Run: 2026-09-23-01M36VGMY8ZW10QAH81NHMNNE0

The three deadbolts turned one after another, and the door swung inward. Aurora stood in the gap, a dish towel slung over one shoulder, the smell of reheated noodles curling out behind her. She looked at him for a full second without blinking. "Rory." His voice carried the faint rasp of someone who'd been standing on a street corner for longer than he wanted to admit. Lucien Moreau stood on the top stair in his charcoal suit, ivory-handled cane resting against his shin, his heterochromatic gaze fixed on her face — amber on the left, black on the right. Slicked-back platinum blond had loosened at the temples from the rain. "You're wet," she said. "I am." He didn't move. She didn't step aside. The narrow hallway behind her held a stack of delivery bags from Golden Empress and a lamp that threw warm light across the scuffed floorboards. Ptolemy wound between her ankles, tail high, and she nudged him away with her bare foot. "You could have called." "I could have." Silence built a wall between them. She leaned against the doorframe, arms crossing over her chest, the crescent scar on her left wrist catching the light. He looked at it — not deliberately, not coyly — but his eyes dropped to it the way they always had, the way he used to trace it with his thumb when they sat together on Eva's rooftop, their legs dangling over Brick Lane. "I need a word," he said. "Words are free. You could've texted." "Words are not free. Not the ones I have." Her jaw shifted. She stepped back from the door, and he took that for what it was — not permission, but a concession to the fact that the stairwell was damp and cold and he looked like a man who hadn't slept. He crossed the threshold. She closed the door behind him, and the lock clicked shut with the finality of a verdict. The flat was small, the ceiling low, the window above the sink looking out over Silas' bar where the amber sign buzzed and hummed in the dark. She moved to the counter and picked up a pair of chopsticks, turning them over in her fingers while she waited. "Sit down," she said, nodding at the stool. He sat. The cane leaned against the counter beside him, and he rested both hands on the wood between his knees. Rainwater dripped from his cuffs and spotted the floor. "Last time I was here," he began. "Last time you were here, you told me to stay out of your business and walked out that door before I could finish a sentence." She set the chopsticks down. "So. Choose carefully." His mouth twitched — not quite a smile, not quite the opposite. He exhaled through his nose. "Lucien." She said his name without heat, without frost, the way you'd say a word you'd rehearsed. "Whatever it is, say it plainly." "Evan Carter reached out to someone I work with. Three days ago. He's asking questions about you — not about where you live, not about your mother, not about the flat. He wants to know if you're under anyone's protection." The room contracted. Rory's hand went to her wrist, thumb pressing against the old scar, a habit she'd never broken. "Why now? He hasn't come near me in over a year." "Because your name appeared in a case file he has access to. Pre-Law at Cardiff — you didn't finish, but your name was still in the system when he pulled records through the firm he interned at. He saw your London address attached to a delivery contract for a Chinese restaurant on the Strand." Lucien's amber eye caught the lamplight. "He has your address, Rory." She turned away from him and walked to the window. Below, a couple stumbled out of Silas' bar into the rain, laughing, clinging to each other. She watched them go. "You came all the way down here, in this weather, to tell me that?" "I came because no one else would." She spun around. "Don't. Don't do that. Don't dress this up as nobility." Her voice stayed level, but the chopsticks in her grip creaked. "You had my number. You had six months of it. You could have called from your office in Soho and told me over the phone like a professional." He held her gaze — both eyes, amber and black, and the discomfort of it never lessened. "Yes," he said. "I could have." "That's it? Yes?" "I came because I wanted to see your face when I told you." Her mouth closed. She set the chopsticks down on the counter with a sharp knock, the sound too loud in the small kitchen. Ptolemy startled and leapt onto the back of the chair behind her, fur bristled. "That's a terrible reason." "It's an honest one." She pressed her palms flat against the counter, leaning forward, and the distance between them shrank to the width of the stool and a breath. He didn't lean back. He never had. "You left," she said, quieter now. "You stood in that same spot and told me I was a liability, and you left, and I didn't hear from you for half a year, and now you're sitting in my kitchen telling me you came because you wanted to see my face." "I said you were a liability to my work. I never said you were a liability to me." "That distinction doesn't matter when you're the one walking out." The rain thickened against the glass, and the lamp buzzed, and somewhere below them Silas poured a last round and locked the front door. Lucien's hands hadn't moved from his knees. The ivory handle of the cane caught the light like bone. "No," he said. "I suppose it doesn't." Rory straightened. She crossed her arms again, and the sleeve of her shirt rode up, exposing the crescent scar, and she didn't pull it down. "So what do I do with this? You show up at my door, tell me my ex has my address, and expect what — gratitude? Forgiveness?" "I expect you to do what you always do. Think three steps ahead, make a plan I haven't seen, and prove me wrong about every calculation I ever made." His voice dropped. "And I expect you to let me stay close while you do it, because Evan Carter doesn't move the way I do, but he moves in circles where I'm already standing." She studied him — the rain-darkened suit, the loosened hair, the way his fingers hadn't uncurled from his knees the entire time. He was a man who held himself like a drawn blade, and right now, on her stool, in her kitchen, he looked like he hadn't decided whether to sheathe or strike. "You could've stayed," she said. "I know." "You could have called." "I know." "You could have —" She stopped. Breathed. Pressed her tongue against the back of her teeth and started again. "You could have just told me. Whatever that was you felt, or didn't feel, you could have said it instead of performing some grand exit." He uncapped one hand and placed it flat on the counter between them — palm down, fingers spread, the way you'd offer something fragile for inspection. Not reaching for her. Just present. "I was afraid," he said. "Not of him. Of you seeing what I am and deciding I was the liability." Rory looked at his hand on the counter. The wood between them was warm from the lamp, and the rain kept falling, and Ptolemy had settled into the chair behind her with the quiet certainty of a creature who understood nothing of what was being said and didn't care to. She didn't take his hand. She didn't pull away from it either. "The address," she said. "How much does he actually have?" Lucien's fingers curled once against the wood, then flattened again. "Street and postcode. Building number. He doesn't know which floor, which door, or that you live above a bar owned by a man with connections he'd never survive approaching." "Silas." "Silas." A beat. "You've done well for yourself, Rory. Better than I calculated." She huffed — not a laugh, something drier, something that had been a laugh once and had worn thin in the intervening months. "You calculated me?"