AI Rory got the first deadbolt open, then the second, then the last. The door gave a small, stubborn creak when she pulled it in, and the corridor light from the landing spilled across the threshold in a pale strip.
Lucien Moreau filled it.
He stood on the worn stair carpet like he belonged there, cane tucked against his palm, charcoal coat cut sharp over his shoulders. The collar of his shirt sat open at the throat. One amber eye fixed on her face; the black one held the landing light and threw it back without warmth . A faint split marked his lower lip. His hair had stayed slicked back, though a loose strand had fallen across his temple and made him look less polished, more dangerous.
Rory stared at him long enough to regret it.
He let the smallest tilt of his head touch his mouth.
“You still locked your door like you expected a battalion,” he murmured.
Rory kept one hand on the edge of the door.
“You still turned up where you weren’t wanted.”
His gaze dropped to her hand, to the scar at her wrist where the sleeve of her jumper had slipped back. That quick glance hit harder than the door opening should have. She tightened her fingers against the wood.
“I didn’t expect you.”
“No.” His mouth twitched . “That appears to have been my advantage.”
Ptolemy chose that moment to weave around Rory’s ankles, a tabby blur with a tail like a question mark. The cat climbed onto the top stair and gave Lucien a long, poisonous stare.
Lucien looked down at him.
“That one has your judgement,” he said.
“Ptolemy knows a nuisance when he sees one.”
The cat rubbed his cheek against Rory’s shin, then settled on the top step as if he had appointed himself judge and jury. Lucien’s cane tapped once against the landing, a neat, clipped sound that did nothing to hide the tension in his shoulders.
Rory tried the simplest route.
“You’ve got the wrong flat.”
Lucien glanced at the door number behind her, then back to her face.
“Three deadbolts, one chain, and a cat with contempt. I found the right one.”
She should have shut the door in his face. She knew it. Her hand knew it. Her spine knew it.
Instead she kept looking at the cut on his lip and the faint smear of soot near his cuff, as if her body had forgotten how to tell her no.
“What do you want?”
His eyes held hers.
“To speak with you.”
“No.”
“That was quick.”
She pushed the door wider only because the neighbours had ears and because the landing smelled of old paint and boiled onions and he made the whole hall feel narrower than it was.
He did not move.
“Out here?” he asked.
Rory glanced at the dim landing, the buzz of the light, the stairs that led down to Brick Lane, to the curry house below, to the street noise and wet pavement and a whole city that had never cared who was bleeding in its corners.
“No.”
That got the smallest shift in him. Relief, maybe. Or satisfaction. With Lucien, the difference had always lived in how well he hid his teeth.
She stepped back.
“Don’t make me regret this.”
He crossed the threshold with the same precision he used for everything else, careful with the cane, careful with his shoulders, careful not to brush her unless he wanted to. The flat swallowed him at once. The place had no spare space to offer. Books climbed the walls in uneven towers. Scrolls sat under paperweights, loose pages fanned across the table beside a half-dismantled mug and three pens. A kettle hissed on the hob in the tiny kitchen area. The whole flat smelled of tea, dust, old paper, and the curry drifting up through the floorboards from the restaurant below.
Lucien took one look around and lifted one brow.
“I see you’ve turned chaos into a furnishing style.”
Rory shut the door behind him and slid the chain across.
“I see you’ve come dressed like trouble with a bank account.”
His mouth curved, but the cut broke the shape before it could turn into charm .
“Flattering.”
“Accurate.”
Ptolemy circled Lucien’s boots once, tail high, then bared his teeth in the feline equivalent of a warning. Lucien looked down at him with open disdain.
“Your cat dislikes me.”
“He’s got sense.”
“That makes two of us.”
Rory snorted before she could stop herself. It annoyed her that the sound escaped, that he heard it, that the corner of his mouth changed when it did. The flat felt crowded with the two of them and the years between them. It all sat there in the air, heavy enough to touch.
Lucien rested a hand on the cane handle. The ivory shone against his skin.
“You never answered my message.”
Rory crossed to the table and picked up a pen, more to have something to do with her hands than because she wanted to write.
“I don’t answer messages that sound like threats.”
“I sent a request.”
“You sent three words and an address. That wasn’t a request. That was you deciding I’d obey.”
His gaze sharpened. “You did always hate being managed.”
“You always loved doing it.”
The kettle clicked off. Rory reached for it, poured water into a chipped mug, and set it on the counter with more force than the cup required. Lucien watched her the whole time. She felt it like fingers at the back of her neck.
“Tea,” she said. “If you’re staying long enough to drink anything.”
He took in the mug, the counter, the narrow gap between the table and the sink.
“You still offer hospitality like a knife fight.”
“Only to people who deserve it.”
“Then I’m in luck. I came prepared.”
He lifted his cane an inch, enough to show the pale grip and the elegance of it. She remembered the blade hidden inside. She remembered a different night, his hand on that cane, his gaze locked to hers over a crowd that had gone too quiet. She remembered wanting to tell him something before he left. He had gone first.
Rory set the tea packet down.
“Why are you here, Lucien?”
For a moment, the air between them tightened. His amber eye stayed on hers. The black one dragged the room into a colder line, making the books and mugs and folded notes look like pieces on a board. He had always made a room feel arranged around his intentions.
“I need a place to sit for five minutes without being interrupted.”
“That’s a lie.”
“Yes.”
She stared at him.
He inclined his head once, conceding the point without any softness.
“I also needed to know if you were alive.”
The words landed between the kettle and the table. Rory’s throat tightened, not enough to show, but enough that she hated him for it.
“You could have checked with Eva.”
“I did.”
That got her attention.
