The King

“You see anyone taking a bath?”

The boy laughed. “No.”

“It’s not a brothel, either. No one’s paying for sex here. I’m not a pimp.”

“What is it then?”

“Sanctuary,” Kingsley said. “Most of these men are married. Children. Jobs. They come to the club because no one cares if a man goes to a strip club full of naked women. They walk in the front door first. But it’s the back door they’re here for.”

Kingsley laughed, but the boy didn’t. The other blond would have gotten his joke.

“Are you married?” the boy asked.

“Do I look married to you?”

“Do you have kids?”

“Not that I’m aware of.”

“Then why—”

Kingsley grabbed the boy and shoved him against the wall again.

“You talk too much,” Kingsley said.

The blond swallowed visibly. He licked his lips, and Kingsley’s groin tightened.

“Then shut me up,” the blond whispered.

The boy wanted to be kissed, and Kingsley wanted to kiss him. The boy’s lips trembled, his whole body trembled. But kissing him would make it all personal. Tonight he wanted anonymity.

“Why are you scared?” Kingsley asked.

“I don’t... We just met.”

“It doesn’t matter. Nothing matters. Nothing but this.”

Without warning the boy, Kingsley turned him and pushed him, chest first, against the wall. Kingsley pressed his chest into the boy’s back, slid his hand down his stomach and opened his pants.

“We’re in the hall,” the blond whispered, and there it was—the fear in his voice. Fear, intoxicating, erotic fear.

“I own the hall. I’ll do whatever I want in it.”

Kingsley wrapped his fingers around the boy’s erection and stroked him.

“You like that?” Kingsley asked, stroking again. “You’re hard, so you must like it.”

“Yeah,” he breathed. His voice sounded pained. “I like it.”

“What do you like? Say it?”

“Your hand on me, on my cock.”

“What do you want? Tell me what you want.”

“I want it all,” the boy said. “I leave tomorrow. This is my only chance.”

“Only chance? You’re a beautiful child, young, new...” Kingsley kissed the back of the boy’s neck. The kiss turned to a bite. “You’ll have other chances.”

The blond shook his head. “You don’t know what it’s like where I live.”

“Where do you live?”

“Texas.”

Kingsley laughed softly but felt the first stirrings of sympathy. He crushed it under his heel like a bug.

“You want it all?” Kingsley asked.

“Yes.” The blond laid his hand on top of Kingsley’s, as if he needed contact with the man who touched him so intimately. “Give me something to take home with me. I can live on the memories.”

“I’ll give you more than memories.”

Kingsley bit hard into the boy’s neck. He cried out in pain even as his hard cock twitched in Kingsley’s hand.

He didn’t give the boy a chance to straighten his clothes before Kingsley grabbed him by the wrist and dragged him down the hallway. When he’d bought the Möbius, he’d also bought the suite of unused offices behind it. Easy enough to convert them into bedrooms. Dozens of trysts happened each day in this hallway. Kingsley charged nothing but rent and the cost of the key. And a generous tip for the poor woman who washed the sheets every day.

The uninitiated might have trouble finding their way around the back halls. The only illumination came from the lamps in the rooms that spilled pale blue light from under the doors and onto the dull gray carpet. Soft and pained sounds escaped the rooms they passed. The men within had trained themselves to keep their desires quiet, and even when giving rein to them, nothing more than a few desperate grunts and the squeak of bedsprings could be heard in the hallway.

“Where are we going?”

“Hell. Or my room. Same thing.”

Kingsley led him down a second hall toward his private room.

“What are you going to do to me?” the boy asked as they neared the final door.

“Beat you and fuck you,” Kingsley said. “Do you have a problem with that? If so, I’d speak up now.”

The boy’s steps faltered. Kingsley grabbed him once more and pushed him back against the wall.

“Problem?” Kingsley asked. He kissed the boy’s neck, pulled down his collar and bit his chest.

“Will I like it?” The blond slid his hands under Kingsley’s shirt, seeking skin-to-skin contact.

“It’s not fun for me if you don’t like it, too,” Kingsley said, grabbing the boy’s wandering hands and pinning them behind his back. “I want you to look at your bruises in the mirror tomorrow and come all over yourself from the sight of them. I want you to see each welt and remember the moment I gave it to you. I want you to try to have normal sex with someone and lay there like a corpse because he’s not hurting you and you need pain to feel alive. I want to ruin you tonight so that every other night feels like a waste of your life. Is that what you want, too?”

