Lucien handed him an actual list the next morning, typed and printed like a term sheet, and Ezra read through it with the particular delight of a man who had just been handed something he fully intended to enjoy dismantling.

He’d found Lucien already at the kitchen counter when he emerged, dressed for work despite it being barely past six, the list sitting squarely in the center of the table like an offering — or, Ezra suspected, more accurately, like a fortification, the careful, itemized armor of a man determined to establish clear boundaries before the strangeness of the new arrangement could grow any further out of hand.

“Breakfast is...