Chapter 19: "If you say so."

“So, what do you want to know?”

I turn that question around for a while, sipping the drink he’s offered and rolling the taste in my mouth, feeling it on my tongue.

An itch runs down a patch of my neck but I ignore it.

“Where has he been all these years?”

That seems like a good place to start.

I know almost nothing about Caelum, and I've heard nothing about him. He’s rich, that much is clear, but being rich doesn’t equate to being almost nonexistent.

Yes, the rich will sometimes lead reclusive lives, but even the reclusively rich are well known in their circles. I should have heard something about him.

Maybe he runs a distilling company.

“He’s been on travels, moving here and there and never staying in one place for long,

Caelum’s always been a business-oriented person and his work takes him all around. He should have flown the coop by now, but for some reason he’s making no indication of doing that.”

I nod as one of my eyebrows arches contemplatively, “So he was here on a visit the d