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I need my boy.

And I need him alive.

17

ELIAS

The basement kitchen is a steel throat, tight and close.

I came down the service stairs with the gun Hardy gave me locked and loaded and the sound of the club carnage above my head.

Zane went this way. I saw the back of his coat, the panic in the way he moved, the fixer suddenly running for a sharp exit when the heat came on.

I followed.

There was no way I was letting him go.

Now the kitchen is eerily quiet. All the staff have run. Pans still on the hobs, gas turned low or abandoned mid-service. A pot of something red has boiled over and dried in a dark streak down the steel. The walk-in hums. Fluorescent strips buzz and flicker over prep tables scarred by a thousand knives.

Hooks on a rail.

A block of blades.

Plastic tubs of chopped onion and mint left like someone expected to come back.

The floor is rubber-matted and slick in places with water and oil. Steam hangs near the dishwashers that no one switched off.

I move between the tables with the pistol up.

“Zane.” My voice carries off the steel. “Give yourself up if you want a chance of making it out alive.”

Nothing except drip from a tap.

The walk-in cycling.

I creep forward. Slow. Heel to toe. The gun is an extension of an arm that is not shaking. Far from it, in fact.

I check the corners the way Dmitri would want. The way a boy who has hustled Triad bars and Greek back rooms learns when the heat gets close.

“Last chance,” I call. “Make yourself known. Surrender. You walk out in one piece instead of a bag. Dmitri will negotiate if you hand over all your intel.”

I don’t know if that’s a promise I can keep. Or even whether I want to keep it…

Then knife comes out of nowhere.

It is a silver streak. It scrapes my left arm, opens a bright line of heat, and I drop the gun on a curse that tears out of me.

The pistol skitters across mat and tile and stops just out of reach, spinning once like it is laughing.

“Fuck,” I spit, an electric pain shooting up my arm.

I duck. Cover. I need cover.

A prep table. Blood already hot down my sleeve. The cut is not deep enough to end me. But it is deep enough to make grabbing the gun a risk I can feel in my teeth.

Zane’s voice comes from the far side of the pass, pleased and ugly…

“I knew you were poison,” Zane says. “Little boy playing with lists. I should have sold you the day you asked for Keller’s. You’re the one who should be worried now. and don’t think I buy that bullshit offer. Dmitri would kill me without a second thought. Just like how I’ll kill you.”