I flick my eyes to Enzo. There's a protocol here, a choreography. This isn't about the answer so much as the way it's delivered. The rhythm of the thing. Enzo's hands are folded, loose, but his thumbs are white at the knuckle, a tell. He's impatient. Norm is wasting our time.
The gurney slides forward, the steel wheels whispering over the tile with a sound that is somehow more chilling than a gunshot. Heat pours from the open oven in waves thick as oil; the flesh on Norm's calves is already pink, mottling with the first stains of burn. He jerks, tries to jackknife upright, but the restraints hold. The table slews a quarter inch to the left. Enzo's foot on the pedal brings it back into place. I could almost laugh at the neatness of it; the way the man's terror makes the room feel cleaner, sharper, as if fear itself is a disinfectant purifying the air.
Norm howls. It's a real, animal sound, scraping from somewhere deeper than words. Instantly, the white floor is splattered with tears, streaked with mucus, and covered with piss. I've seen men face death with less noise; I've seen them greet it as a favor, a relief, sweet—or at least necessary. But this is not that kind of death. This is the kind that makes people remember you, the kind that puts a rusty hook in the back of memory and drags it out for years. I let the noise fill the room. It's a good warning for the staff. The front clerk is probably already updating her résumé.
"I didn't betray you!" Norm yelps. The words are barbed wire, tangled, and raw. "I swear, Massimo! On my life! I never would!" He's cowering into the restraints, his spine arched so hard it looks ready to snap. For a moment, I consider the possibility: What if heistelling the truth? But then, truth is less important than effect. The story isn't about what happened; it's about what will happen next. Order is maintained not by justice, but by consequence.
Enzo pours me another bourbon, and I let it wash down my throat. Let the words hang in the chemical air.
"You don't need to betray me to destroy my business," I explain to Norm. "You fucked up the moment you stopped paying attention."
Norm goes silent. Broken, maybe. Or calculating. I walk to the slab, set my glass down, and lean so my face is inches from his. I want him to see my eyes, to understand the nature of the thing that's about to unmake him. I want him to know it's not personal; it never is.
"I'm sorry," he wails. "I'm so sorry, Massimo. I'll make it right. Please. I'll do anything."
Anything is already happening. The gurney slides again, and now his shins are blackening. I breathe through my mouth.Never let the body's last betrayals get to you. That's where sentiment lives.
I look at Enzo. "Do it."
Enzo presses the button, and the oven's jaws close around the slab. The hiss is monstrous, a sound that wants to be remembered, but the soundproofing does its job. The room goes oddly still, like the moment after a verdict has been read.
I pour myself another drink and watch the thin thread of smoke curl from the vent, dissolving into the recirculated air. Outside, Vegas lights up the horizon.
Inside, order is restored.
"Let's go find Ann," I say, opening a small hatch inside the oven door. Heat and a sickly smell engulf me. I finish the drink and toss the empty glass into the fire, where two bodies are already turning to ash.
It's an easy disposal. Clean. No questions asked. No one weighs ashes, and even if they did, the desert is generous with its silence. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust, as they say. Enzo is on the phone before the glass even settles, giving the drivers the new address.
It's going to be a long night.
We're out of the Oven in under two minutes, the smell of rendered fat clinging to my suit like a reminder. People think the violence is the hard part.
It isn't. The hard part is deciding. Once the decision is made, everything else is just mechanics.
Outside, the air is cooler. Dawn is beginning to carve a sickle of light along the mountains, thin and sharp. Our convoy waits, engines humming, as men already move through checklists on their phones. I slide into the Escalade, and we're rolling before the door even shuts.
"The address Enzo texted?" Luc asks, eyes flicking to the rearview, waiting for my nod.
We pass a billboard for a celebrity magician, his smile blown up to the size of a house, promising miracles to anyone stupid enough to believe in them. I wonder what it would take to makehimdisappear.
Enzo scrolls through contacts beside me, expression flat, calculating. He's already three steps ahead. I let him work. My mind drifts to the business at hand. I don't torture women.
Not because I'm kind. Because they break too easily. Tears come fast. Voices crack. Promises spill out before the pain even has time to teach them anything useful. There's no measure in it. No test. No dignity. And tears—God, I hate tears. They do something to my stomach. Open me up. Leave me exposed.
Somewhere behind my ribs, a memory shifts: green eyes, blood on tile, a sobbing sound from a woman who refused to be broken.
I shove it back where it belongs. Ghosts are dangerous. The woman who taught me that is the most dangerous one of all.
The city wakes up around us, not in the way the brochures promise, but in the hour of janitors and service calls, when the party ends, and the real business begins.
And tonight, business is far from finished.
A few hours later…
My phone rings at 5:43 in the morning. I feel the vibration before I hear the sound—a reptile's warning in the dark—my father's number pulses on the screen. He never calls me this early unless something is on fire, or about to be. I answer, propping myself up in the half-light, the air in my chest already coiling tightly.
"Jenna," he says instead ofgood morning, no warmth, no ramp, just the sound of my name as a pointed reminder. "Have you seen the news?"
