The address led me to a small private dining room above a restaurant I didn't recognize, the kind of place with no sign out front, the kind of place people like the Spears family used when they needed privacy money could still buy in a world increasingly hard to hide from.
Harold met me at a side entrance, inclined his head the same careful, formal way he had on the porch, and led me up a narrow staircase without a word. My legs felt unsteady the whole way, some animal part of me screaming that I was walking willingly into the den of the man who'd engineered every terrible thing that had happened to me for the last five years.
Papa Niel was already seated when I came in. Alone, exactly as promised, at a small round table set for two, a bottle of wine open and breathing beside two untouch
