Red Flag

In life a red flag is a reason to leave. In fiction it's a reason to stay, because the reader is safe and the character isn't. That gap is the whole appeal: you can read your way into something you'd never allow in your own kitchen.

He knows things about you he shouldn't. He decides for you before you've been asked. He says “mine” before there's any right to.

Dante in “Under His Protection” offers protection you never requested. In “Nightclub of Shadows” the owner sees through your cover and hires you regardless, which should make you wonder why. And the publisher in “The Antiquarian's Debt” knows more about you than you've ever told him. How deep into the red you go is what the intensity setting is for.