Run: 2026-09-03-01M1K56XJ9ACQ8EG4KCKR1EGQF

Rory thumbed the last deadbolt back and hauled the door inward. Heat from the curry house below pushed up the stairwell and wrapped round her ankles. Paper dust and cumin hung in the air of the flat behind her. Lucien Moreau filled the landing. Rain beaded on the shoulders of his charcoal suit and darkened the points of his collar. Water tracked down the ivory head of his cane and slipped between his knuckles. His platinum hair lay slicked back from his forehead, damp at the temples, and his mismatched eyes, one amber and one black, fixed on her face. Rory gripped the edge of the door. Her bare feet curled against the worn boards. "You lost my number?" Lucien tilted his head. A muscle jumped along his jaw. "You left London." Rory leaned her shoulder into the doorframe. Stacks of Eva's books rose behind her to the ceiling, spines cracked and leaning, scrolls unrolled across the worktop and the arm of the sofa and the floor. Ptolemy, Eva's tabby, wound between the piles with his tail high. "I left your office." Lucien lifted his cane an inch off the mat and set it down again. The ferrule clicked. "You left both." A draught pulled at the hem of Rory's shirt. She folded her arms to stop the shiver. "What do you want, Luc?" Lucien glanced past her into the flat, then down the stairs toward Brick Lane. Neon from the shopfronts bled through the frosted glass of the street door. A bus rumbled past and shook the banister. "An invitation over the threshold." Rory let out a breath through her nose. "Eva is not here." Lucien arched one pale brow. "I know." Ptolemy butted his head against Rory's calf and purred against bone. Rory nudged him aside with her toe. Her left wrist caught the hallway light and bared the small crescent scar there, white against skin. Lucien tracked the movement. His gaze lingered on the mark before it rose back to her eyes. "You screen your visitors through three deadbolts now." Rory curled her fingers to hide the scar. "Eva screens her visitors." Lucien stepped closer. Rain lifted off his suit in a cool wash, cut with bergamot and smoke and something scorched underneath, brimstone from Avaros his father passed down in blood. "Let me in, Rory." Rory held the door with both hands now. The wood bit into her palms. "Give me one good reason." Lucien turned his profile to the stairwell. Footsteps slapped wet pavement outside, too light and too fast for the hour. He shifted his weight and the thin blade inside his cane sang a fraction from its sheath. "Two men followed me from Whitechapel." Rory peered round him. The street door rattled in its frame. Shadows split on the other side of the glass. "Your line of work, not mine." Lucien met her stare. The amber eye burned. The black eye swallowed light. "They want the ledger Eva pulled from the Golden Empress." Rory's stomach dropped. Behind her, Eva's notes covered every surface, inked margins and pinned photographs and red string between names, Yu-Fei Cheung circled twice. "You told them she has it." Lucien shook his head once. Droplets flew from his hair. "I told no one." Rory laughed, short and raw. "Right. The fixer with four languages and no loyalties." Lucien planted his cane hard against the landing. The crack echoed up to the flat above. "I kept your name out of my ledgers." Rory stepped back. The door swung wide with her. "Get inside." Lucien crossed the threshold in one stride. Rory slammed the door behind him and drove the bolts home, one, two, three, her hands slick on brass. The lock cylinders thumped into place. Lucien stood in the middle of Eva's front room with rain pooling round his shoes. Books hemmed him in on all sides. A scroll brushed his trouser leg. He looked too tall for the low ceiling, too sharp for the clutter, a knife left in a drawer of spoons. Rory bolted past him and killed the main light. The room sank into the orange glow of the streetlamp through the blinds. Stripes fell across his face and cut his heterochromatic gaze into bars. Lucien lowered his voice. "You remember the back exit." Rory crouched by the window and eased one slat apart with a fingernail. Her black shoulder-length hair fell forward and brushed her cheek. Below, Brick Lane shone wet. Two figures in dark jackets paused opposite the curry house, collars up, hands in pockets. "I remember plenty." Lucien moved to the wall beside her. His sleeve brushed her shoulder. Heat bled through wool despite the rain. "You still deliver for Yu-Fei?" Rory kept her eyes on the street. "Part-time. Nights I can pick." Lucien rested the head of his cane against his thigh. "Brendan would hate that." Rory snapped the blind shut and rose. Her bright blue eyes caught the dim light. "Do not bring my father into this." Lucien raised both palms. The ivory handle gleamed. "Pardon." Ptolemy leapt onto a stack of case files and sent loose pages sliding to the floor. Rory bent and scooped them up, movements brisk and efficient, old habits from lecture halls in Cardiff and late shifts she never mentioned. Lucien watched her hands, quick and sure, and