The blond boy pushed his hips against Kingsley’s and rasped two words.

“Ruin me.”

3

KINGSLEY OPENED THE door to his room, took the boy by the collar of his jacket and pushed him inside.

The boy stood in the center of the bedroom. Bedroom, yes. Nothing but a room with a bed. Kingsley hadn’t even bothered with a chair. Why waste the floor space? The bed itself was black—black sheets, metal frame. Light from the barred and grated window cast squares of weak yellow squares across the sheets and the floor.

“Can I ask you a weird question?” the blond said as he turned to Kingsley.

“Ask.”

“I can’t figure your accent out. Where are you from?”

Kingsley smiled.

“Not Texas.”

He grabbed the boy by the throat and forced him to the floor. He slapped him once, hard. Hard enough that the blond gasped, not hard enough to leave a mark.

“Fight back if you want,” Kingsley said as he stripped the boy of his jacket and threw it aside. “You’ll lose. But you can try.”

The boy was already struggling against him as Kingsley pulled his shirt up, exposing the bare flesh of his back.

Kingsley grasped the bamboo cane he kept under the bed.

“I’m going to cane you.”

“Will it hurt?”

“Fuck, yes, it will.”

The boy shuddered, but he didn’t say no, so Kingsley took that as a yes.

Once, twice, five times he struck the boy’s back, harder each time. The blond didn’t cry out but only released soft grunts of pain. A passing car beamed a momentary spotlight into the room, and Kingsley could see the furious red welts already raised on the boy’s otherwise pale and spotless flesh.

“Beg for mercy if you want me to stop,” Kingsley said, digging his hand into the boy’s blond hair at the base of his skull and forcing his face against the bare wood floor.

“Don’t stop.” The blond boy’s voice was flush with desire and desperation.

Kingsley stripped him completely naked before striking him again with the cane—across the front of his thighs, across the back, all over him from his shoulders to his knees and back up again. Meanwhile the boy made no protest, begged no mercy and never once asked him to stop. The boy lay in the fetal position on the floor. Kingsley stood up, put a shod foot on his shoulder and pushed him on to his ravaged back. He flinched and arched as his brutalized skin met the floor.

“Touch yourself,” Kingsley ordered. “I want to watch.”

The blond took his erection in his hand and stroked upward.

“Keep going.” Kingsley watched as the blond rubbed himself with his right hand. He knew it was agony, every movement he made would scrape the raw wounds on his back. And yet for all the agony, the blond was hard. Fluid dripped from the tip on to his lower stomach. Kingsley longed to lick it off. “It hurts, doesn’t it? Your whole body?”

“It hurts,” he breathed.

“Good.” Kingsley walked to the bed and pulled a tube of lubricant out from under the pillow. Better to do this on the hard, unforgiving floor than the bed. He slept in a bed, was at his most vulnerable in a bed. He didn’t want to be vulnerable tonight.

Kingsley knelt between the boy’s legs, nudging his thighs wider. He pushed his fingers into the welts on the boy’s legs. When the boy’s groans reached a crescendo, Kingsley brought his mouth down on to his cock and sucked him deep. Pleasure and pain, pleasure and pain. He would couple them together tonight for this boy, and never again would he feel one without the other, desire one without the other. The boy would either hate him or thank him for this later—Kingsley didn’t care which. But he knew one thing for certain; this beautiful blond teenager would never forget him.

As he sucked him, Kingsley wet his fingertips with the lubricant and pushed them into the blond’s anus. The blond grunted but said nothing more. Kingsley poked and probed inside him, until the boy’s grunts of discomfort turned to gasps of pleasure. Kingsley opened him up while licking and massaging every inch of him.

“I’m coming,” the boy said between heavy breaths.

“Come, then.” Kingsley put his mouth down deep over him and tasted the salt on his tongue. He wanted to swallow but didn’t want to give the boy any ideas that this encounter meant more that it did. He spat it on the floor, pushed the boy on to his stomach, stroked himself to his full hardness and, without mercy, entered the boy.

The boy cried out, his hands scratching against the hardwood floor.

“Take it,” Kingsley said. “Take it all. Don’t fight it.”

“I won’t.” The boy shook his head. “I want it.”

Kingsley pushed in again. The boy was tight as a fist around him, and it took all of his hard-won self-control to keep from spilling into him right now. He’d only been with women lately. He’d almost forgotten how good it felt to fuck a young man, especially one so rare and lovely as this long-limbed youth with the perfect pale blond hair and the heart both afraid and fearless.

