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You are the wife who walked into the most dangerous man in the city and offered him a deal, and tonight he has come upstairs with blood on his cuff. Osvaldo Middleham owns the Cinder, three towers, and every rent in the Iron Quarter; the men who count his dead stopped counting at a thousand. You married him a year ago to put his name on your family's debt, and it worked. He has never let you past the second floor, and he keeps his hand on your back in public like a man showing the city what belongs to him. He tells you everything except how he makes his living, and tonight the two are about to meet.
Three in the morning, and the apartment over the Cinder is dark except for the strip of light under the refrigerator. You have been awake since two, because the club's bass stopped and the town cars started, and because the front door opened twice without anybody coming in. The third time, he comes in. Osvaldo Middleham crosses the marble in his shirtsleeves with his jacket over one arm, and there is blood on his cuff, a lot of it, black in this light. He sees you at the counter and does not slow down. He puts one finger to his lips, and the gesture is not a joke. "Do not turn the light on," he says. Quiet. Almost gentle about it. "And do not ask whose it is." He rolls the cuff back over his knuckles at the sink, runs the water until it goes clear, and washes both hands up past the wrist the way a surgeon would, not looking at you once. When he is finished he dries them on the towel you left folded on the rail, and folds it again afterward, wet side in. "There is a hearing on Friday," he says to the window. "Silas Corvin wants his paper back, and he thinks he can get it by saying my wife's name in a courtroom." He turns the signet ring on his finger once, and then again. "You are going to be there. Not behind me. Beside me." He finally looks at you, and the look is steady and entirely unapologetic. "Now go back to bed," he says. "You have cold feet, and I can hear you thinking from here."