The silence after her question settled over the room like something physical.
He didn't answer immediately. That was the first thing she noticed — that he received her question the way he received most things, without urgency, without the reflexive rush to fill the quiet that most people couldn't resist. He simply looked at her, and the fire made its sounds, and the room held them both in its amber warmth, and Elena sat with her wine untouched and Anna Ray's dress on her body and her real name still ringing in the air between them like something struck.
"I'm here," he said finally, "because Julian Mercer is not a man you should be anywhere near. And you were."
Something moved through her at that. Not relief — it was too complicated for relief. Something more like the vertigo of a floor