Closing his eyes, Kingsley rose up and bore down. The boy gasped beneath him.

“Please,” he said.

“Please what?” Kingsley asked.

“Please, let me touch you.”

Kingsley unbuttoned his shirt while still deep inside the boy. He pulled out, let the boy roll on to his back. He grabbed the boy’s hands, pressing them to his chest.

“You have scars,” he said, running his hands over Kingsley’s bare torso.

“I am nothing but scars.”

The blond pushed his palms against Kingsley’s stomach and traced the muscles there.

“Your body’s amazing,” the boy said as he pushed Kingsley’s shirt off his shoulders and down his arms. “I can’t stop...”

His hands roamed all over Kingsley’s exposed skin—his shoulders, his biceps, his scarred chest and taut stomach. But when the blond tried to touch his hair, Kingsley seized both wrists and slammed them into the floor.

Kingsley thrust deep and kept thrusting. Enough niceties. He should never have let the boy touch him like that. But it had been so long since he’d fucked someone without tying them up first, he’d forgotten what it felt like to be touched during sex.

Pressure built inside Kingsley’s stomach and hips. He pushed repeatedly into the boy who raised his knees to his chest to take even more of him. Fucking turned into mindless rutting as Kingsley slammed into him with quick hard thrusts. No matter how much he gave, the boy only begged for more. When Kingsley couldn’t hold off a second longer, he pulled out, shoved the boy on to his stomach and came all over his red-welted back.

Finally the room was still, and Kingsley was still and the blond boy on the floor was still. Kingsley wiped the semen off the blond’s abraded skin.

Underneath him the boy shivered and shuddered. The salt into the wounds must have hurt more than anything else had.

“You did well,” Kingsley said, and heard another voice saying those same words to him once.

Kingsley stood up, cleaned himself off and straightened his clothes. As if every movement caused him agony, the boy slowly sat up. He looked down at his body, at his welts, before looking up at Kingsley again. His lips were parted, his eyes wide. He crossed his arms over his stomach and pulled his legs to his chest.

“There’s a shower through that door.” Kingsley picked up the boy’s shirt and gave it to him. “You can get cleaned up. You can stay here tonight if you want. Those welts will turn into bruises. Keep your clothes on until they’re gone.”

“Are you leaving?”

“Yes.”

“Can’t you stay? For a little while? We don’t... We can talk.”

“I don’t want to talk,” Kingsley said.

The boy scrambled to his feet and pulled his jeans on. He sat on the bed and spent longer than necessary buttoning his shirt. Kingsley finished pulling himself together. He’d shower back at the town house. Nothing worth bothering with right now. All he wanted to do was drink himself into a stupor and sleep until he woke up dead. As usual.

“You’re young,” Kingsley said. “You’ll heal fast.” He wasn’t speaking about the welts.

He gave the boy one more smile before turning his back and heading to the door.

“My name’s Justin,” the blond called out after him.

Kingsley turned around and looked at him. A square of light from the window lay across the boy’s face like a white mask.

“I’ve only been with a guy once. It wasn’t like this. I didn’t even come. If my parents knew I was gay, they’d kick me out. I just... I wanted you to know those three things.”

“Anything else?” Kingsley asked, keeping his face composed, his voice devoid of emotion.

“You’re beautiful,” Justin said. “I feel stupid for saying that to another guy, but I can’t find another word. And what you did to me was everything I’ve always wanted. So...thank you.”

“You’re thanking me?”

“They teach us manners in Texas.”

Kingsley could taste the boy on his lips. Walk away. He knew he should walk away.

He pulled out his wallet and, from it, took a slim silver card with black ink.

“My name is Kingsley Edge. Not entirely, but it’s what I answer to. I’m French. That’s the accent you hear. And if your family kicks you out—and you’re right, they might—come back to this city and find me. I can help you. I’m not saying I will help you. But I can if I’m in the mood.”

Justin took the card and held it in his fist.

“Why did you pick me tonight? Only gay guy in the club?”

“There were three if I counted correctly.”

“Then why me?”

“You’re blond,” Kingsley answered truthfully. Justin gave a little laugh.

“You must really love blonds, then.”

“No.” Kingsley smiled tiredly. “I hate them.”

