27. Mike
MIKE
I'm sitting in my office counting money.
I check the security cameras. I spot Ryan coming in.
Nocturne is full tonight. Preston Vale has a table of four, already three bottles deep. Dane Mercer is working a woman half his age by the window.
There's a woman with her back to the camera. It's Janet.
I lean closer to the screen. Same coat. Same posture, straight and still in the middle of a moving room. My hand goes to my phone before I even know I'm doing it.
I remember she blocked me.
I set the phone down. I check the camera again. She's still there.
I go out onto the floor to the bar.
I grab her arm. "Hey."
She turns. "Hey, yourself."
It's not her. Same length. Same color, dark and straight, falling past her shoulders. Wrong face. Wrong eyes. For a second, I can't say anything at all.
"Sorry, I thought you were someone else," I say.
"I can be someone else."
The bartender comes over. "Can I get you something, boss?"
"Boss," she smiles.
"Excuse me," I say. "Get her a drink on us." I turn before she can say anything else.
I haven't been fine in two weeks, ever since I learned my number got blocked. I keep doing this. Catching a flash of dark hair and feeling my whole chest drop before my brain catches up. I need to stop.
I look for Ryan.
The room sounds the way it's supposed to sound — money, ice, a low bass line under all of it. No Ryan. I scan the booths, the bar, the back tables.
A guy comes out of the hallway by the bathrooms fast, head down, jacket pulled close, moving like he wants to be invisible. I watch him cut straight for the exit without stopping.
I don't see Nico anywhere.
I move toward the hallway.
I hear them before I'm through the door — impact, something hitting tile, a grunt, a crash.
I push inside and it's already full-blown.
Nico has Ryan by the collar against the stall door, Ryan's got a fist in Nico's ribs, and they are both fully in it, neither one of them interested in stopping.
The paper towel dispenser is on the floor.
One stall door is hanging off its hinge.
I don't think. I get in.
I grab Nico from behind, both arms, and haul him back. He's two hundred and ten pounds of muscle, and he does not want to move. Ryan lunges forward, and I get a shoulder into his chest, driving him back into the wall.
"Stop." I'm between them now, one hand on each. "Both of you. Stop."
Ryan's bleeding from the lip. Nico's got a cut opening above his eyebrow. They're both breathing hard, still locked on each other over my shoulders.
"I said stop."
Something in the room shifts. Not calm. The pause before the next move.
I look at Ryan. "Get out. Upstairs. Now."
"Mike—"
"Now."
He straightens his jacket. Takes his time. Shoulders back, like leaving is his idea. He goes.
I let go of Nico. We both stand there a second in the wreckage of the bathroom: the broken door, the water on the floor, the dispenser lying sideways by the sink.
"What happened?"
Nico wipes the cut above his eye with the back of his hand. "He was selling in here, Mike." He looks at me steadily. "Drugs. Out of your bathroom."
Nico's got ice pressed to his eyebrow when I find him by the service hallway five minutes later. The bathroom's already being cleaned, the door propped, a guy from the kitchen mopping the floor.
"Are you good?" I ask.
"I've had worse."
"I know."
"He's done, Mike. He has to go."
"I sent him upstairs."
"That's not what I'm talking about, and you know it." He lowers the ice. There's a mark coming up dark along his jaw, and the cut above his eye is still seeping. "You think that's the last time? You think it gets better from here?"
"I'll talk to him."
"You've been talking to him since he got out of prison. How's that working?"
I don't answer that.
"I'm not asking you to cut him off," Nico says. "I'm asking you to keep your club clean. There's a difference, but you keep acting like there isn't one."
"There isn't one. Not to him."
"Then that's his problem, not yours." He tosses the ice pack into a bus bin against the wall. "Ban him, Mike. I mean it."
"I'm not going to ban my brother from my club."
"He's going to get this place shut down. He's going to get you shut down."
"He's my brother."
"I know what he is." Nico's voice doesn't rise. It never does, which is worse than if it did. "I also know what you are, and I watched you build this place out of nothing for three years, and I am not going to stand here and watch him burn it down because you can't say no to him."
"I'm not banning him."
He looks at me for a long moment, the kind of look that used to mean something in a different country, in a different life, when the only thing that mattered was whether I'd watch his back.
"Then I don't know what to tell you," he says, and walks back toward the floor.
I go upstairs.
Ryan's pacing with a drink in his hand. "You know I can take that guy, right?"
"What do you think you're doing?"
"Trying to make a little extra cash."
"I gave you money."
"You my little brother; I'm not going to come to you every time I need money."
"You can't sell in here."
"I'm going to keep it under the radar."
"No."
"What you should do is fire that guy and hire me to do security."
"You think so?"
"You think I'm kidding? Nobody better at catching crooks than a guy who's been inside. Think about it."
"I need you to promise me you'll never do that again."
"You want me to promise you?"
"I do."
"And if I don't promise you."
"Then I got to ban you."
"Me? Your own brother?"
Ryan walks over to me. He hugs me. “I love you, brother,” kisses me on the cheek. He leaves.