The air changes the second the door shuts behind me.
Heavy. Electric. My gut coils like I’ve walked into a storm I should’ve turned my back on.
The room isn’t like the others—it isn’t dressed for seduction, not in the obvious way. It’s stripped bare, all sharp corners and shadows, with just one long table in the middle and a single lamp humming low above it. A stage dressed in silence, waiting for the actors to play their parts.
My eyes sweep the corners—habit, instinct. I’ve been in too many rooms where the man who thinks he’s in control ends up bleeding out on the carpet.
“Dean.”
The voice is smooth. Too smooth.
I followed it to the far end of the table. He’s sitting there like a king in exile, back against the chair, fingers drumming idly against the polished wood. Not my client. I know immediately. This isn’t business. This is a game.
And James—the little fucker—still hasn’t said a word.
“What the fuck is this?” My voice cuts through the silence like a blade.
The man smiles only. It’s the kind of smile that says he knows every dark secret carved into your bones. “Relax. You’re among friends.”
I don’t move closer. I don’t sit. My jaw tightens because I already know—I’m not among friends. Not here.
Club Z did nothing by halves. If you were summoned, it wasn’t for negotiation. It was an initiation. It was a debt. It was blood.
And I hadn’t agreed to pay mine.
James fidgets beside me, and the air thickens with something unspoken, something I don’t want to name. My gaze flicks to him—his sandy curls, his boyish guilt etched across his face. He can’t even look me in the eye.
“You dragged me into this?” I hiss low, quiet enough that only he can hear.
His throat bobs. He doesn’t answer. He doesn’t have to. The silence is confession enough.
The man at the table leans forward now, elbows resting like he’s been patient long enough. “Dean,” he says again, savouring it this time. “You’ve kept us waiting.”
Us.
My stomach drops.
From the shadows, movement. Two more step out, flanking him, suits cut sharp, eyes dead. This isn’t a meeting. It’s a message.
I exhale slowly through my nose, the taste of copper on my tongue from biting back every curse.
And still—through all of this—the thought snakes in unbidden, poisonous: Brooklyn.
Her name tastes dangerous in my mouth, even unspoken. She’s across the hall every night, peeking from behind the curtain, avoiding me but never far. She does not know what this place is, what threads I’m tangled in, what ghosts I’ve buried to keep standing.
And if they so much as sniff her name on me—I’ll burn this fucking place to ash.
The three of them don’t move. They just stand there, like carved statues, with the faintest flicker of amusement in their eyes. Watching me. Measuring me.
My fists clench at my sides. I’ve walked into a hundred boardrooms with billionaires and sharks, but this—this feels different. This isn’t about money, contracts, or fucking mergers. This is power. Pure, unfiltered. And it stinks of something I don’t like.
James shifts again, rubbing the back of his neck like a guilty schoolboy. My jaw grinds. I don’t want to look at him because if I do, I might wrap my hands around his throat before they even get the chance.
The man at the head of the table finally pushes back his chair, the scrape of metal on wood echoing too loudly in the stillness. He doesn’t stand fully, just leans forward into the slice of yellow light, and for the first time I see his face properly.
Calm.
Too calm.
