Section 17
Maintenance
Gia
Red is quiet.
The lights are low but on, the emergency strips glowing along the floor like veins. The air smells wrong without bodies in it—too clean, too honest. No bass to rearrange my insides. No laughter to blur the edges. No moving crowd to remind me I’m in charge of something bigger than my thoughts.
“Maintenance,” the sign on the door says. As if we’re fixing a leak and not recovering from an attempted execution before noon.
Diablo doesn’t care about my metaphors. He pads alongside me, nails clicking on polished concrete, head low and purposeful as he sniffs the hallway. Every few steps he pauses and looks up at me, as if checking that I’m still here and still worth guarding.
“I’m fine,” I tell him anyway, because the repetition might make it true.
He huffs through his nose and keeps walking. Egotistical mammal.
I’m halfway down the corridor toward the back offices when I hear a chair creak.
It shouldn’t be loud. But in a building that’s usually a hurricane, small sounds become announcements. The creak follows with a second noise: a soft, muttered apology.
“I’m sorry,” Lucky says, as if the chair’s feelings are in danger.
It takes me half a heartbeat before I remember to keep moving.
He’s waiting outside my private door, helmet on, hands loosely clasped in front of him.
The careful posture of someone who’s trained himself to be less noticeable than he actually is.
His jacket is zipped, his boots are clean, and his shoulders look like they haven’t dropped since the shots this morning.
He notices me immediately and goes still, which is absurd because he was already still. Somehow he manages.
“Boss,” he says.
“Lucky,” I reply.
We stand there for a moment longer than we need to. I hate the way my body reacts before my brain can do paperwork about it. The attack should have burned everything else out of me—fear, desire, distraction—but it didn’t. It just made me raw enough that everything feels sharper.
Lucky shifts his weight, the smallest movement possible, and the chair behind him complains again.
He looks back at it with annoyance, then at me like he’s bracing for criticism.
“You can stop apologizing to the furniture,” I say. “It’s not going to unionize.”
His shoulders loosen by a millimeter. “You say that, but I’ve met chairs with strong opinions.”
Diablo gives a low, approving grunt, as if he agrees that furniture cannot be trusted.
I unlock the door with my thumbprint. The latch clicks, clean and final. Lucky doesn’t move until I step aside and gesture him in.
This isn’t a home, merely a function. A secure door that only opens for me. Thick walls that swallow sound. A desk that’s never used for paperwork. A bed made with ruthless precision—white sheets, hospital corners, pillows aligned like soldiers.
I do not look at the bedside table.
Which is, of course, what makes my brain immediately light up with every single thing that table represents.
Diablo trots straight to the bed and hops up like he owns it. He circles twice, pushes his face into the pillow, and flops with a dramatic sigh that says: I have endured enough violence for one day. His eyes stay open anyway.
Lucky remains near the door.
“This is temporary,” I say, mostly to myself. “Until the street cools off.”
He nods once. “Copy that.”
I shrug off my coat and hang it on the hook by the desk.
The movement pulls at my shoulder where the recoil earlier jarred something that hasn’t decided whether it wants to ache.
My knee stings where it scraped the sidewalk.
There’s a thin line of dried blood along my cheekbone that I haven’t bothered to clean because, frankly, I earned it.
I move to the small sink in the small en suite and rinse my hands. The water runs clear, which is insulting. It should be darker after today.
Lucky stays where he is, giving me space with the dedication of a man who doesn’t understand that distance is sometimes more intimate than touch.
“You can sit,” I tell him without looking up.
He hesitates. “I am sitting.”
I turn my head.
He’s pointing at the chair by the desk—the one I use for quick meetings, the one designed to make people uncomfortable on purpose. It is, apparently, his chosen battlefield.
“You’re perched,” I correct.
“I’m… respectfully perched.”
“Stop being respectful,” I say, and regret it immediately because the room is too quiet for words to evaporate. “Stop being… like that. You’re making it worse.”
Lucky drums his fingers on the too low armrests. “Making what worse?”
“Everything,” I say finally. “The silence. The… hovering. The chair apologizing.”
He looks down at the chair as if it betrayed him. “I can stop talking to it.”
“That would be appreciated.”
“Okay.” He pauses, then adds carefully, “Do you want me to leave?”
The question forces me to admit that the answer isn’t simple.
I meet the black mirror of his visor. I can’t see his eyes, which is probably for the best, because if I could I’d have to acknowledge what they might show.
“You’re not leaving,” I say. “Not tonight.”
He nods once, immediate acceptance. Pure obedience, like this is a normal part of his job.
I move to the bed and sit on the edge, careful not to disturb Diablo’s sprawl. The mattress dips, and Diablo’s tail thumps once. I take a breath and listen.
Nothing.
No music.
No muffled laughter from the floor below.
No glass clinking behind the bar.
Red is a beast that usually roars. Tonight it’s holding its breath. The quiet presses against my skull, and my thoughts fill the empty space like smoke.
Bellini chose the morning. He chose a public street. He chose the audacity of daylight.
He chose me.
Because I’m not like the others, no matter that I was raised into this life—fed violence through mother’s milk. Because I’m a woman.
The insult sits in my chest like an anvil.
I hear Lucky shift in the chair again, and the chair creaks despite his carefulness. He freezes like he’s waiting for me to scold him.
I almost laugh.
Almost.
“Your chair is plotting against you,” I say instead.
“I know,” he whispers back, as if the chair might hear and retaliate.
Diablo lets out a quiet huff that might be a laugh if he were capable of joy in a civilized form.
I lean back on my hands and stare at the ceiling.