stooped to retrieve a sheet near his shoe. Their fingers brushed over paper. Rory jerked back as if the page burned. Lucien held the sheet out. Eva's handwriting crawled across it, a list of deliveries from the restaurant with times and plates. "She involved you." Rory snatched the page and shoved it between two hardbacks. "She needed help with Mandarin on a menu." Lucien gave a humourless smile. The scar through his left eyebrow, thin as thread, pulled tight. "Eva needs help with nothing." Rory crossed to the tiny kitchenette and filled the kettle with a violent twist of the tap. Water hammered steel. "You came here for the ledger." Lucien followed her to the edge of the rug and stopped, respectful of the narrow space. His shoes left damp prints on lino already stained with tea rings and ink. "I came here because they tracked me." Rory slammed the kettle onto its base and flicked the switch. The element glowed. "And I should believe you." Lucien set his cane against the counter and shrugged off his jacket. The lining clung to his forearms for a second before it released. He draped the wet wool over the back of a chair already buried under library books. "You believed me in Marseille." Rory stared at the twist of his cufflinks, silver knots she once undid with her teeth in a hotel with shutters closed against noon. "That was before you sold a name to keep a client." Lucien unbuttoned his waistcoat and left it on. His shirt stuck to his shoulders and mapped the lean line of him underneath. "I sold a rumour to bury a name. Yours." The kettle roared and clicked off. Steam fogged the window above the sink. Rory poured water into two mugs with Eva's chipped university crest, hands steady through practice. "You let me walk out thinking the worst." Lucien accepted the mug she thrust at him. Their knuckles knocked. Tea slopped over the rim and scalded his thumb. He never flinched. "You walked out before I finished the sentence." Rory wrapped both hands round her own mug. Warmth crept up her wrists. "You had three months to finish it." A fist pounded the street door below. Both of them froze. Ptolemy bolted under the sofa with a hiss. The pounding came again, rattled the frosted glass, then voices, low and clipped, argued on the pavement. Lucien set his mug down without a sound on a pile of journals and reached for his cane. He twisted the ivory handle. Steel whispered free, a thin ribbon of blade that caught lamplight. Rory put her fingers round his wrist. His pulse hammered against her palm. "Put that away." Lucien held her gaze. The amber iris flared gold in the dark. "They force that door, they come up." Rory released him and crossed to the bookshelf. She pulled a heavy Welsh-English law dictionary from the bottom shelf and wedged its spine under the flat's door handle, then dragged Eva's desk chair across and jammed its back beneath the knob. "They force that door, we go out the back." Lucien slid the blade home with a soft click and leaned his cane against his leg. "The fire escape drops into the yard behind the curry house." Rory drank. Tea burned her tongue. She welcomed the sting. "You remember." Lucien picked up his mug again. Steam curled round his chin and dampened his upper lip. "I remember every turn in this flat." Silence stretched, broken by the extractor fan from the kitchens below and rain against glass. The voices outside faded down the lane. An engine started, then died. Rory sank onto the arm of the sofa. The frame creaked under her weight. Loose notes crackled. "You cannot stay long." Lucien remained standing. Water darkened his socks where it seeped from his shoes onto Eva's rug. "Until they clear the street." Rory gestured with her mug toward the window, the chairs, the cat's tail flicking from beneath the sofa. "This place barely holds one." Lucien sank into the opposite armchair, long legs folded awkwardly among footnotes and atlases. His knee brushed a tower of paperbacks and steadied it with practised ease. "We managed smaller in Marseille." Rory looked away first. Her throat worked. "Do not." Lucien leaned forward. The stripes from the blinds striped his hands where they wrapped his mug. "Eva trusts you with the ledger." Rory shook her head. Her hair swung and stuck to her damp neck. "Eva trusts me with the cat." Lucien smiled, real this time, crooked at the corner, and the years fell off him, thirty-two gone to twenty-something in a Marseille bar with salt on the table and her laugh too loud. "Ptolemy hates everyone." Rory glanced at the tabby. Ptolemy crept out and rubbed his cheek along Lucien's wet shoe, then flopped over and exposed his belly. "Traitor." Lucien toed the cat gently and earned a loud purr. "He knows a fellow stray." Another bang echoed from below, nearer this time, the back yard gate. Rory shot upright. Tea sloshed onto her wrist and over the crescent scar. Lucien rose in the same breath and caught her elbow to steady the mug. Rory met his eyes over the rim. Her breath hitched. His thumb pressed into the soft inside of her arm, just below the old mark, and stayed there.