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His thumb traces my cheekbone. “You’re right to fear that,” he admits. “I’m not a good man, Rae. I’ve never pretended to be.”

“Then why am I here?”

“Because I’m aselfishone.”

My heart is spasming in my chest. “Lukas…”

“Stay,” he says again. “Please. Give me… give me one week.” He grips my hands hard in his. “That’s all I’m asking. Seven days to show you who I truly am. I’m not the monster Kir warned you about, Rae. I’m just…” He trails off, searching for something he doesn’t seem to have the vocabulary for. “A man.”

I’m speechless. Couldn’t answer one way or another if I wanted to.

“Then you can decide,” he says. “If you want to run, I won’t stop you. If you choose to walk away and never see me again, I’ll still make sure you’re taken care of—your brother, your debts, everything. But give me one week first.”

I hesitate.

Then I nod.

It’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever done. Dumber than taking this job in the first place, dumber than sending him that photo in the red dress, dumber than this and that and the other thing.

But I nod anyway.

Lukas exhales a breath he’s been holding for a long time. Then he unlocks the door and leads me inside.

I follow him mutely, too confused to do anything but obey. The brownstone is beautiful. High ceilings lined with original moldings ranging over hardwood floors that creak softly underfoot. But it’s also untouched. Dust motes drift through shafts of pale winter sun. White sheets are draped over furniture like shrouds. The air smells stale and preserved.

It’s a graveyard.

Lukas locks and bolts the door behind me, then leads me further in. He moves through the space like a man returning to a grave. His fingers trail along a sheet-covered chair, leaving tracks in the dust. He pauses at a mantle where photographs might once have stood, now bare except for a single dead flower in a crystal vase.

“This was my home,” he says quietly. “Before.”

“Before what?” I ask, though I think I already know.

Lukas moves to a window and pulls back a heavy curtain, letting gray light spill across the dusty floorboards. “Before everything changed.”

I wrap my arms around myself, suddenly cold despite the coat I’m still wearing. “You haven’t been here since?”

“Not once in eighteen years.” He lets the curtain fall and the light is snuffed out once more. “Not since the funeral.”

“Then why bring me here now?”

He turns to face me. When he does, he looks anguished. “Because it’s the only place no one will look.”

He disappears through an archway and returns with two crystal tumblers and a bottle of whiskey so old the label has faded to a total blank.

“Drink,” he says, pressing a glass into my hands and pouring some liquor into it.

I take it and sip, coughing when it burns my throat.

Lukas settles into a sheet-covered armchair across from me. He looks oddly out of place here, this enormous, polished man in his bespoke suit surrounded by ghosts and cobwebs.

“Why did you really walk away?” I ask. “From the meeting today, I mean. You didn’t even try to fight back.”

He swirls his whiskey and watches it climb the sides of the glass. For a while, I think he won’t answer.

“Last night,” he begins slowly, “I was in a negotiation. With dangerous men. The kind who’d gut you for looking at them wrong.”

I curl my feet beneath me on the dusty settee.