Page 97 of Jude

‘Aye aye, captain,’ I said, sashaying away, sensing the heat of his gaze on my ass.

The production team began the five-hour setup.

Keen to get my hands dirty and be useful, I hooked my fingers into my denim pockets and stepped close to a maze of black audio cables.

The band’s sound engineer, a pleasant-faced Australian named Charlie, held a bundle of fiber-optic leads.

He grunted in surprise when I knelt beside him.

‘Can I help?’

‘You’re Jude’s bird, aren’t you?’

I arched a brow at the slang.

‘Sì, I’m his chica,’ I quipped, leaning into my Italian accent.

He laughed.

‘You’ve done this before, love?’ he asked, his Aussie inflection thick over the rattle of road cases rolling across the floor.

‘I’m good with my hands,’ I said. ‘And I don’t mind getting dirty.’

He grinned at me.

‘Takes a whole new skillset, honey.’

Charlie showed me how to wind a cable in circles so it never got tangled.

For two hours, I hauled dense rubber snake cables and helped the riggers secure the connectors.

Occasionally, my eyes drifted upward toward the expansive roof structure.

The lighting grid was a spectacular engineering marvel, a motorized array of hundreds of moving-head lasers and strobe arrays.

LED blinder pods hung from the structural steel like a high-tech constellation as sound speakers were strung up.

The intricacy of the setup blew my mind.

At one point, Jude came by to check on me.

‘Is she helping or stirring shit?’ he called out to the sound crew.

‘She needs to be banned, mate.’

Charlie grinned and winked as he spoke, and everyone around us chuckled.

‘Yeah, nah, she’s way too cool, and giving us a laugh with her wild stories of life in Italy.’

Sitting on a nearby crate was Mason, the Six Sinners’ business manager.

The lean, intense, and boisterous Australian man sported a thick blonde beard, a booming guffaw, and an endless supply of dry jokes.

‘How dare you accuse your wife of causing chaos, brother?’ he ribbed Jude. ‘You’re the freakin’ chaos agent around here. If your man misses his opening chord change tonight, Sofia, like he did last week, we’re swapping him out for a new co-lead. I’ve got a few young guns with voices that leave you weeping lined up.’

Mason’s blue eyes crinkled with mischief as he handed me a bottle of mineral water.

His other half, Nari, slight, dark-haired and always in jeans and Converse sneakers, appeared on his other side.