Seven floors above the city, in a penthouse where the lights never fully went out, Vikram stood at the window and watched rain smear the streets into long ribbons of gold and grey, and thought, as he had thought every night for seven years, about a girl who had stopped being a girl a long time ago and had never once stopped occupying every quiet corner of his mind.

He had built an empire in her absence. He told himself, in the early years, that the empire was the point: the company, the name that made rooms go quiet when he entered them, the fortune large enough to make most men forget what they’d lost in acquiring it. He had believed that for a while, the way a man believes anything he repeats often enough in the dark.