Without another word or a kiss goodbye, Kingsley left the room, left the hall, left the club and walked into the rainy streets of Manhattan. He should have called for his driver to come for him and take him home. But after so much sadism, a little masochism would do him good. The rain had turned the night near freezing, and Kingsley dug his hands deep into his jacket pockets burrowing for warmth. He walked fast, lengthening his strides as the late-winter rain soaked him to the skin. After two miles he arrived home to his town house. He paused outside and looked up. After six months living here, he still couldn’t believe he owned a Manhattan palace. Three stories—four if one counted the pool in the basement—black-and-white facade, wrought-iron balconies, a glass conservatory on the roof and luxurious bedroom after bedroom after bedroom...

Any one of his bedrooms would do him right now. He wanted to be warm and naked and drunk this very second. He ran up the stairs, opened the door and shut it behind him. He didn’t lock it. He never locked the door. Someone was always in the house, always coming or going. And people only locked their doors to keep the barbarians at the gate. He was the barbarian. Why would he keep himself out?

As soon as he entered the house, he pulled off his jacket and tossed it on the floor. Someone would take care of it. Someone always did. He heard music coming from within the house. Blaise, he guessed. She’d taken to staying here most nights, even the nights he didn’t fuck her. She seemed the sort to like piano music—or at least to pretend she liked it.

He trudged up the steps but paused before he reached the first landing. The music...it didn’t sound as if it came from a stereo or a radio. No, it sounded close, and live. Alive.

“Fuck.” Kingsley stormed back down the stairs. He had one rule in his house and one rule only. No one touches the grand piano in the music room. No one. It was to be looked at and never touched, never played, never even acknowledged. Whoever dared touch his piano would be thrown into the street and forbidden from ever crossing the threshold of his house again. The person who defied Kingsley’s one law would curse the day he’d ever learned to play the fucking piano.

Kingsley threw open the door to the music room.

He stopped.

He stared.

He did not breathe.

It couldn’t be...

But it was.

The room was dark, but Kingsley could see who played his grand piano. And even if he couldn’t see, he would still know it was him. Only one man he’d ever known could play so skillfully without sheet music, without even seeing the keys. A sliver of streetlight penetrated the room and cast a circle of light around the pianist’s hair.

His blond hair.

Søren.

Frozen in place, Kingsley could do nothing but stand and listen and watch and wait and wonder. Why? How?

The music—Beethoven, Kingsley believed it was—set the room afire, and the sound moved like smoke over the floor, up the walls and across the ceiling. Kingsley breathed it in like incense.

The piece ended. The final note rose like a burning ember before falling to the floor and fading into ash.

Shock had stolen Kingsley’s courage, but now it returned to him. He couldn’t get to the man fast enough. He rushed forward as the pianist closed the fallboard and stood. Over ten years had passed since Kingsley had seen him, had looked on him with his own eyes. Kingsley had almost given up hope he would ever see him again. They’d caused each other too much pain, and someone had paid the highest price for their secrets. But that was all in the past. It would be better now between them. No hiding. No lies. Kingsley would give him his heart and his body and his soul, and this time he’d ask for nothing in return.

But as the pianist rose, Kingsley noticed something different about him. He looked the same, only older now. How long since they’d last stood face-to-face, eye-to-eye? He would be twenty-nine years old, wouldn’t he? God, they were grown men now. When had that happened? If it was possible, he was even more handsome than Kingsley remembered, and taller, too. How was it possible he was taller? His clothes, however, were far more severe. He wore all black.

All black but for one spot of white.

A square of white.

A square of white at his throat.

The pianist smiled at him, a smile of amusement with only the barest hint of apology. And not the least bit of shame.

Fuck.

Kingsley stared, incredulous. He took a small step back.

No...not that. Anything but that. Whatever hope had been in Kingsley’s heart a second earlier shattered and died like the last stray note of a symphony.

The old love, the old desire coursed through his veins and into his heart, and there was no stopping it.

He met the blond pianist’s eyes—the priest’s eyes—and released the breath he’d forgotten he’d been holding.

“Mon Dieu...”

My God.

4

FOR A SILENT eternity they only looked at each other.

Finally Kingsley raised his hand.

“Wait here,” he said and turned around. He turned back around again. “S’il vous plait.”

Søren said nothing. Even if Søren wanted to speak, Kingsley left before he could say a word.

Kingsley strode from the music room and shut the door behind him.

