We step out. The doorman doesn’t even pretend to block us; he shifts so fast it’s almost funny. I catch the way he looks at me and then away, like he’s not sure if I’m supposed to be seen. Rook doesn’t introduce me. He doesn’t have to. His hand rests warm and heavy at my hip as we pass. The message is clear.
Inside, it smells like sweat and neon.
The main floor is a cathedral of sin. Dark leather booths arranged like confessionals. Private tables. A long bar in gleaming black marble, underlit so the bottles glow like stained glass. There are cages. There are shadowed alcoves. There are cameras I can’t see, which means Ash installed them.
A few night-shift staff are still here from whatever bled past dawn. Two girls wiping down tables. A bartender restocking. A man with a broken nose asleep in a booth like he lost a fight to gravity.
Every one of them watches us. No—watches him. Rook. Me second.
I’m cataloging faces automatically, posture, possible weapons within reach. I shouldn’t still be doing this. I can’t seem to stop.
“This is revenue,” Rook says quietly as we walk. “Information. Pressure. We don’t run girls. We don’t run product from here. We run leverage. They come here to feel untouchable. That makes them honest.”
“So you blackmail them,” I murmur.
Vale laughs, delighted. “She’s learning.”
“We keep records,” Saint corrects smoothly. “Blackmail is such an ugly word.”
Rook doesn’t bother to polish it. “People talk more with a warm mouth and a drink in their hand than they do under a knife. Everyone’s brave in a movie. No one’s brave with their trousers around their ankles and their name on a ledger.”
I feel my lips twitch, unasked. “And you want me to see this because…?” I ask.
“Because if you’re going to wear a crown in this house,” Rook says, like that’s not a grenade at my feet, “you don’t get to be blind to what that crown sits on.”
My mouth goes dry. He just keeps walking, like he didn’t just say that out loud in front of all of them. Saint’s eyes flick to mine. Not pity. Understanding. Wraith doesn’t react. Wraith apparently already decided this. Vale looks smug, likeof course.
I swallow. “And do your… people… know that? That I’m—”
“They will,” Rook says.
Saint’s voice comes low at my shoulder. “That’s why you’re here.”
We cut through a velvet curtain at the back of the floor and descend a hallway that smells like concrete and old damp. It gets colder. Quieter. Less public. There’s a biometric panel at the end of the corridor, then another door.
Wraith keys us in. This isn’t the club anymore. It’s the spine.
Underground. Stone walls. Vaulted, low corridors lit by red safety lights. The temperature drops ten degrees. The sound changes too — up top everything is layered, messy, human. Down here, it’s precise. Distant hum of servers. The faint clack of metal. Movement that’s intentional, not sloppy.
I know this place.The Catacombs. A different version than the first night — or maybe this is the actual catacombs and what I saw before was just an antechamber meant to scare me.
There are rooms off the hall with reinforced doors, and I don’t need anyone to explain those to me. Lock rooms. Storage. Containment.
One is open as we pass. I glance, and Rook lets me.
Guns.
Not tossed in piles. Not “gangster movie.” Ordered. Cased. Cleaned. Tagged. There’s an entire wall of long rifles and modified carbines, matte-black and gleaming under overheadlight. Shelving with sidearms in foam cutouts. Ammunition labeled, dated, logged.
This isn’t dirty street work. This is procurement.
Wraith glances over at me like he’s checking for flinch. I don’t give him one. Instead I say, “You’re not just supplying yourselves.”
“No,” he says.
I nod once. “You’re international.”
Rook’s mouth curves, just barely. “You catch on quick.”
