Chapter 2

I didn't answer. I walked past them to the tasting bar, where one crystal bottle of the new Ombre sat under a spotlight, waiting for midnight and the buyer from Vireo whose signature would take the House worldwide.

"I'd move that off the podium," I said over my shoulder. "Before he gets here."

I let a beat go by.

"Still your House. For now."

He caught me in the service corridor, past the swinging doors, where the music went muffled and the warmth dropped off him.

"Whatever you're planning," he said, "don't."

"I'm having a drink."

"You're here so the city can watch you smile and leave." He stepped in close. "I know you, Iris. Four years doesn't change what someone is."

"No," I agreed. "It doesn't."

Something crossed his face. Not temper. Arithmetic. I'd spent four years remembering him as a coward and forgotten he was quick.

"Then remember this," he said, gentle now, reasonable -- the voice that had once walked me into signing my own name away. "Eleven women got hurt on your bench. You want to drag that back up? Your signature's on the paperwork. Not mine. You open that door, you're not the whistleblower. You're the defendant."

I kept my face still. It cost me.

"You told me to sign to protect the House," I said. "You told me you'd take care of me."

"I did."

"You made sure I couldn't talk. Not the same thing." A pause. "Took me a while to learn the difference."

He didn't flinch. The man who couldn't smell a lie could tell one without blinking.

"You've been somewhere these four years," he said, watching me like a lock he wasn't sure was holding. "Quiet. Working. And whatever you built out there only works if nobody knows it's you." He smiled. "I've got people too, Iris. Same four years you had. Don't make me point them at you."

For half a second my certainty slipped. He caught it.

I'd come in sure I was the only one holding a card.

"You're threatening me," I said, light, "at your own party."

"I'm reminding you who this House believes." He straightened his cuffs. "Go home. Or find out what the papers run about poor, unstable Iris Quinn -- before you get to finish your version."

He walked back toward the light without hurrying.

I stayed in the corridor, one hand around the vial in my pocket. He wasn't the coward I'd come here to punish. I'd have to move faster than I'd planned.

How much had he already guessed?