Rory set the mug down.
“You talked to Eva and came here anyway?”
“Yes.”
“Did she tell you I was likely to slam the door in your face?”
“Among other things.”
“What other things?”
Lucien’s expression went still. “That you would hear me out if there was a reason.”
“And is there?”
He took a step farther into the flat. The toe of his shoe nudged the leg of a chair, and he adjusted it with his cane before he answered.
“Yes.”
Rory folded her arms. The move pulled her sleeves back again, and the scar on her wrist caught the light. Lucien’s gaze went there and stayed there longer than the others.
“If you came for a favour, you chose the wrong night.”
His eyes lifted to hers.
“I came for you.”
The words sat there, direct and bare, with no room around them. Rory’s pulse hit her wrist once, hard enough that she felt it where he was looking .
“Don’t.”
His brows drew together. “Don’t what?”
“Don’t turn up here and say things like that as if they mean nothing.”
His jaw shifted. The cut on his lip opened a little when he pressed it together, and that small wince made him look less like the unshakable man who moved through London’s hidden doors and more like the one who had left her behind with nothing but a closing door and a sentence she’d never stopped hearing.
“You think I came to play with you?”
“I think you do everything like a negotiation.”
He put the cane’s tip to the floor and leaned both hands over the handle for a beat. When he spoke again, his voice had gone flatter, rougher around the edges.
“I came because someone asked about you.”
The room changed. Ptolemy paused in the middle of grooming his paw. Rory kept her face still.
“Who?”
Lucien looked at the cat, then at the stack of notes on the table, then back to Rory, as if measuring how much she could take in a single breath .
“Someone with patience and bad habits. That should narrow it down.”
Rory’s mouth tightened. “You’re enjoying this.”
“Not nearly as much as you are.”
She stepped closer before she made the decision to. The floorboards gave under her socks. She stopped with less than an arm’s length between them. Close enough to catch the clean bite of his cologne under rain and city air, close enough to notice the fine line of stubble at his jaw and the faint shadow under his eyes.
Close enough to remember other rooms, other hands, the heat of his body against hers and the way he had always looked like he was holding back one truth and offering another.
“Say the name.”
His gaze dropped to her mouth, then came back up with a strain in it she had never seen before.
“Not yet.”
Rory laughed once, without humour.
“You show up at my door after disappearing on me, and you still think you get to keep secrets.”
Something in him flickered at that. A dark, fast hurt crossed his face and vanished. It almost made her step back. Almost.
“I did not disappear.”
“You vanished.”
“I left.”
“You left without looking back.”
Lucien’s hand tightened on the cane. “You made that part easier.”
The room went silent enough for the tap from the downstairs kitchen to seep through the floorboards.
Rory looked at him, at the tailored coat, the bruised lip, the composed body that had never fully let itself relax near her. The anger she had carried for him lived in her chest like an old bruise. It still hurt when she touched it, which only made her more furious.
“You don’t get to rewrite it now.”
“I’m not rewriting it.”
“Then what are you doing?”
He drew a breath that lifted his shoulders under the coat. When he spoke, the edge in his voice had thinned to something she recognised and hated because it made him harder to dismiss.
“I’m standing in your flat because you would not answer any other way.”
Ptolemy jumped down from the stair and rubbed against Rory’s calf, then wound himself around Lucien’s shoe with sudden, traitorous affection .
Lucien looked down at the cat.
“You have poor taste in allies.”
The tabby blinked up at him and settled beside his boot as if he had decided Lucien could stay for the moment, which felt like a small betrayal all its own .
Rory rubbed a hand over her mouth, then let it fall.
“Sit down before you start sounding noble.”
A spark moved in Lucien’s face at that, brief and sharp.
“I never sounded noble.”
“No. You sounded annoying.”
“Still talking about me with affection , I see .”
She should have answered with something cutting. Something clean. Instead her eyes snagged on the line of his throat where his collar gaped, on the tension in his hands, on the fact that he had crossed half the city to stand in her cramped kitchen under a weak yellow bulb and ask for a minute of her time.
Rory turned away first, because if she kept looking at him, the old want would climb back up her skin and make a fool of her.
“There’s a chair. Use it.”
Lucien eased himself toward the table, cane clicking once against the floorboards. He lowered into the chair with controlled grace, then rested the cane across one knee. The movement pulled the coat open a fraction. Rory caught a flash of shirt buttons and the line of his wrist. One hand had a faint smear of dried blood at the knuckle.
She saw it. He saw her see it.
“Don’t start,” he said.
Rory reached for the mug, the tea packet, the kettle, anything that kept her hands busy and gave her a reason not to stare at him.
“I wasn’t going to.”
His mouth tilted. “Liar.”
She glanced over her shoulder. “You came to my flat uninvited. That buys me a little dishonesty.”
“Only a little?”
She carried the mug to the table and set it in front of him. Their fingers missed by inches. The space between them felt hotter than the tea.
Lucien looked at the mug, then up at her.
“You still remember how I take it.”
Rory kept her expression flat. “Sugar doesn’t make you less insufferable.”
“Yet you remembered.”
She planted both palms on the table and leaned in just enough to make him feel it. “Tell me why you’re really here.”
His amber eye locked on hers, bright and sharp in the dull room. The black one held steady, unreadable , and for one suspended moment neither of them moved. The cat sat between them like a witness with fur.
Lucien lifted one hand from the cane and touched the edge of the mug, his fingers brushing the ceramic.
“I needed to see whether you still looked at me like that.”
Rory didn’t breathe for a second.
“Like what?”
His gaze dropped to her mouth again, then rose with deliberate care.
“Like you wanted to close the distance and make me answer for it.”