Chapter One
TWENTY-FIVE YEARS LATER
I was halfway through pouring a draft when Chain barked something at the grill and someone near the door laughed too loud, the kind of sound that usually blended into the rest of it but caught sharp that night, making me glance up just long enough to track the movement without really meaning to.
High Voltage was already packed, heat sitting heavy in the room, music low and steady under it all, and I moved through it on autopilot, beer, cash, nod, repeat, like I’d done it a hundred nights before, like nothing in here ever changed even when everything outside of it did.
I moved through it without rushing.
I worked the bar the way I worked everything else, precise, efficient, aware of angles most men never noticed. One hand poured a draft while the other swiped across the tablet mounted beneath the counter, cycling through the security feeds. Exterior lot. Side alley. Back delivery door.
All clear.
No unfamiliar movements flagged by the system I’d built three years earlier and upgraded twice since.
Order mattered.
Systems mattered.
They kept chaos where it belonged.
After what happened with Lark, I’d finally convinced Chain the extra cameras behind the bar weren’t optional. The office sat empty half the time, and I wasn’t relying on luck again. Not with cult remnants still out there somewhere, rotting but not gone.
“Still babysittin’ those screens?”
Chain’s voice carried over the music as he stepped behind the bar, broad shoulders filling the narrow space like it had been built around him.
He ran High Voltage. Vice President of The Devil’s House for five years, and the title had settled into him the way leather settled into skin — natural.
Worn-in. Unshakable. There was a contentment to him that hadn’t been there before, something forged in the months that followed everything we’d dragged Lark out of.
I didn’t look up. “I wasn’t babysitting. It’s called preventative maintenance.”
He snorted. “It’s called paranoia.”
“It’s called not getting blindsided.” I flicked him a glance. “There are more of those cult assholes out there. You want Lark safe, don’t you?”
That earned his full attention.
Chain leaned an elbow on the counter, scanning the room the way he always did, measuring tone and movement without seeming to. “Lot clean?”
“Clean,” I confirmed. “Unless you were worried about Tommy’s girl stealing napkins again.”
A low huff of laughter left him. “Let her. We have boxes.”
I slid a whiskey across to a regular without him asking for the order. He caught it and nodded once.
“You ever think,” I said, wiping down the bar with slow, deliberate strokes, “you’d be less stressed if you trusted the tech guy?”
“You pretend to live in a whole different fuckin’ generation,” Chain shot back. “How the hell are you so good at tech you claim to hate?”
“I spent a lot of time alone as a kid,” I told him. “You ate glue. I learned to code.”
His mouth twitched, but his gaze shifted past me toward the dining side of the bar.
Lark moved between tables with an ease that hadn’t been there when she first started.
She carried a tray balanced steady against her palm, blonde hair pulled back, expression calm but alert.
She’d learned the rhythm of this place, when to smile, when to step aside, when to ignore the noise.
Working here you had to learn those rules to survive.
I followed Chain’s line of sight for a second, then went back to wiping the bar. I liked watching things come clean under my hands. Liked the way a surface could go from sticky and scattered to smooth in a single pass.
“You were thinkin’ again,” Chain muttered.
“Dangerous habit.”
“Usually is.”
I reached beneath the counter and flipped the switch that rotated the music feed from the standard playlist to mine for the next set. The crackle of vinyl filtered through the speakers before the opening riff hit, something older than most of the crowd would recognize.
A few of the older members lifted their heads. Someone near the pool tables gave an approving nod.
“Man was born sixty years too late,” one of the regulars called.
I allowed myself the smallest smile. “It was a better time.”
Chain leaned closer. “You weren’t there.”
“Didn’t need to be there to know it was simpler. Families took care of each other.”
He studied me for half a second longer than usual, like he might argue the point, like he knew better, but he let it drop. “Keep the floor clear. Lark has a double shift.”
“Got it.”
At the far end of the bar, Ruby laughed at something a customer said, bright and easy as she tucked a loose strand of red hair behind her ear. She’d been at High Voltage long enough to move like she belonged. She was a damn good employee. Hard to find.
I poured another drink.
Checked the screens again.
Counted heads without meaning to.
The night rolled forward calm and controlled. Engines outside idled down as late arrivals trickled in.
The bell over the front door chimed, not loud enough to cut through the music or the rumble of conversation, but sharp enough that my head lifted automatically, more reflex than interest, because I was always tracking entrances whether I meant to or not.
And then she walked in, and something in me caught wrong—subtle, but enough to throw everything off its rhythm, like a bike idling just a little too rough under your hands.
She didn’t hesitate or linger in the doorway, didn’t look around like she needed to figure out if she belonged; she just stepped inside and let the door fall shut behind her, moving like the place already made sense to her, like a crowded biker bar on a Friday night wasn’t anything worth thinking twice about.
The neon caught her as she came in, red light dragging across dark red waves of hair pulled back just enough to show her face, the rest spilling over her shoulder with a kind of deliberate weight, and it settled over her in a way that made the color there seem deeper, warmer, like it was meant to be noticed.
I didn’t realize I’d stopped moving until the glass in front of me sat untouched and the rag in my hand had gone tight in my grip, my jaw setting as something low and heat-heavy worked its way through my chest and dropped slow into my gut, instinctive and uninvited.
Pearls rested at her throat, real ones, shifting softly with each breath, drawing my attention down along the line of her neck to the clean fit of that dress, cream with small red dots, simple at a glance but cut in a way that held its shape against her, dipping just enough that I had to pull my gaze back up before it lingered too long.
Nothing about her pushed for attention, and somehow that only made it harder to look away.
When the fabric slipped slightly at her shoulder, it revealed the edge of a rose inked into her skin, dark-lined and deliberate, and that contrast, soft polish over something permanent, settled into me in a way that didn’t come with a clean explanation.
She paused just long enough to take the room in, her gaze moving slow, measured, uncertain like most first-timers, and when it clicked for her, it showed in the way she didn’t stiffen or pull back, just absorbed it like it matched whatever she’d already decided walking in.
That was when it really landed—soft didn’t mean easy.
By then my pulse had already picked up, syncing somewhere with the bass running through the floor, everything else around me dulling out at the edges, voices fading, movement blurring, until it narrowed down to her and the way her eyes lifted and found mine without hesitation.
She held it, steady and clear, like it wasn’t a question.
Like she’d come in looking for me.
And standing there, with that look fixed on me and that hot weight sitting low in my gut, all the control I usually kept locked in tight, the reading, the distance, the patience, didn’t seem to carry much use.
All I could really track was the space between us, and the quiet certainty that my life was about to change.