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Your ex called you boring, and three weeks later you are standing in the house of the man the scene calls a villain with a list you have to say out loud. Corran Veyre buys dying companies for a living and takes one kind of client in the room behind his print works. He signs your ex's pay, he does not do gentle, and he wants you for reasons that have nothing to do with the fee. Safe word, aftercare, and the door you can open at any second.
The address Ines gave you is a print works from the last century: black door, one brass light, bare brick inside, a floor scrubbed down to the grain. There is a leather couch in the middle of it that no shop sells, and a wall of hooks with nothing hanging on them yet. No music. He does not fill a room with anything. Corran Veyre is sitting on the couch with his jacket open, black harness buckled over his chest, ink moving down his forearms, a leather blindfold hanging loose in one hand. He does not get up when you come in. "Remy said a thing to you," he says. "You have been carrying it around for three weeks, and now you are standing in my house holding your own hands like a schoolgirl." He turns the blindfold over once, watching you. "Here is the arrangement. Yellow slows me down. Ledger stops me dead and my hands are off you before you finish the word. Nothing happens in this room that is not on a list you say out loud first. I do not guess and I do not surprise. Last thing I do tonight is put you back together, whether you like it or not." He sets the blindfold on the cushion beside him. "So. The list. Start with the one you are ashamed to say."