Kneel For Me

Lunch

He asked at eleven fifty-three.

Not through the internal line. Not via email. He came out of his office, stopped at my desk, and stood there for a moment in a way that was slightly different from his usual stops — less purposeful, like he hadn’t entirely decided what he was going to say before he said it.

“Lunch,” he said.

I looked up. “You have a call at one with the Alderton—”

“I moved it.” A pause. “There’s a place on Jermyn Street. Twelve thirty.”

I looked at him. “Is this a meeting?”

“No.”

“A briefing?”

“No.”

The word sat between us, clean and unqualified.

No.

“All right,” I said.

He nodded once. Went back into his office.

I stared at my screen for ten seconds. Then I saved my work and got my coat.

The restaurant on Jermyn Street was the kind of place that didn’t have its name on the door. Dark wood, low light, tables spaced far enough apart that conversations stayed private. The maître d’ knew Lucian by name and didn’t react to me, which I appreciated.

We were seated at a corner table. No laptop. No files. No legal pads with angular handwriting.

Just two people and a menu.

It was profoundly strange.

Lucian ordered without looking at the menu — the habit of a man who’d eaten here enough times that the choices were already made. I ordered the first thing that seemed reasonable and put the menu down and looked at him across the small table.

He looked back.

“You’re waiting for me to produce an agenda,” he said.

“Aren’t you going to?”

“No.” He picked up his water glass. “I wanted to eat lunch. That’s the agenda.”

I studied him for a moment. In the low light of the restaurant, away from the forty-third floor and the frosted glass, he looked — not different, exactly. But like a slightly earlier version of himself. Before Marcus Webb. Before Irina. Before he’d decided that sentiment was expensive.

“Why today?” I asked.

“Because yesterday was difficult. And the day before.” He set the glass down. “And you handled both without complaint.”

“That’s the job.”

“Most people in the job would have complained.” His eyes were level on mine. “Or quit.”

“I signed an eighteen-month non-compete.”

The corner of his mouth moved. “You were looking for a reason before I gave you one.”

I opened my mouth. Closed it.

He was right. I had been.

“Tell me about your mother,” he said.

The shift was so clean I almost missed it — from the edge of something personal to something that was also personal but safer. Or maybe he’d decided they were the same thing.

“She was a paralegal for twenty years,” I said. “Corporate law, mostly. She was good at it — better than good. She stopped when she got sick.” I looked at the table. “She doesn’t talk about missing it. But I can tell.”

“What does she talk about?”

“Books. My brother, when he calls. Whether I’m eating properly.” I looked up. “The usual things.”

He was quiet for a moment. “My mother talked about money. Specifically, about who had it and who didn’t and what that meant about a person.” He said it flatly, without apparent emotion. “It was an efficient education.”

“Efficient,” I repeated. “Is that how you’d describe it?”

“It’s accurate.”

“Accuracy and adequacy aren’t the same as good.”

He looked at me. Something shifted in his expression — not quite a reaction, but the ghost of one. “No,” he said quietly. “They’re not.”

The food arrived. We ate.

It was, unexpectedly, comfortable. Not the charged, pressurised comfort of the office — something simpler. He talked about the Alderton deal, but without the operational flatness of a briefing. Like he was thinking out loud to someone he trusted to think back.

I told him about my first job, at seventeen, doing filing for a solicitor’s office in Peckham. How I’d reorganised their entire system in three weeks because the existing one made no sense, and the solicitor had been equal parts annoyed and impressed.

“Equal parts,” he said.

“He kept the new system,” I said. “But he didn’t tell me it was better for another six months.”

Lucian was quiet for a moment. “I recognise that impulse.”

“I know you do.”

His eyes met mine. Something passed between us — quick, warm, almost humorous. The closest thing to easy I’d seen from him.

At two fifteen he signalled for the bill. Paid it before I’d registered he was going to.

Outside on Jermyn Street, London grey and moving around us, he paused.

“The Calder situation will escalate next week,” he said. Back to the operational register, but lighter than usual. “Webb will make another move.”

“I’ll be ready.”

“I know.” He looked at me for a moment — that direct, unguarded look that lasted three seconds and then pulled back. “That’s why I needed today to not be about any of it.”

He turned and walked back toward the office.

I stood on Jermyn Street for a moment, watching him go.

That’s why I needed today.

Not I thought you deserved a break. Not it seemed appropriate.

I needed today.

He needed it.

I turned and followed him back toward Voss Enterprises, and thought about a man who worked through the night and said sentiment was expensive and had just told me, in the most Lucian Voss way possible, that lunch with me was something he had needed.

The most dangerous thing wasn’t the non-compete.

It wasn’t Marcus Webb.

It wasn’t even the way he said my name.

It was this. The small, quiet, ordinary moments he was starting to let me into.

Those were the ones I wouldn’t recover from.