He disappears through an archway and returns with two crystal tumblers and a bottle of whiskey so old the label has faded to a total blank.
“Drink,” he says, pressing a glass into my hands and pouring some liquor into it.
I take it and sip, coughing when it burns my throat.
Lukas settles into a sheet-covered armchair across from me. He looks oddly out of place here, this enormous, polished man in his bespoke suit surrounded by ghosts and cobwebs.
“Why did you really walk away?” I ask. “From the meeting today, I mean. You didn’t even try to fight back.”
He swirls his whiskey and watches it climb the sides of the glass. For a while, I think he won’t answer.
“Last night,” he begins slowly, “I was in a negotiation. With dangerous men. The kind who’d gut you for looking at them wrong.”
I
