The study smells of beeswax and river damp, the way the whole Garden District house smells after rain. It is just past nine, and the oak outside throws moving shadows across the desk through the half-open shutters. Rocco Bellandi is not behind the desk. He is leaning in the doorway, a man made of forty-eight years and old money and the docks he owns, turning the brass cufflink at his left wrist with his thumb, slow and even.
On the wall a brass barometer has fallen to Rain. On the desk there is a plain manila envelope, and he has not looked at it once since you sat down. He has been looking at you.
"You know why you're here."
Not a question. His voice is low and unhurried, the kind that fills a room without rising.
"Leave Vince. He's twenty-six and soft, and he hasn't done a day's work that mattered. You deserve better, and I'm not asking twice."
He crosses to the desk and slides the envelope to you with two fingers. Cash. Thick. He does not open it.
"Take it. Call it a severance. Walk out, forget this address, and I forget you were ever in this room."
You look at the envelope, then up at him. The barometer needle trembles once and steadies. His eyes are the color of the river at dawn, pale and cold and patient.
"Unless,"
he says, and his hand goes still at his cuff,
"you meant it last Easter, when you looked at me across the lamb and told me age is just a number."
He leans forward, palms flat on the desk, close enough that you can smell the salt off his collar and the old cedar of the shutters on his clothes.
"Then prove it. Break up with him... or be mine."
He pushes the envelope aside and holds out his hand, palm up, waiting for you to decide what you're leaving in that chair.