As soon as he stood alone in the hallway, Kingsley pushed a hand into his stomach. A wave of dizziness passed over him. He fought it off, ran upstairs to his bedroom and changed from his rain-soaked clothes into dry ones. He grabbed soap, a towel. He scrubbed at his face, rinsed the taste of Justin out of his mouth, toweled the rain from his hair and slicked his hands through it. In less than five minutes he looked like himself again—shoulder-length dark hair, dark eyes, olive skin inherited from his father. Did he look like he did ten years ago? Was he more handsome? Less? Did it matter to Søren anymore what he looked like?

“Søren...” He breathed the name like a prayer. How long had it been since he’d said that name out loud? What was he doing here? Last year Kingsley had been dying in a hospital in France, dying of infection from a gunshot wound. He remembered nothing of those days after his surgery but for the few minutes Søren had visited. He’d been too ill, barely conscious. He’d only heard Søren’s voice speaking to a doctor, demanding they treat him, heal him, save him. Kingsley thought it only a dream at the time, but when he awoke to find he’d been left a gift—access to a Swiss bank account with more than thirty million dollars in it—he knew it had been real.

That should have been it. That should have been the last time they’d seen each other. Kingsley knew that bank account had been blood money—Søren’s way of saying he was sorry for what had happened between them. The second Kingsley spent the first cent he’d accepted that apology. They were even now. No unfinished business.

So why was Søren here?

Kingsley took a steadying breath, but it did nothing to quell his light-headedness. He was almost giddy with shock. He laughed for no reason. As much as wanted to, he couldn’t leave Søren alone in the music room all night waiting for him. He had to go back, talk to him, look him in the eyes again and find out what he wanted. And he would. He could do this. Some of the most dangerous men in the world pissed themselves at the mere mention of Kingsley’s name. People feared him. They should fear him. He feared no one.

He took one more breath and readied himself to leave the bathroom and go to Søren. But then he stepped back, kicked the seat of the toilet open and vomited so hard his eyes watered.

Once he was certain he’d fully emptied his stomach of all its contents, he sat on the cold tile floor and breathed through his nose. He laughed.

Here he was, eleven years later, and Søren could still do this to him without saying a word. God damn him.

Slowly he stood and washed his mouth out again. He could run. He had money. He could leave. Go out the back door, fly away and run forever.

But no, Kingsley had to face him. He could face him. His pride demanded it of him. And if Søren had found him here, he could find him anywhere.

Outside the music room Kingsley willed his hands to stop shaking, willed his heart to slow its frenetic racing.

He threw open the door with a flourish and stepped inside.

At first he didn’t see Søren. He’d expected to find him waiting on the divan or on one of the chairs. Or perhaps even standing by the window or sitting at the piano. He hadn’t expected to find Søren bent underneath the top board of the piano. He’d turned on a lamp now, and warm light filled the room.

“What are you doing?” Kingsley asked as he came to the piano and peeked under the open lid. He spoke with a steady voice.

“Your bass notes are flat.” Søren hit a key and turned a pin inside the piano. “You shouldn’t have the piano near the window. The temperature fluctuates too much.”

“I’ll have it moved.”

“When was the last time you had it tuned?” Søren asked.

“Never.”

“I can tell.” Søren hit another key, turned another pin. Kingsley watched Søren’s hands as he worked. Large, strong and flawless hands. His clothes had changed, he’d grown taller, more handsome, and now he was a priest. But his hands hadn’t changed. They were the same hands Kingsley remembered.

Søren stood up straight and lowered the lid of the grand piano back down.

“The action is stiff. Has it not been played very often?”

“You were the first. No one’s allowed to play it.”

“No one? Then I apologize for playing it.”

“Don’t apologize. When I say no one is allowed to play it, I meant...no one but you.”

Søren glanced up and met Kingsley’s eyes. It took all of Kingsley’s resolve, fortitude and the alcohol left in his bloodstream not to break eye contact. Søren always had this way of looking at him that made Kingsley want to confess everything to him. Even back when they were teenage boys in school together, he’d had that power. But Kingsley kept silent, kept his secrets. They weren’t boys anymore.

“I’ll call someone,” Kingsley finally said. “I’ll have it tuned.”

“Call a music store. They’ll be able to recommend a good tuner.”

Kingsley and Søren studied each other over the top of the piano.

“Do you want to keep talking about the piano, or should we have a real conversation?” Søren asked.

Kingsley gave him a halfhearted smile and sat down on the piano bench. The adrenaline had subsided, but the disorientation remained. If he awoke to find himself in bed and all this was a dream, he wouldn’t be surprised.

