Her heels struck the marble like a countdown. One. Two. Three. The study door stood open, a rectangle of amber light spilling across the polished floor, and she walked through it because stopping would mean turning around, and turning around would mean admitting she couldn't do this.
The room swallowed her. Leather and old paper hung in the dim air, the desk's polished wood cool under the lamp's single glow. A crystal decanter clicked against a glass, the only sound in the thick, silent heat. Vincent didn't rise. He sat behind his desk like a throne, slate eyes tracking her from the doorway to the chair he hadn't offered yet.
She felt his gaze catch on her fingers—the paint she'd scrubbed raw but couldn't quite erase from under her nails. Her hand moved to her locket before she could stop it, thumb tracing the silver edge. A tell. She knew it was a tell. She did it anyway.
He nodded. Once. The chair.
She sat. The leather creaked under her, too soft, too expensive, the kind of chair that made her feel like she was sinking even though she hadn't moved. He poured wine without asking—a deep ruby that caught the light—and pushed it across the polished wood. The glass stopped exactly in front of her. Precise. Deliberate. Like everything about him.
"Tell me why you're here."
Her throat closed. The question sat between them, and she didn't know which layer he meant. The arrangement. This room. This whole impossible night. All of it. None of it. She picked up the wine because her hands needed something to do, and the glass was cool against her palm, and the first sip burned going down.
"You know why." Her voice came out steadier than she'd expected. "The papers. The debt. My father's signature on things he shouldn't have signed."
Vincent's expression didn't change. He watched her like he was reading a book he'd already finished, waiting for her to reach the part he knew was coming.
"That's a reason," he said. "Not the reason."
The locket again. Her thumb pressed into the silver, hard enough to leave a mark. She set the wine down before she could spill it.
"I'm here because my brother would kill you if he could, and my mother cries every time she looks at me, and I don't know what else to do." The words came faster now, tumbling over each other. "Is that what you wanted to hear? That I'm desperate? That I'm scared? That I showed up at your door because I ran out of other doors?"
He was quiet. The silence stretched, filled the room, pressed against her chest until she felt the need to fill it rising in her throat. She bit her tongue instead.
"Good," he said finally. "Honest." He leaned back, the leather sighing under his weight. "The arrangement requires honesty, Sophie. Even the parts that burn."
Her name in his mouth. Like he'd been saving it.
The question landed like a stone dropped into still water. Sophie's fingers found the locket again, the silver warm now from her skin, and she let the silence stretch because filling it meant saying something she couldn't take back.
"Being seen." The words came out before she'd fully decided to speak them. "Not the way people look at a painting, or a piece of jewelry, or a—a thing they've acquired. But really seen. The parts I keep hidden. The parts I don't even show myself."
She didn't look at him. Couldn't. Her gaze stayed fixed on the wine glass, the way the light caught the rim, the faint smear of her lipstick she'd left on the edge.
"I'm afraid you'll look at me six months from now and know exactly who I am. Every weak thing. Every selfish thought. Every time I wanted to run and didn't because I was too cowardly to face what waited on the other side of that door."
Her voice cracked on the last word. She bit the inside of her cheek, hard enough to taste copper.
Vincent didn't move. Didn't speak. The silence pressed against her ears until she could hear her own heartbeat, the slow drag of air into her lungs, the distant tick of a clock somewhere in the house.
"And if I already do?" His voice came low, almost gentle. "Know who you are?"
Her head snapped up. His eyes hadn't changed—still that flat slate gray, still unreadable—but something in his posture had shifted. He'd leaned forward, just slightly, his forearms resting on the polished wood. Close enough that she could see the silver threading his temples, the fine lines at the corners of his mouth.
"Then I'm already trapped," she whispered. "And I walked into it with my eyes open."
He studied her for a long moment. Then he reached out, his fingers closing around the stem of her wine glass, and pushed it back toward her—a refill. A continuation. An invitation to stay exactly where she was.
"Then let me show you what being seen looks like," he said. "When it's not a trap."