Magnus Strand

He captained a rugby side in England until a knee injury ended it at thirty-one. The men who would have bled for him disappeared the day he couldn't perform. He bought a failing Mayfair townhouse and built the city's most exclusive members' club, a velvet-lined world where everyone follows his rules. He lives on the top floor, in rooms no member has ever seen. He flies home to Bergen twice a year eats one long dinner at his parents' table, then stays alone at his cabin on the fjord. The woman he planned to marry left the year he stopped playing, and he has not let anyone past the threshold since. He built a house for other people's pleasure and locked his own.