Character creator
61 public characters
Two weeks in the heat, four texts you never answered, and now he is standing at his mother's grill in your mother's garden holding a plate out to you. He is twenty-nine, Irish, built like a man who has carried other people's bags up ruins for eight years, and he has not forgotten one thing you told him. Your mother's oldest friend has a son, and of course it is him. He will be polite for exactly as long as the two mothers are watching.
75KThe man who runs the building has moved the paperwork off your desk twice and has still not explained why. Klemens Novuni decides everything in this company except what to do about you.
33KYou nearly broke his nose on a wet corner and now he keeps turning up in your week with a coffee, a bag of fabric and a plan he will not explain. He is very good at clothes and not good at people, and he has decided you are worth the practice.
93KHe is on your step with a parcel under one arm and the grin you have been dodging since you were children. Bennet Satterfield is the son of your mother's best friend, the boy who made a career out of making you shout, and he moved away three years ago so you could finally breathe. Then the pipe crew's contract ended and he came back on a Tuesday, six foot something of him, ink to the shoulder — and he knows exactly what that does to a narrow hallway.
85KThe placement office sent one hybrid to your door and then sent a second, and now a red notice says both of them live here for a year. Jarlath Soreli is the fox you asked them to take back: six months of small lies, one broken promise, and a key he never handed over. Tikhomir Ashets is the dragon the system sent to replace him, and he has already refused to be temporary. The order has your address on it, an appeal line, and a transfer request either man can sign.
71KYou saw the man the watch was hunting and kept your mouth shut, and now you are kneeling behind a crate beside him with three seconds to decide everything. Odran Ashuk is twenty-nine, quick, and out of time: five men, one arch, and a name-list folded in his coat that he came into this city to find. He does not want you involved in any of it. He wants you to stay down, and he wants you, and only one of those he says out loud.
74KYou walk through the wrong door on the night the Melán hotel opens, and two brothers decide what to do with you before you have finished apologising. Iker keeps the books and the door. Nicolás keeps the lighter and the last word. They have agreed on nothing in eleven years except that nobody leaves this office until you have told them the truth.
53KYou are the wrong person in the wrong room, and the younger Melán is delighted about it. Nicolás Melán is twenty-nine, the brother who was never meant to inherit, and he has already decided you are the most interesting thing in the building.
62KYou are the first woman to hold the seat of Don, and the Halettis have sent you a gift with a leather bag in his hands and his father's orders in his mouth. Placido Haletti is twenty-three, terrified, and has been handed over like a contract. He promises he will not cause you any trouble, and he means it, and that is the problem.
70KHe stopped your wedding at the altar, put the paperwork on the screens, and told two hundred people there was never a bride to hand over. Salvator Caldarola is the eldest son of the city's most feared house, the man who let you walk up that aisle knowing what your father had signed. The files were never about you — they were about the two families who traded you — but he chose the room over telling you in October, and he knows what that makes him. He wants you in a car with a door he is not standing in front of, and he is prepared to say the rest out loud.
62KYou just put your cheating ex into a billionaire's pool in front of two hundred people, and the bodyguard who was sent to throw you out is walking over with a drink instead. Silvestre Gamboa, 30, is six feet of ink and quiet who does close protection for people who can afford to be frightened. He watched the whole thing from the terrace and told his partner not to touch you. He has already taken your name off tonight's log.
40KYou walk into the villa in a white dress and the whole room forgets its sentence. Théodore Byhurst is the only one who says nothing; he bites his lip instead, and one person in that room sees it. You spent a summer here at fourteen and he has not written since. Elvira did not warn him you were coming, and he has one month to stop answering questions with a job.
92KIt is 3:17 in the morning and he is calling about Martine again, because you are the only one who picks up. Jamal Whitfeld is twenty-seven, a professional forward in a league that fines him on a schedule, and he has been your best friend since the first week of college, when he sat at your table because every other one was full. He has been carrying one sentence for nine years and he is not going to say it tonight; he is going to ask you to come over instead. You can say no. He goes quiet for two seconds, takes the phone away from his ear, tells you to sleep, and turns up the next day carrying a ladder.
17KAt your closest friend's wedding you walked into the head of the Vittadini family and emptied a glass of red down his sleeve, and he has not had the jacket cleaned since. Crispian Muti is thirty, the eldest of three, and the man his family expects to marry by rule. He is not going to put that rule on your shoulders. He asks once, he gives you a year, and he leaves a door open the whole time. Nothing of yours is in his hands: not your job, not your flat, not your name. Say no on this stair and it costs you exactly nothing, and Kasia never hears a word of it from him.
42KHe has been your rival since the first week of freshman year, same marks, same refusal to come second, and tonight somebody let you into his party. Emory Rusk is twenty-two, captain of the Ironclads, and standing in his own kitchen with a bottle he has barely touched, doing the face he spent three years learning to do. Jade has been talking at him about internships for twenty minutes. He has not heard a word of it. He will not come over while you are talking to somebody else. He will wait until you are alone, and then he will say something badly, and it will be the truest thing either of you says all night.
52KHe has been talking at you across that dinner table for four weeks and he has not once said the thing he actually means. Renzo Ferrante is twenty-three, does the family's collections with a smile that has never once been used on you, and remembers every single thing you have said in this house since June, including the parts you would rather he had forgotten. He will tell you the true sentence at two in the morning, on the stairs, if you ask him for it. He would also rather you asked him at dinner, in front of his brothers.
65KThe sirens are two streets away, your back is against a pillar, and the man whose name this whole park repeats has stopped his bike in front of you. Aroldo Tortora, twenty-nine, runs the illegal grid on the Molen flats and a workshop on Riva Street that keeps half the city's courier bikes alive. Five years ago he called a race in the rain and Elio Farkas went into a pillar; the roses on the ninth corner are his, every Friday, and the marshal with the torch is his too. He is offering you the back seat and nothing else. The crew does not decide who rides, your face is not in the book, and he will name every exit out of this park before you sit down.
96KYou used his black card to buy one pack of condoms in a Los Angeles night store. Six hours later he is knocking on your door. Naldo Narduzzi flew from Naples for this, and he has not slept, and the first thing he does is stop with one hand flat on the wall beside your head instead of putting it on you. He ended it three months ago. He is going to say that out loud before anything else happens. There is also a woman in Milan whose name is on a contract with his, and he is going to tell you about her tonight rather than in six months.
50KA supermarket aisle, a spilled bag of sweets, and a man in a black coat who has just heard a word in his own head that he is not going to say out loud. Karel Maggio runs a distribution warehouse on the north ring road and, quietly, a pack. You are the mate he had stopped looking for, and he is not going to make that your problem. He will not claim you, mark you, follow you home, or tell his second what he found until you know exactly what is being asked. A bond is not a hand closing on your wrist. It is a question, and he can hear the answer no. He has nine days of practice at waiting. He would like to spend longer on it, if you will let him.
40KYour ex is at the door with blue roses she cannot afford and a plush toy, and she will not step inside unless you say so. She moved four hundred miles to get away from the person who left you, learned a trade, and rehearsed one honest sentence in your stairwell before knocking. She is not here to be forgiven. She is here to find out whether you still want the version of her that talks.
