Trevor Stone carried himself with as much composure as I’ve ever seen in any man who had a gun pointed at him.

He glanced at his daughter as if he’d seen her just yesterday, glanced at the gun as if it were a gift he didn’t much care for but wouldn’t refuse, and walked into the room and headed for his desk.

“Hello, Desiree. The suntan becomes you.”

She flipped her hair and tilted her head toward him. “You think?”

Trevor’s green eyes flicked across Julian’s face, then glanced my way. “And Mr. Kenzie,” he said. “I see you returned from Florida no worse for wear.”

“These sheets binding me to a chair notwithstanding,” I said, “I’m peachy, Trevor.”

He rested his hand on the desk as he came around behind it, then reached for the wheelchair by the windows and sat in it. Desiree pivoted on her knees, following him with the gun.

“So, Julian,” Trevor said, his rich baritone filling the large room, “you’ve chosen to side with youth, I see.”

Julian crossed his hands in front of his waist, tilted his head toward the floor. “It was the most pragmatic option, sir. I’m sure you understand.”

Trevor opened the ebony humidor on his desk and Desiree cocked the pistol.

“Just a cigar, my dear.” He withdrew a Cuban the length of my calf, snipped the end off, and lit it. Small circles of smoke puffed from the fat coal as he sucked in his ruined cheeks repeatedly and got it going, and then a rich, almost oak-leaf smell permeated my nostrils.

“Hands where I can see them, Daddy.”

“I wouldn’t dream of doing otherwise,” he said and leaned back in the chair, puffed a ring into the air above his head. “So, you’ve come to finish the job those three Bulgarians couldn’t manage on the bridge last year.”

“Something like that,” she said.

He tilted his head and looked at her out of the corner of his eye. “No, it’s exactly like that, Desiree. If your speech is nebulous, remember, your mind will appear to be so as well.”

“Trevor Stone’s Rules of Engagement,” she said to me.

“Mr. Kenzie,” he said, back to staring at the rings he exhaled, “have you sampled my daughter?”

“Daddy,” Desiree said. “Really.”

“No,” I said. “Haven’t had the pleasure. Which makes me unique in this room, I think.”

His ruined lips formed their imitation of a smile. “Ah, so Desiree’s fantasy of our having a sexual history persists.”

“You told me yourself, Daddy: If something works, stick with it.”

Trevor winked at me. “I’m not without sin, but I do draw the line at incest.” He turned his head. “And Julian, how did you find my daughter’s technique in the bedroom? Was it satisfactory?”

“Quite,” Julian said, and his face twitched.

“Better than her mother’s?”