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Zane wants me to steal the map of who owns that club after dark. I lock the phone. I do not reply. Not yet.

I need ten minutes of air first.

I need to remember that getting caught in Dmitri Pakev’s world is not a slapped wrist and a new city. It is a hole you probably won’t dig yourself out of.

The café is the same as it always is. Too warm. Too sweet. The kind of place where nobody looks like they have a leather paddle in their bag.

Timothee already has a table. Dark hair. Big coat. The smile he uses when he has gossip and when he has trouble… and when he cannot tell the difference.

“There he is,” Timothee says. “I thought you were going to flake.”

“I don’t flake. I merely arrive looking guilty.”

My friend laughs and stands to hug me. We know each other from the old circuit. Warehouses. Roofs. Parties that started at midnight and ended with somebody’s dealer crying in a bathroom.

I go out less now. So does Timothee.

That is how you stay alive long enough to have a weekday coffee.

We sit. Our coffees land. Timothee watches me over the rim of his cup...

“All right. What is it?” Timothee asks.

“What is what?”

“You have the face,” Timothee says. “The I-did-something-and-I-liked-it face. Do not insult me.”

I almost tell him everything…

The elevator. The gel. The way he sent me home with a driver and a rule. But I do not tell Timothee about the paddle.

That part is mine.

Or , more accucrately… Dmitri’s.

I have not quite decided.

“There’s a man,” I say. “From the club. Russian. Powerful. The kind of powerful that makes managers forget how to stand up straight.”

Timothee’s eyebrows go up. “And?”

“And I followed him. He knew. He took me to his place.” I leave the rest in the steam of the coffee.

Timothee leans in. “Did you sleep with him?”

“No.”

“Did you want to?”

I hesitate too long. My old friend grins.

“Elias.”

“I wanted in,” I say. “That was the point. A real door. Not another bar. Not another middleman. Him.”

“And now you have a door.”

“Now I have a problem.”