AI Rory had barely gotten the second deadbolt free when the knock came again, harder this time, rattling the door in its frame.
“Whoever it was, they’d picked a funny hour to die at my threshold,” she muttered, reaching for the chain.
Ptolemy lifted his head from Eva’s sofa and fixed her with a judgemental yellow stare, tail flicking once over the heap of books he’d claimed as a bed.
Another knock. Sharp. Familiar.
Rory froze with her fingers on the chain.
No. Not him.
The brass peep hole showed a blur of charcoal wool, pale hair, and the clean line of a cane planted beside polished shoes. Her stomach dropped straight through the floorboards.
“Of course,” she breathed, and unhooked the chain before she could talk herself out of it.
The door opened on Lucien Moreau standing in the hall like he’d stepped out of a different climate entirely. Rain had darkened the shoulders of his tailored coat. His platinum hair sat slicked back without a strand out of place. One amber eye, one black, looked her over in a single, neat sweep that landed on her bare feet, her oversized jumper, and the expression she hadn’t managed to build any walls around.
Rory gripped the edge of the door.
“You’ve got a talent for arriving where you’re least wanted.”
His mouth twitched, not quite a smile.
“You still answered.”
“That’s not the same thing.”
“No.” He rested one gloved hand on the cane. “It isn’t.”
The hall light caught the sharp plane of his cheekbone. He looked infuriatingly composed, like the night and the city and every bad choice they’d ever made had gathered around him and failed to get a crease into his suit.
Rory’s pulse kicked. “If this is a social call, you’re lost.”
“I am aware of where I am.”
“Then you’re worse than lost.”
His gaze held hers. “May I come in?”
“No.”
The word came out too fast, too automatic.
Ptolemy sprang from the sofa and trotted to the door, winding his tail around Rory’s ankle. Lucien’s gaze dropped to the cat, then back to her face.
“I see the household has accepted me with more grace than you have.”
“He hasn’t accepted you. He judges everyone. It’s his charm .”
“Like his owner.”
Rory huffed a laugh before she could stop it, and the sound made the air between them change, thin and dangerous.
Lucien caught it. Of course he did.
“Rory.”
She hated how her name sounded in his mouth. Not soft. Not pleading. Just there, like a hand set carefully at the small of her back.
“What,” she snapped.
He tilted his head. “You left my last message unanswered.”
“Your last message,” she echoed . “That’s what you’ve come for? To complain I ignored you?”
He looked past her shoulder into the flat, over the towers of paper on the floor, the open books on the table, the mug with cold tea gone cloudy. His brows rose a fraction.
“You live like a scholar who’d lost a war to stationery.”
“Get on with it.”
His jaw shifted once. “Let me in.”
Rory held his stare. The corridor behind him smelled of wet brick, curry from downstairs, and the cold clean bite of rain. One of the deadbolts sat warm under her palm. She should have shut the door in his face. She should have done it months ago.
Instead she stepped back.
“Five minutes,” she said. “And if you’ve come to manipulate me, lie to me, or stand there looking like that, I’ll throw you out myself.”
Lucien crossed the threshold with the care of a man entering a chapel. The cane tapped once on the worn floorboards. Ptolemy circled his ankles, sniffed his trouser leg, and sneezed.
Lucien glanced down. “An honest review.”
“Don’t get smug. He bites.”
“I am not concerned.”
“You should be.”
“Rory,” he murmured, and the way he said it made the back of her neck tighten, “your cat is more courteous than you are.”
She shut the door and leaned her weight against it, arms folded tight enough to hurt. “You’ve got three minutes left.”
He stood in the cramped room and took in the chaos with a precision that made her feel inspected down to the bone. Book stacks rose along the wall. Scrolls shared space with notebooks, receipts, loose pages marked in three different inks. A lamp crowded the side table beside a candle that had burned halfway down. Her coat hung over the kitchen chair. Someone had left a bag of takeaway rice on the counter from two nights ago.
His gaze settled on a folded newspaper on the table, then the map pinned beneath a mug.
“You’ve been researching,” he said.
“No.”
“Rory.”
She pushed away from the door and strode to the kettle, more to give her hands something to do than because she wanted tea. “You don’t get to turn up after months and act like you know my week.”
“I know your habits.”
“That sounds worse.”
“It was not intended to comfort you.”
She reached for a mug, her wrist brushing the chipped enamel. The old scar there caught the light, the crescent of it pale against her skin. She hated that he noticed everything. Hated more that he had once known the shape of that wrist under his fingers.
Lucien’s eyes flicked to the scar, then away with a speed that did him no credit.
The kettle started to hiss.
“Out with it,” she said. “What do you want?”
He rested the cane against the wall and took off one glove finger by finger, slow enough to be insulting. “You always ask as if I’ve come to sell you something.”
“You usually have.”
That pulled the faintest edge into his mouth. “Fair.”
The kettle clicked off. Rory poured the water, slammed the mug down, and turned to find him still standing in the centre of Eva’s overstuffed living room, a dark pillar among the clutter.
“Well?”
He looked at her then, really looked, and whatever he saw there made him still.
“I need you,” he said.
Rory laughed once, sharp and humourless. “No.”
He lifted a brow. “You have not heard the request.”
“I don’t need to.” She took a long swallow of tea too hot to taste. “That sentence from you has only ever meant trouble.”
“It has also meant profit.”
“Not for me.”
The black eye, smooth as wet stone, seemed to catch the lamp’s weak light. “This time it is not about profit.”
She set the mug down before she spilled it. “Then you’re in the wrong flat.”
His shoulders lowered a fraction. “Your friend Eva is not available.”
