“You’re not here because I’m some sort of pedophile,Elias,” I tell him. He straightens at his name. “You’re here because you are useful and your presence will be seen.”
“And useful to you how?” He raises an eyebrow, the expression more challenge than curiosity. “You want somekidnapped boy toy on your arm. I heard about your tastes,Lucian.”
I let his sarcasm slide like a stone off a pond. It used to be an issue that I fraternized with men as well as women, but as soon as I took power, the whispers have quelled.
“You did? Tell me about them.” I smile over my wine glass.
He bites the inside of his cheek and for a second the bravado blinks. I watch that flicker: proud, defensive, ready to strike. He’s testing boundaries not because he hates me but because he wants to know how far I will let him go. People like him read the world in the spaces other men leave open.
“You like women as well as men,” he says, softer now. “You prefer public sex. Your father had to pay off many people to keep quiet about it. I guess they didn’t keep their tongues if I heard about it.”
I chuckle. Maybe a little surprised by his boldness. “Perhaps.”
He leans in until his shoulder lightly brushes mine; the contact is accidental and intentional at once. The scrape of fabric sends an electric thread along my arm. He grins like a man who knows he’s stepped on a train track and wants to see if the train will come.
“What do you like, Elias?”
He blushes, his eyes pulling away from me. “Not old men like you.”
“I didn’t think twenty-eight was ancient, but I guess I must change my tune.” I sit back in my chair. “Maybe I should buy a cane. Get a shower seat. Yell at kids to get off my lawn. The works.”
Elias laughs. His armor isn’t totally intact anymore.
“Oldgrumpyman,” he teases, and the phrase is an insult wrapped in a dare. “That’s what you are, you know. All posture and quiet and brittle rules. I was expecting thunder and insteadI got…this.” He waves a hand at the candlelight, as if it’s a museum piece to be mocked.
I want to scold him for the tone. I want to tell him that mockery around someone who spends his life buying silence with fear is a dangerous hobby. But there’s a part of me that enjoys being ruffled. The enjoyment is wrong. The enjoyment is dangerous.
“You mistake stillness for weakness,” I say. “I’m not quiet because I’m tired. I’m quiet because I’ve learned the weight of noise.”
He looks at me for a long moment, then laughs in a way that’s half admiration and half scorn. “You think you’re special cause you’re stoic,” he says. “You think the city will fear you more if you appear solemn. It’s ridiculous.”
“Do you think the city will think me monstrous?” I ask. The question is a trap.
He meets my eyes, and for the first time tonight, there’s no sardonic curtain between us. “They’ll call you whatever gets the best headlines. Devil of the North End or Saint of Broken Men. People like simple names.” He taps his fork twice against the plate, a punctuation. “But you—” He leans forward, lowering his voice. “You’re not monstrous to me, Lucian. You’re…complicated. That’s worse, honestly.”
That word lands like a twinge in an old bruise. The honesty in it is not comfortable. It strips the theater and leaves something more real: a man considering another man without the usual inventory of advantages.
The conversation turns inward after that, like a tide pulling back to show the stones beneath. We trade barbs and truths with the same hands. He tells me what it’s like to be a boy who watched men in suits decide his worth. I tell him what it’s like to sit in a father’s shadow and make the choice to stand. Neitherof us are soft. Both of us learn that the other reads restraint like language.
Elias pushes his plate aside. He puts his hand on the table, palm down, so close to mine that the flat of our skin almost brushes. It’s an invasion, deliberate and slow.
“You enjoy being difficult, don’t you?” I say.
“You enjoy having someone to annoy,” he replies instantly. “We’re useful to each other.”
We stare across that thin inch of space. He’s testing to see if I’ll pull my hand back. I don’t. I am not a man who moves first when it comes to petty domination. I am patient. I am precise. But for the first time since this began, precision feels like a thin rope over a dark drop, and I am aware of the pull.
He smiles then, a tight curve that both celebrates and stakes a claim.
“You know,” he says quietly, “for a man who said he wanted me humiliated, you’re awfully touchy about my proximity.”
“The humiliation is for your father only,” I answer, though the calm in my voice is threadbare. I reach for the wine and let the glass cool my fingers. “If you behave, nothing will harm you here.”
He leans forward so we are inches apart. The closeness rearranges the space until we are the only things in the room.
“If I behave.” He mocks the word.
My eyes slice to his. His brashness is cute, but I won’t allow him to walk all over me.
