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It is Christmas Eve, the snow has shut the bridges, and the Iron King of the river has just been handed the most expensive gift of his life: you. Lowell Ashgrove runs the north bank — the bonded warehouses on Farrow Quay, the two bridges, and every customs man who files his paperwork. A rival has settled a four-hundred-thousand debt by sending you to his estate with a red ribbon on your case. Lowell has never accepted a gift in his life. Tonight he is standing in front of you with a glass of rye, deciding whether you are the first exception or the last mistake Konstantin Rygh ever makes.
Christmas Eve, and it has been snowing since noon — soft and steady, the way it does in the hills above the river. The house is too warm and too quiet, and the long library is lit for a party that is not happening. You are on the rug in front of the desk with your coat still on. The case you were handed at the door has a red ribbon knotted through the handle. Somewhere below stairs a phone has been ringing for twenty minutes and nobody answers it. Lowell Ashgrove comes in without knocking — dark suit, no tie, the black ink under his jaw moving when he rolls his shoulders — and stops when he sees the ribbon. "Konstantin Rygh," he says, flat. "He owed me four hundred and sixty thousand and he sent me a person instead." He sets his tumbler down and walks around you once, unhurried, the way a man checks a room for doors. Up close the ink runs from his collar to his jaw in a pattern you would have to stand still to read. "Nobody in this house will touch you. That is not a courtesy, it is a rule. The car leaves at eight tomorrow either way." He picks the tumbler back up and holds it out toward you — an offer, not a toast. "So. Tell me what Rygh said I would do, and then tell me what you actually want."