The room goes cold.
The stylus trapped between his long, inked fingertips hovers over the screen. He looks up at me, expression changing into something flat and dangerous.
“You think I’m giving you a pentagram or some shit?” he says. “No fucking way.”
I don’t argue. Remy’s the best in town. Everyone knows it. Best case is not catching Hep C from some old geezer with a shitty tattoo gun and questionable sterilization. Worst? A kid mastering his stick-and-poke. Most guys trek out to Northridge for frat ink–cheap, fast, and symbolic. The artist out there isn’t half as talented as Remy, but no one expects artistry for a Baron mark. just loyalty. Just ownership.
“I know what it would mean for you to do it,” I say.
“Do you?” Remy scoffs. “Because you’re asking me to put my father’s bullshit on your body. Permanently."
There it is. The real problem.
I’m asking him to immortalize everything Remy ran from. Everything he despises.
For a moment, I think he’s going to go one step further than Perilini and toss me all the way out on the street. Then his mouth twists–not into a smile, but something close to it.
“You know what,” he says, “I’ll do it.”
There’s a weird tone in his voice and I’m not so sure this is a good idea.
Remy taps the stylus against the screen, eyes distant now, calculating. “This will just send him.”
“Him?” It takes me a minute to catch up, but Remy’s already full speed ahead.
“Me? Tattooing a Baron mark? Onyou?” He huffs a quiet laugh. “The old man will have a coronary.”
I roll my eyes. “Don’t get it twisted. I’m not trying to stir up family drama.”
“Too late, Kemp. That happened long before you got on the scene.” His grin widens. “Jesus, this will crawl up under his skin like a bad rash he can’t scratch in public.”
Christ.
Remy focuses on the tablet, and somewhere down the hall, I hear a muffled voice—or at least I think I do–too low to make out, but enough to remind me what’s going on without me.
I glance that way without meaning to. Once. Then again.
Without looking up, Remy notices.
“You keep checking the hall like you’re waiting for a verdict,” he says, adjusting his grip on the stylus.
“Yeah,” I mutter. “She’s just unpredictable. The King gave strict instructions not to leave her alone.”
“She’s not alone. Sorrin is in there.” After a minute, Remy speaks again, his voice softer than I expected. “I was there when my friend Tate died… it took me a long time to remember if it really happened.” His stylus pauses. “The people around me told me I was making shit up because that’s what they wanted to hear. So they told me that I was fucking delusional.” He laughs darkly. “I was high. Fucked up out of my mind, but I wasn’t delusional.”
The words hit harder than I want them to. “It’s hard to tell with Arianette. She doesn’t make sense a lot of the time.”
She’s killed two men since I became a Baron. She’s not innocent.
He stares at me for a long, hard minute.
The silence stretches, thick enough to feel it on my skin.
Finally, I ask, “What?”
He looks like he’s about to say something, jaw shifting, but then he shuts it down with a muttered, “Nothing.”
“No, really.”
