The old man looked Lombard over for a moment — unhurried, taking his time — and something in his eyes shifted from neutral to warm. He extended his hand.Lombard took it.There was something about shaking an older man's hand that Lombard had never been entirely able to explain to himself, even though he had thought about it more than once. It was in the weight of it — the way a hand that had touched a great many things over a long life seemed to carry traces of all of it. Knowledge that was not the kind you read anywhere. And Lombard, whatever else he was, had always been drawn irresistibly toward that particular kind of knowledge. It was arguably a more reliable weakness than women. Arguably."Lombard August," he said quietly."Lombard — I don't know who you are, but you have a permanent place in my heart. A very permanent place."Lombard bowed slightly. "If you put it that way, sir, then I'm honoured."The old man smiled — the kind of smile that revealed teeth that had no business

Mireya had left the house early that morning with a very clear objective: find Lombard. She had used her power to pull his location and had been driving toward it when she checked again and found it had shifted. She turned the car around, recalibrated, and let the signal settle before moving again. She found it eventually — his physical presence and the particular trace her nose had registered from being near him for two years, both converging on a single point. A hospital. She pulled over at the roadside. What was he doing in a hospital? She reached for the door handle — and then she saw him. He was standing outside, near the car park entrance, and his arms were around a woman. Not a polite, perfunctory embrace. A proper hug, close and unhurried, with no apparent concern for who might be watching. Something inside Mireya went very still, and then the stillness cracked. She got out of the car. He had no right. He had absolutely no right to be doing this. Not after everything

Rowan and Mireya's mother arrived at the station a little after six in the morning. Most of the officers on duty had been there since the night before and were visibly counting down the minutes to the end of their shift. They had the particular look of people who have decided, somewhere around the third hour of a long night, that they would not be handling any additional complications before going home. They had no way of knowing that was not how this morning was going to go. Rowan had come specifically for Mireya. She had not called once — not during the hours he had spent in that hospital bed, not after he had discharged himself, not at any point through a night that had been, by any reasonable measure, one of the worst of his recent life. She had been out here the whole time, and he had heard nothing. He was not going to raise that point with Mireya's mother, who had her own role in the situation and who he suspected had been following Mireya's lead on most things for years wi

Rowan stepped forward."After locking her cousin in here," he said, his voice carrying a quietness that was more deliberate than any shout, "you went ahead and started manipulating her as well?" He came closer as he said it, his confidence straightening his spine in a way that seemed to add half an inch to his height. The memory of the hospital floor, of the fracture, of the particular humiliation of having his own butt bone fail him — all of it was right behind his eyes, and he was drawing on it now."How is your butt, by the way?" Lombard asked.He said it the way you ask someone how the weather is. Casually. Without looking up from adjusting his sleeve.Rowan stopped.The question landed in the room and sat there. One of the officers at a nearby desk went very still. Mireya's mother inhaled sharply. Mireya herself looked briefly at the floor. Nobody was quite sure whether to process what had just been said as an insult, a provocation, or simply the m

“Let’s go, babe.”Rowan took Mireya’s hand like she was the most important person in the room and walked out with her.To him, it was already over.He had crushed Lombard.Completely.There was no way Lombard had expected things to go this far. He had probably arranged everything with that man and his wife, thinking a court case would scare them off quietly.A court case?The Belmont family?Or him?Being threatened by something like that?He almost laughed.Lombard had touched the wrong nerve.And he was going to pay for it.Dearly.Inside, Mireya’s mother stayed behind for just a moment longer.She stepped forward, her expression filled with cold disgust.“I thought I had seen every side of you,” she said. “But I was wrong.”Her gaze hardened.“To sink this low… to try and get back at us in such a pathetic way?”She let out a sharp breath.“No. It’s beneath you. And the Holy One will deal with you for this. Trust me—you will cry for it.”She turned slightly, already dismissing him.