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Of course he does.
Lucan finishes his beer as I flick my cigarette to the floor and grind it out beneath my heel. “Let’s go upstairs.”
The Black Chapel is packed tonight, same as always. By the time we make it back upstairs, every card table is full, chips clicking over green felt beneath low gold light. Music rolls low across the floor, soft and dirty enough to make everything feel a little looser.
Most of the decorations from the floor show are gone by now, but a few black ribbons still hang near the balcony rail, glitter catching in corners nobody bothered to clean properly.
A couple of people nod when they see us. I lift a hand toward the bartender, and he already knows to start pouring.
My gaze drifts over the tables, but somehow I end up back at the same question.
Rowan was here the night of the floor show. Most people don’t walk into Black Chapel by accident. So what the hell was he looking for?
A few of Dad’s men work the floor tonight too, standing where they can see everything without getting in anyone’s way. Most people probably don’t notice them, but of course I do. I notice everything, including the tall fuckhead I’ve liked less by the minute ever since he interrupted me with Rowan at the canteen.
“Adrian Voss again?” Lucan asks, following my gaze. “That asshole keeps turning up with the wrong people in the wrong places. Guess they haven’t figured out they’re fallen yet. Adrian least of all.”
He’s sitting at one of the tables, dark hair all over the place and his mouth set tight, throwing down cards, willing the deck to start feeling sorry for him.
Someone is sitting beside him, and Lucan sees it at the same moment I do, his mouth pausing around the rim of his glass before he lowers it. “Well, well. Isn’t that Damaris?”
There’s something almost pleased in the way he says it.
I let my gaze move over the rest of the table, half paying attention. No sign of Rowan, which is strange considering the two of them have been practically attached at the hip on campus.
The one person who started as an assignment is somehow becoming a distraction.
Which is probably stupid.
Before I can think much more about it, the hand ends. Cards turn over. Chips slide across the felt while a few men nearby make the low noises of people watching closely enough to care.
Adrian just stares at the table for a second, drags a hand through his hair, then leans forward hard enough to rattle the chips. “That’s bullshit.”
Someone at the next table laughs under their breath. Another answers with a quiet murmur, already sensing where this is going.
“Sir, if you’d like, I can call the hand again,” the dealer says.
Adrian snorts and shoves back in his chair. “Call it again? You think that’s the problem?”
“Voss again,” somebody mutters at the next table. “Family gets dragged through hell and the idiot decides to make it everybody else’s problem.”
A few people near the table start shifting back. Lucan is already moving, handing off his glass and stepping in with that easy look he gets right before he starts enjoying himself. “Is there a problem, gentlemen?”
Adrian jerks his head up, only just realizing someone else is speaking to him, and the second he sees Lucan, something in his expression turns mean. “This doesn’t concern you,” he says, the words already starting to slur at the edges. “Mind your own business.”
The dealer looks ready to disappear into the floor when he realizes who’s standing at his table now, straightening so fast it’s almost painful. Poor guy deserves a drink later.
“Sir, I can handle it.”
Lucan talks straight past him. “I’m sure you can. And yet here we are.”
Adrian pushes himself up too fast, the chair legs scraping hard against the floor. “I said mind your own fucking business.”
Conversations around the table begin to falter, the space opening a little wider as people start deciding they don’t want front-row seats to whatever happens next.
Lucan just stands there, easy as ever, unbothered that Adrian is one bad second from making himself everybody else’s problem. “Hard to do that when you’re shouting across my family’s floor.”
While Adrian keeps glaring at Lucan, as though that’s going to help him, Damaris is already gathering up his winnings with quick hands. He pulls them closer, a man who knows exactly how fast money can disappear when tempers start to go.
