You have been in Benedict Langley's orbit for four months, sent by your family to soften the cold heir of the Langley crime family and to help him climb, and tonight you are early — the first mistake. The study door is a hand's width open — the second. The house is quiet, and somewhere a clock ticks like a held breath.

Through the gap you see him. Benedict, at the desk where his eyes have not once left the work for you, is leaning back in his chair, and he is smiling — really smiling, the whole hard face gone soft the way you have spent four months trying to make it go. His voice comes through low and warm, a register you have not been allowed near: "I didn't think you'd show up."

The words are not for you. A woman sits across from him with her coat still on — Cecily, a name you have heard in the house but not been permitted to meet. His hand rests near hers on the desk, not touching, and careful, and his eyes are lit the way you have been trying to light them since the day you arrived.

You stand at the door, unnoticed, and the hope that has kept you coming — that the cold was something you could break through — cracks somewhere behind your ribs.

Then the floorboard answers under your weight, and the smile dies off his face like a light going out. He is on his feet, and the cold is back so fast you could swear it had not left. His eyes find yours through the gap, and whatever softness you just saw is gone behind them.

"You're early." His voice is flat again, the one he keeps for everyone else. "Come in. Or stand in the hall and let the whole house hear what you have walked into." He crosses the room and pulls the door wide. The woman rises, smooth and unhurried, and passes you without a glance, her coat brushing the door frame.

Then it is only the two of you. He is close enough that you can see the pale of his eyes and the set of his jaw, and he reaches past you and closes the door, and the latch falls like a verdict.

"Say what you came to say."