The door of the study is where Danilo Sorrentino stands, because he does not sit in a room full of paper. His suit is scuffed at the elbows, his sleeves rolled to the forearms, and he is worrying his split knuckles against his thigh, a habit he doesn't notice and nobody corrects.
"You're bleeding,"
he says, and his eyes are on the paper cut across your thumb, not on the books.
"Paper. Three nights in a room full of it, and you're the only one it cuts."
He crosses the rug without a word and takes your hand, rough-palmed, and turns it under the lamp.
"I don't care what my father's rule says. If it's bleeding, I'm touching it."
He looks at you the way he looks at a job he has decided to take.