Chapter 6: Terms

"I'll stop the wedding," Lucian said on the club steps. "Tonight."

"With what?"

"With the truth. I'll tell Imogen to her face that I won't be at the church."

"You told her you'd marry her to her face on Saturday. It hasn't helped."

His mouth tightened.

"What do you want from me, Del?"

I looked at the tall windows behind him, where Leopold Bulfinch's silhouette had not moved.

"Your father keeps a ledger from 2005 in the wall safe at the Weston house. I want it. Sealed. Unread."

"That's his private."

"That's why."

"If I take that, I can't go back."

"You can. You'd just have to lie again."

I stepped around him and started down the steps.

"I'll be at my old apartment in Somerville tonight. I have boxes to pack."

He did not follow me.

I did not look back to see if he would.

The walk-up on Elm Street smelled of radiators and old paint.

I had not set foot in it since the night of the party.

I was packing mugs into a crate at midnight when somebody knocked, three times, hard.

Lucian stood in the hallway in a black coat, holding a plain envelope against his chest.

His knuckles were split open and bleeding.

"The safe was easy," he said. "My father uses my mother's birthday."

"And your hand?"

"The study door was locked. I introduced it to my shoulder, then my fist."

I stepped aside, and he came in.

He stood in the middle of the room that had been my whole life for two years.

There was a mattress on the floor, a table with one chair, and a kettle on a single burner.

"You lived here," he said.

"I lived here, and I went to your office in the mornings, and I came to your penthouse at night."

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