The Montague estate was forty minutes outside the city.
Roman's car turned through iron gates and up a gravel drive lined with old trees. The kind planted by someone who understood they would not live to see them reach full height. The house was stone, older than anything Roman owned, with the settled quality of a building that had long since stopped needing to prove itself.
A man met him at the door without speaking and took him to a sitting room on the first floor. Dark wood. Books that had been read rather than arranged. Two chairs beside a low table with a tray of tea already set out. Roman sat and waited.
Savio Montague arrived eight minutes later.
He was smaller than Roman expected. Not in a diminished way. In the way of men who had never needed size to fill a room. Late sixties,