Rory’s jaw tightened. “How do you know that?”
“I know many things.”
“Try me.”
Lucien’s gaze moved to the books again, the notes spread across the table, the lines of Eva’s careful handwriting tucked under Rory’s own quicker scrawl. “She vanished three nights ago.”
The room went silent around his words.
Rory stared at him. “No.”
“Yes.”
“No, you would have said.”
“I am saying it now.”
Rory pushed past him so fast the hem of her jumper brushed his coat. She snatched up her phone from the side table, thumb already moving across the screen. One missed call from an unknown number. Two texts from Eva, both hours old, both short enough to sting.
Back soon. Don’t let the cat eat the evidence.
Ptolemy blinked at her from under the table as if offended by the accusation.
Rory looked up slowly . “This is a joke.”
Lucien’s face had gone unreadable . “I wish it were.”
“She wouldn’t just disappear.” Her voice came rougher than she wanted. “She’d leave a note. Or ten. Or a trail of bloody breadcrumbs and a lecture about my phone habits.”
“She did leave instructions.”
Rory stared at him. “You’ve been here.”
“I went by the restaurant. Yu-Fei said you were off shift. I came here after.”
“And you stood outside until now?”
“Yes.”
The answer hit harder than it should have. She folded her arms again, but it didn’t help. The flat felt smaller with him in it. Hotter. Filled with the shape of him, the clean scent of expensive soap and wet wool, the old memory of his mouth on hers and the way he’d stepped back the next morning with his face carved from ice.
“Why didn’t you call?” she asked.
His fingers tightened around the cane handle. “You did not answer my last message.”
She snorted despite herself. “You absolute bastard.”
The corner of his mouth moved, but he didn’t look pleased. “I thought if I came in person, you would be more inclined to listen.”
“That’s not what happened.”
“No.”
Rory raked a hand through her hair and immediately regretted it when she caught the tremor in her own fingers. “What kind of instructions?”
Lucien reached into his coat and produced a folded scrap of paper. He held it out but didn’t cross the distance to force it on her. The gesture was infuriatingly respectful.
She took the paper. Eva’s handwriting slanted across it in a line so neat it looked calm.
If Lucien shows up, don’t hit him with anything expensive. Also don’t trust him unless he gives you the ring.
Rory looked up sharply . “What ring?”
For the first time, Lucien’s expression shifted. Not much. Just enough to show that whatever lay under the polished surface had teeth.
“The one on my right hand.”
She frowned. “You’re not wearing one.”
“Precisely.”
Rory stepped closer before she could think better of it. Her eyes snagged on his bare hand, then his face. “You took it off?”
“Yes.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“It is the answer you have.”
The air between them snapped tight. She remembered a room lit by cheap red lamps, his hand at the base of her spine, his voice low in her ear; remembered leaving without looking back, and hating herself for how much she had wanted him to stop her.
“Eva told you to give me a ring,” she said.
“She told me to give you the ring.”
“Why?”
Lucien’s gaze locked onto hers. “Because she believed it would make you come with me.”
Rory went very still. “Come where?”
He let the silence stretch, and when he spoke again, his voice had dropped into something smooth and dangerous. “Somewhere neither of us should be seen going alone.”
Ptolemy jumped onto the table, knocking a pen to the floor. Rory didn’t blink. “That’s not enough.”
“No, it is not.”
“You want me to walk into whatever this is with you, on the strength of a note and your immaculate coat.”
He glanced down at the wet hem of his trouser leg. “It is no longer immaculate.”
“Don’t split hairs.”
“I would never split anything with you unless you asked.”
The words landed hot and sudden. Rory’s face went tight before she could stop it. Lucien watched the reaction with the stillness of a man who’d struck exactly where he meant to.
She hated that. Hated the way he could still find the soft spots she’d built over her old bruises.
“Don’t do that,” she said.
“Do what?”
“Look at me like you’ve got the advantage.”
“I did not say I had none of the blame.”
Her breath caught.
He went on, quieter now. “If I had come sooner, you would have been less angry.”
“That’s your theory?”
“It is my observation.”
Rory let out a short laugh and turned away, pressing the heels of her hands to her eyes for a moment. “You show up after months, tell me Eva’s missing, wave a note around, and expect me to trust you because you’re using a sad voice.”
Lucien’s cane tapped once against the floor. When she looked back, he had moved closer, though not enough to crowd her. The distance between them felt deliberate. Measured. A man knowing exactly where not to step because one wrong inch would ruin everything.
“I do not expect trust,” he said. “I expect anger. You have delivered it with admirable restraint.”
“Charming.”
“I have been called worse.”
“By people who liked you?”
His mouth curved, brief and real this time, and it hit her right in the ribs.
“By people who knew me,” he said.
The words sat there, crowded with everything he hadn’t said when he left her all those months ago. Rory felt them drag through her. Knew me. Not past tense. Not enough of one.
She picked up Eva’s note again so her hands would stop shaking. “If this is some stunt, Lucien, I swear—”
“It is not.”
“—I’ll make you regret ever learning my address.”
“You did not tell me your address.”
“Don’t get clever.”
“I arrived anyway.”
That dragged a reluctant sound from her throat, somewhere between a laugh and a growl. She hated that he still knew how to pull one loose thread and have the whole knot loosen under her fingers.
The kettle gave a sharp little click as it cooled, loud in the pause that followed.
Rory folded the note and looked at him over the edge of it. “You’ve got one minute to explain what Eva dragged you into.”
Lucien’s eyes held hers, one amber, one black, each giving nothing away and everything at once.
“Then,” he said, “we leave.”