Human Resources was on the fourth floor, tucked behind a bright glass wall and a plastic plant that probably cost more than his bike. Bolt was already there—looking wildly out of place in a collared shirt and ink crawling up his neck. He tossed Ant a file as he walked into the room.
“You’re late, and the HR lady’s already annoyed,” Bolt grumbled.
Ant smirked. “She’ll live. Plus, I’m not really that late—only about five minutes.” He checked his watch and realized that it was more like ten minutes, and shrugged to himself.
Bolt guided him through the hallway. “This is all pretty standard. Mostly background stuff, security passes, new credentials, and you’ll be in the system by tomorrow.” Ant nodded but didn’t say much. His mind kept drifting back to the night before and his conversation with Ruby at Savage Hell.
Bolt noticed. “You good?” he asked.
Ant wasn’t about to admit that he was thinking about the sexy brunette at the club from last night, but from the way she was cozied up to Bolt’s wife, he would know exactly who Ant was talking about. “Just tired,” he lied. “I guess I stayed at the club too late last night. Should have called it a night earlier.”
“Yeah, I saw you talking to the Harlots. It was good of you to buy Ruby a round to celebrate her first day at the hospital. You know her?” he asked.
“No,” Ant lied, “not really.”
“You looked spooked last night,” Bolt assessed. “Did Ruby get under your skin or something?”
Ant hesitated. “You know her well?”
“Well enough to know she’s off-limits if you’re thinking about causing any trouble, and from what I heard from my wife, you tried to stir up some shit,” Bolt replied. “Royal Harlots protect their own. Banshee would skin a man alive before she let shit happen to that girl.”
Ant raised an eyebrow. “Really?”
Bolt nodded his head. “Yep, she has earned her place with us. Saved my life in Nashville last year and has been patching up Royal Bastards and Harlots’ wounds since before she was even licensed. Got a heart bigger than most people.”
Ant leaned casually against the wall outside HR. “That so? Cause I’ve seen her someplace that doesn’t exactly scream that she’s a doctor.”
Bolt’s eyes narrowed. “Meaning?”
Ant held his stare. “Strip club off 23. Velvet House. I work there in my spare time for them as a bouncer. She was dancing under the name of Scarlet.” He could have cut the silence with a knife, and he worried that he had said too much. Bolt’s jaw locked, and something like a warning flickered behind his eyes.
“You’re wrong,” he said firmly. “Ruby wasn’t dancing anywhere. That wasn’t her.”
Ant nodded slowly. “Sure. Maybe I mixed her up with someone else.” He hadn’t, but from the look on Bolt’s face, there would be no convincing him of the truth.
Just then, the HR door opened. A woman with large glasses and a clipboard called them in. “Anthony Sawyer,” shesaid, calling him by his full name. Only his grandmother and schoolteachers ever used his given name.
“Just Ant,” he corrected automatically, stepping inside. Bolt followed—but not before giving Ant one last look. It was a look that told him to back the fuck off, Ruby, but Ant wasn’t sure if he could do that. Because, for some gnawing reason, deep down in his gut, he just had to know if he was right—no matter what the cost.
Ant sat through paperwork, fingerprints, and an orientation video about confidentiality and operational protocol. All the while, his mind drifted. Why was she lying about working at the strip club? Who was she afraid of—her past? Or her own people? Maybe even herself, but he wouldn’t know unless he pushed the subject, and everyone was telling him to back off.
After the HR rep finished his ID badge and slid it across the desk, she smiled politely. “Welcome to Huntsville Operations, Mr. Sawyer. We appreciate what you’re doing. Just remember—” she lowered her voice, almost like she’d been trained to say it, “this unit runs on trust.”
Ant’s hand froze halfway to the badge. “Trust, right,” he murmured. He stood, pocketed the badge, and finally said the thing that’d been buzzing in his head since last night. “What happens when someone’s living two lives? Which one do we trust?” He looked straight at Bolt when he asked his questions.
Bolt stiffened beside him as HR blinked, seeming thrown off. And all Ant could do was smile, smooth and easy.
“Just a hypothetical question, of course,” he quickly added. But there was nothing hypothetical about it.
As they walked out into the sunlight, Bolt finally spoke up. “You got questions about Ruby; you bring them to me first. She has nothing to do with the FBI.”
Ant looked over. “And if I want answers, are you going to tell me to let them go?”
Bolt’s voice dropped—dangerous quiet. “Then you'd better start deciding whose side you’re really on. She’s a Harlot, and questioning her will mean questioning them all. They won’t like that, and neither will Savage and the Bastards. Don’t go borrowing trouble.” Ant wasn’t opposed to trouble. He used to love trouble when he was younger. The question was, would Ruby be trouble that he could handle?
They stood there a moment—his new HR badge on one side of Ant’s chest, and the echo of a dance studio spotlight burning on the other. He had been living two lives for a while now. He always lived in two worlds, skirting the edge of good versus bad, but still knowing the difference. Two worlds—one truth waiting to break loose. And Ant knew one thing for damn sure—he wasn’t done with Doctor Ruby Monroe. Not yet—not even by a long shot.
Hospitals always felt like a foreign country to him. They were too bright and too sterile—like they wanted to scrub out anything real. He’d healed in places like this before, but he never felt whole because of them. They were the kind of place that stitched up your body but ignored everything broken deeper inside.
