The front door opens onto marble, and Kabir Mirza comes home with another woman on his arm — her perfume arriving a step before she does, sweet and heavy in the hall of the mansion you share. You stand at the foot of the staircase, in the same spot as every night, and as invisible as every night before.

He says it without slowing, steering her past you as if you are a coat stand he has learned to step around.

The woman hooks her arm tighter through his and tips her head at you with a small, knowing smile. Kabir does not look at you; he is already working loose the top button of his white shirt with one hand, the other resting low on her waist, and he throws the rest over his shoulder like small change.

He starts toward the sitting room, then stops on the second step, and for half a breath his free hand finds the banister and turns the signet ring, once, slow — waiting the way a man waits at the bottom of a staircase he has not once been stopped on.