I should be sleeping. Or do paperwork. I should be making calls, arranging contingencies, compiling lists of names that need to disappear.
I should be angry.
And I am—but anger isn’t loud when there’s no noise to carry it. It becomes something smaller and sharper, like a needle you can’t remove. It makes you aware of everything.
Lucky’s breathing is steady. Controlled.
It’s infuriating.
It’s also, I have to admit, grounding.
I shift my weight and my eyes flick—traitorously, stupidly—to the bedside table before I can stop them.
The drawer is closed.
I know what’s in it anyway, because I put it there. Because I’m not sentimental, but I am prepared. Because sometimes the easiest way to shut your own brain up is to give it something physical to focus on.
That coping mechanism feels obscene tonight. Not because of what it is, but because of what it’s for: control without risk. Pleasure without attachment. A clean, private exit from yourself.
And now I’m lying in a room built for temporary bodies with a man who refuses to be temporary.
I can’t blame him for that, no matter how much I want to.
He hasn’t done anything wrong. That’s the problem.
I glance at him again. He’s staring straight ahead, hands folded loosely, posture still. Helmet reflecting dim light in fractured pieces. He looks like a villain from a comic book who got lost and accidentally became useful.
“Have you slept?” I ask, because the quiet is chewing through my patience.
“Not yet,” he answers.
“Why?”
He shrugs in a small motion. “I’m on shift.”
“This isn’t a shift.”
He tilts his head. “Feels like one.”
I make a sound of irritation. “You’re allowed to sleep.”
“I know.”
He doesn’t move.
I stare at him, and for a second I hate him for being so careful. For acting like he could be fired for existing in the same room as me. For refusing to take any space that wasn’t explicitly granted.
It’s stupid. And it’s probably my own damn fault.
Trust means handing someone the knife and believing they won’t use it.
I don’t do that.
“I’m not going anywhere,” he says quietly, and it takes me a second to realize he’s answering the thought I didn’t speak.
I don’t like that he can read me.
I don’t like that I don’t hate it.
“Good,” I say, because I can’t afford softness. “Don’t.”
The chair creaks again as he adjusts, and he whispers, very sincerely, “I’m sorry.”
I close my eyes.
“This is going to be a long night,” I murmur.
“Yeah,” he agrees. “But you’ve had worse.”
I open my eyes again, annoyed at the accuracy.
“How would you know?”
He pauses. “Because you’re still here.”
Diablo shifts on the bed and lets out a low, content sigh, the kind that only happens when a creature has decided a room is safe enough to sleep in.
Lucky glances at him. Then, like he can’t help himself, he adds softly, “Good boy.”
Diablo’s tail thumps once without opening his eyes.
Traitor.
My dog trusts him. It’s worse that my body does, too, in the small ways I can’t control: the way my shoulders loosen a fraction, the way my breath slows.
I also need it.
I slide farther back on the bed and pull the blanket over my legs. Diablo doesn’t move, only stretches one paw to keep contact with my thigh like he’s anchoring me.
Lucky stays in the chair.
The distance between us feels loud.
I stare at the ceiling again and try to let my mind empty.
It doesn’t.
It runs through the day in sharp flashes: the crack of gunfire, Lucky’s hand on my back, the way he went cold in an instant. The conference call. Frank’s almost-pity. Bellini’s name like a taste I want to spit out.
Then my brain, traitorous and exhausted, supplies something else: the memory of Lucky’s voice when he’s amused, the way he said rules are sacred, the warmth that lives under the helmet even when he’s trying to be a statue.
I don’t want to think about that.
I think about it anyway.
“Boss?” Lucky says quietly.
“What?”
“I’m not trying to be—” He stops, as if the sentence has too many ways to go wrong. “If you want me to move farther away, I will.”
I laugh once, sharp and humorless, and it surprises both of us.
“Don’t,” I say. “It’s fine.”
He doesn’t reply, which is rare for him.
With a sudden wash of irritation: he’s actually trying. He’s trying to respect a woman who doesn’t know what to do with respect that isn’t transactional, without flirting or inserting himself in a situation he doesn’t belong.
That makes my throat tight in a way I don’t enjoy.
“Your mentor guy,” Lucky says after a while, the words careful. “Frank.”
I don’t answer immediately.
“He thinks you’re the weakest link,” Lucky continues, and the way he says it makes it sound like an accusation, like the words are offensive on their own.
“He didn’t say that,” I reply.
“He didn’t have to.”
I turn my head slightly, looking at the outline of him in the dim light.
“You hate him,” I say.
Lucky pauses, then answers honestly. “Yeah.”
“Why?”
“Because he looked at you like you were small,” he says simply. “And you’re not.”
I stare at him in the dark, annoyed by the sincerity. Annoyed by the fact that it lands.
“That’s not your business,” I say.
“No,” he agrees. “But it’s still true.”
The chair creaks again as he shifts, and he mutters, reflexively, “Sorry.”
I would laugh if it didn’t feel too much like breaking.
I take a long breath. Another.
The room is still.
Red is still.
Somewhere out there Bellini is congratulating himself on his cleverness, on his choice, on the fact that he made me respond.
Let him.
I will respond.
I will make him regret the shape of his curiosity.
Tomorrow, I will be steel again. Tomorrow, I will be ruthless and efficient and above it all.
Tonight, I lie in a room designed for briefness, with my dog pressed against my leg and a man in a helmet sitting in a chair like a penitent.
For the first time since the morning, my pulse stops sprinting.
I don’t sleep.
But I close my eyes and let the silence exist without trying to fill it.
And when the chair creaks one last time and Lucky whispers an apology under his breath, I decide I won’t kill him for it.
Which, for me, is practically affection.