready to climb down the drainpipe just to prove she could. Like he expected her to bolt. Like he expected to have to decide whether to stop her.
“You are not asking the right question,” he said.
Rory lifted her chin. “I’m not in the mood for riddles.”
“No. You are in the mood for a fight.”
“If I was, you’d know.”
The corner of his mouth moved. “I always knew.”
That should not have made her breath catch. It did anyway.
Lucien stepped closer, not enough to touch, just enough for her to feel the shift of heat from his body in the cramped room. He smelled like rain, expensive soap, and the faint bite of something not human under the surface.
“Rook has been speaking to people who should not exist,” he said. “He has been collecting names. Yours is among them.”
Rory held his gaze, her stomach going cold. “Mine?”
His amber eye flicked over her face, watching for the hit. “Yes.”
“And you waited until now to tell me?”
“I waited until I had proof.”
“You waited until you could stand in my kitchen and watch me react.”
He did not deny it. “I waited until I could make sure you listened.”
Rory laughed once, but the sound came out flat. “You really are impossible.”
“And yet, here I am.”
The words landed close. Too close.
For a moment neither of them spoke. The rain tapped at the window. Ptolemy climbed onto a stack of books and settled there like a queen. Lucien stood with one hand resting near his cane, immaculate and tired in a way that only showed if you knew where to look. Rory knew.
She hated how much she knew.
“You should have called before showing up,” she said at last.
“If I had called, you would have prepared a speech.”
“I would have prepared several.”
“I know.”
“And you still came.”
“Yes.”
She searched his face, looking for the trick, the angle, the thing he had not said yet. Under the anger, the old pull was there, steady as a pulse . It made her want to shove him out and drag him closer in the same breath.
“Why now?” she asked.
Lucien’s gaze held hers. “Because Eva told me you were close to something. Because Rook’s trail touched my territory. Because I grew tired of pretending your silence meant you had forgiven me.”
Rory’s throat tightened.
He went on, quieter this time. “And because I could not decide which would be worse: you slamming the door in my face, or you opening it and looking at me like this.”
“Like what?”
“Like you still remembered.”
Ptolemy jumped down from the books and rubbed against Rory’s calf, demanding attention. Rory bent without taking her eyes off Lucien and scratched the cat behind the ears, a small, useless motion that kept her hands busy.
“I remembered plenty,” she said.
His gaze dropped to her mouth. Rose there. Stayed there half a beat too long.
“Then tell me,” he murmured. “Which part do you want first?”
Rory lifted her head slowly , fingers still buried in the cat’s fur, and the whole flat seemed to tighten around the space between them.