“So...parish priest? Dominican? Franciscan?” he asked, the old words coming back to him like a language he used to be fluent in but hadn’t spoken in years.

“Jesuit,” Søren said, taking a seat on the white-and-black-striped sofa across from the piano bench.

Kingsley rubbed his forehead and laughed.

“A Jesuit. I was afraid of that. I knew they wanted you in their ranks.”

“I wasn’t recruited. It was my choice.”

“So it’s real? The collar? The vows? All of it?”

He clasped his hands in front of him between his knees.

“It is the most real thing I’ve ever done.”

Kingsley raised his hands in surrender and confusion.

“When? Why?” He gave up on his English and fell back into his French. Quand? Pourquoi?

“I know you’ll find this hard to believe, but I’ve wanted to be a priest since I was fourteen,” Søren answered in his perfect French. It felt good to speak his first language again, to hear it again, even if every word Søren said stabbed his heart like a sword. “I converted at fourteen, so I could become a Jesuit. It was all I ever wanted.”

“You never told me.”

“Of course not. When I met you...”

“What?”

Søren didn’t answer at first. Weighing his words? Or simply torturing Kingsley with silence? Kingsley remembered those long pauses before Søren would speak, as if he had to examine every word like a diamond under a jeweler’s lope before allowing it to be displayed. Kingsley could live and die and be born again waiting for Søren to answer one little question.

“When I met you,” Søren said again, “it was the first time I questioned my calling.”

Kingsley let those words hang in the air between them before tucking them inside his heart and locking them away.

“Did you think I would try to talk you out of it?” Kingsley asked once he could speak again.

“Would you have tried to talk me out of it?”

“Yes,” Kingsley said entirely without shame. “I’ll try to talk you out of it now.”

“You’re a little late. I’m ordained. You know religious orders are sacraments. They can’t be revoked. Once a priest...”

“Always a priest,” Kingsley finished the famous dictum. He wasn’t Catholic, but he’d gone to a Catholic school long enough to learn all he needed to know about the Jesuits. “But a Jesuit? Really? There are other sorts of priests. You had to join an order that takes a vow of poverty?”

“Poverty? That’s your problem with the Jesuits? Not the celibacy?”

“We’ll get to that. Let’s start with the poverty.”

Søren leaned back on the sofa and rested his chin on his hand.

“It’s good to see you again,” Søren said. “You look better than the last time I saw you.”

“The last time you saw me I was dying in a Paris hospital.”

“Glad you got over that.”

“You’re not the only one, mon ami. I should thank you—”

Søren raised his hand to stop him.

“Don’t. Please, don’t thank me.” Søren glanced away into the corner of the room. “After all that happened, after all I put you through, terrifying a doctor on your behalf was the least I could do.”

He gave Kingsley a tight smile.

“You did more than terrify a doctor. I shouldn’t tell you this, but my...employer at the time had decided to burn me.”

“Burn?”

“Remove me from existence. Letting me die in the hospital was a nice, clean way to get rid of me and everything I know. The doctors, they’d been encouraged to let me die peacefully. I would have, if you hadn’t shown up and given the counter order.”

“I’m good at giving orders.” Søren gave him the slightest of smiles.

“How did you find me? At the hospital, I mean.”

“You listed me as your next of kin when you joined the Foreign Legion.”

“That’s right,” Kingsley said. “I had no one else.”

“You had our school as my contact information. A nurse called St. Ignatius, and St. Ignatius called me.”

“How did you find me today?”

“You don’t exactly fly under the radar, Kingsley.”

Kingsley shrugged, tried and failed to laugh.

“It’s not fair, you know. I couldn’t open my eyes that day in the hospital. You saw me last year. I haven’t seen you in...too long.”

“I was in Rome, in India. I’m not sure I want to know where you’ve been.”

“You don’t.”

“What are you doing with yourself these days?”

Kingsley shrugged, sighed, raised his hands. “I own a strip club. Don’t judge me. It’s very lucrative.”

“I judge not,” Søren said. “Anything else? Job? Girlfriend? Wife? Boyfriend?”

“No job. I’m retired. No wife. But Blaise is around here somewhere. She’s the girlfriend. Sort of. And you?”

“No girlfriend,” Søren said. “And no wife, either.”

“You bastard,” he said, shaking his head. “A fucking Jesuit priest.”