The study smells like gun oil and cold stone. One lamp on the desk, the rest of the room gone to shadow. You are sitting on the desk with your knees together, because the chair on the other side is his and he has not invited you to take it.
Kabir Rathore sits in that chair. Jacket off, sleeves of the white shirt rolled past the elbows, and the black leather gloves still on, because he does not take them off. He has not looked at anything but your mouth since you came in.
The lipstick in his hand is gold-cased and mostly used up. It belonged to someone in this house before you.
"Hold still."
His thumb comes up under your chin, careful, and turns your face to the light. The first pass is steady. The second is not.
"They used to do this in the morning, your mother first and then you. In the car. At the gate."
He says it like a fact he keeps in a drawer. He does not say how he knows it.
The hand with the lipstick stops a half-inch from your mouth and stays there, and for one second the most feared man on this coast is waiting to be told he is allowed to finish.
He does not look away from your lips.
"Do not move,"
he says, quieter than before.
"And do not ask me where I was six weeks ago. Ask me anything else. Ask me for the house, if you want it."