Section 47
Sit. Stay. Bleed.
Lucky
Here’s a fun fact about rope: it does not care about your bench press.
Progress so far: I’ve frayed maybe three fibers.
At this rate I’ll be free sometime next spring.
Still. You work the burr. That’s the job. You don’t get to pick the size of the hole you climb out of.
In through the nose. Out through the mouth.
Everything hurts in that specific way where your body starts filing complaints in alphabetical order. Jaw. Mouth. Ribs—those especially, because Frank’s guy has excellent aim and zero imagination, and he keeps hitting the exact same spot like he’s trying to unlock an achievement.
My helmet’s on the bar.
Upside down, next to the register, like a bowl somebody’s supposed to drop their keys in.
Four guards. I’ve had time to sort them.
The two by the bar are muscle-for-hire, all shoulders and no patience—they shift their weight constantly, which means their feet hurt, which means they’ve never stood post for longer than a shift at a Cubs game.
Guy by the DJ booth keeps checking his phone. Might as well be asleep.
Guy by the staircase, though. He doesn’t fidget. Doesn’t look at me. Watches the doors instead.
That’s the one who matters.
Two more in the hallway who can’t stop breathing like they’re auditioning.
I catalogue it all because it’s the only useful thing I can do with my hands tied, and because if I stop counting things I’ll start thinking about the phone call.
Don’t come, I told the empty room.
I have never in my life been listened to less.
The door opens.
Heels click against the concrete, and the whole room adjusts.
Please be a plumber, I think, with everything I have. Please be someone here about the ice machine.
Then she steps into the light and my chest does something I’d be embarrassed about if I had the energy.
Gia Serrano walks into a trap the way other people walk into a fancy restaurant.
Coat dark with rain. Chin level. Not one hair out of place, because of course not, because the woman would show up to the apocalypse having considered her shoes.
She looks annoyed.
And here’s the thing I’m going to have to live with: she is standing in this room because of me.
Frank didn’t beat me for information. He beat me for the visuals. I’m not a hostage, I’m a leash—and he’s holding the other end and she came anyway, and every guard in this room is watching her do it.
I lift my head. It costs more than I’d like.
Our eyes meet.
Don’t, I mouth.
Anybody watching would swear she didn’t see it.
She saw it.
She saw it and she filed it and she kept walking, and if I ever get out of this chair I am going to have some extremely respectful things to say about that.
Frank begins a typical mobster spiel about ideologies that’s long past their expiration dates.
“Red,” Frank finally says. “For him.”
And the room goes so quiet I can hear the rain hitting the high windows.
Now. Here’s my professional opinion, as the guy tied to the chair:
Take the deal.
Trade me. Get the building, get the witnesses, get out the door with her name intact and come back later with Dante’s people and enough ordnance to redecorate. I’m one man with a concussion and a folding-chair situation. She’s an institution.
Take the deal, Gia.
I try to tell her. Ribs veto the sentence somewhere around my diaphragm and it comes out as air.
She tilts her head. That small tilt. The one that means somebody is about to have a very bad quarter.
“I don’t like people touching my things,” she says.
Then she glances at me, and back at him.
“And I’m keeping both.”
Something in me goes off like a flare.
Which is a problem, because this is genuinely the worst tactical decision I have ever personally benefited from, and I love it so much I forget to breathe.
Nobody has ever refused to trade me for something.
Not once. Not in a bar, not in a barracks, not in a warehouse with a man asking questions in Italian. I have been the thing you hand over. I have been the deposit.
She just looked at a building she built and picked the dog.
I’m going to need a minute.
Frank’s smile widens, slow, and my flare gutters out, because that is not the smile of a man who lost a negotiation.
“I was hoping you’d say that.”
Right.
Of course.
He never wanted the club. He wanted her to choose me in front of witnesses, and she just did it in a room he filled with them.
She didn’t walk into a trap.
She walked into a photograph.
More men come out of the hallway. Jackets open. Not Red security—I know Red security, I’ve bought them coffee.
Frank squeezes my shoulder hard enough that the chair creaks under it, and my ribs write another complaint.
I strain against the ropes. The burr and I make our three-fiber progress.
“You’re gonna hate how this ends,” I told Frank earlier.
I stand by it. I just wish I had a single piece of evidence.
Then Frank turns his head toward the back entrance.
“Bring him in.”
A door opens somewhere behind us.
Every person in this room turns except Gia. The guards turn. Frank watches her not turning, and he likes it, because he thinks it’s control.
I’ve watched this woman for weeks. I’ve seen her surprised exactly twice—once by a dog and once by me—and both times her chin came up half an inch before anything else moved.
Her chin doesn’t move.
So it’s one of two things.
Either she’s out of moves and this is what dignity looks like on the way down—
Or she’s three moves ahead of everyone else.
God, I hope I’m right about which.