Section 52
Structural Integrity
Lucky
Construction sites all smell the same.
Dust. Metal. Wet concrete. Somebody’s terrible coffee sweating in a paper cup somewhere nearby.
Red currently smells like all of that, plus smoke that still hasn’t fully left the walls.
Four days after we set fire to the old club, I’m standing in the middle of what used to be the main floor with a clipboard in one hand, trying not to inhale drywall.
The club looks worse in daylight.
The bar is gone. The dance floor is ripped up. Half the ceiling has been cut open so electricians can curse into the wiring. Plastic sheeting hangs in strips where the VIP section used to be, fluttering every time someone opens the service door.
And somehow, despite all that, I can still see it.
What it was.
What it’s going to be.
That’s probably Gia’s fault. She looks at wreckage like it’s a rough draft.
She’s standing twenty feet away, speaking to a contractor with the expression she usually reserves for people disappointing her professionally.
Charcoal slacks. Black coat. Hair pulled back.
No wasted movement, no wasted words. Every man in the room pretends not to be adjusting his competence level in response.
It’s a little hot, honestly.
Deeply inconvenient.
She points toward the raised platform near the back wall. “No exposed conduit. I want it buried or boxed cleanly. If I can see it, you’re doing it wrong.”
The contractor, who is built like a retired bear and looks about as easy to impress, nods like she just handed down the law from a more elegant god.
“Understood.”
She turns. Sees me watching. Doesn’t smile.
Good. That would be weird in front of witnesses.
“You’re limping,” she says instead.
“I got hit in the ribs repeatedly.”
“That was four days ago.”
“Your tenderness remains overwhelming.”
She walks over, taking the clipboard right out of my hand.
I let her, because I enjoy employment.
Also because if I don’t let her do at least one controlling thing every ten minutes, she starts looking at the world like she’s about to shed blood. I’d rather it wasn’t my blood.
She scans the list. “The camera placements on the south hallway are wrong.”
“I know.”
“Then why are they still on here?”
“Because,” I say patiently, “those are Rossi’s placements. Mine are on the next page under ‘ideas that won’t get us murdered.’”
She glances up.
I shrug. “Morale.”
“That isn’t what morale means.”
“It could be.”
She gives me the look.
The one that says she’s trying very hard not to react to me where anyone can see it.
My favorite look, unfortunately.
She hands the clipboard back. “Walk with me.”
That’s not a suggestion.
I fall into step beside her as she heads toward the back corridor.
Workers part without being told. The air gets cooler away from the main floor, the damage changing from obvious to surgical—charred baseboards, cracked tile, one blackened stretch of wall where the fire caught hard and stayed hungry.
Gia stops outside what used to be the office.
The door is gone.
The frame is warped.
Inside, the room is stripped down to studs and ash.
“Bellini asked for an update,” she says.
“Did he use actual words or just show up somewhere expensive and terrifying?”
“He sent flowers.”
I turn to look at her.
“You’re kidding.”
“No.”
“What kind?”
She glances at me.
“Black dahlias.”
I whistle softly. “Bro…”
She crouches near the far wall, where the contractors have marked out dimensions in neon chalk. “I’m moving the office.”
“Good.”
Her brows lift slightly. “You don’t think sentiment matters?”
“I think a room where someone undermined your authority is maybe bad feng shui.”
She straightens. Dusts her hands off. “The Morozovs also reached out.”
That pulls me up a little.
“About Frank?”
“No.” Her tone goes flatter. “About a personal favor.”
I stare at her.
“That phrase should be illegal.”
“I agree.”
“What did they send, orchids?”
She gives me a look.
“Did they say what kind of favor?” I continue, trying to at least give the impression that I’m in control of the conversation.
“He said he’d ‘rather discuss it when the smoke clears.’”
I grimace. “Cool. Hate that.”
“Yes.”
She looks around the room again, measuring.
I look at her.
She’s quieter today, like some of the noise under her skin is busy elsewhere.
I’ve noticed it since the apartment.
Since she looked at me and said things no one says unless something has cracked.
She hasn’t taken them back.
Which is maybe worse.
Maybe better.
Definitely something.
“You sleep at all?” I ask.
She doesn’t look at me. “Some.”
“That’s not a number.”
“It wasn’t the question.”
I lean against one of the exposed studs, careful of my ribs. At least they weren’t cracked, but that doesn’t mean they don’t hurt like a motherfucker. “You know, for somebody rebuilding an empire, your bedside manner remains absolute garbage.”
“You survived.”
“Barely.”
“Still counts.”
She turns fully then, arms folding. “If you’re looking for sympathy, I’m sure Sylvie has opinions.”
“I would rather get hit with a chair.”
“Then stop complaining.”
I grin despite myself.
It fades when she doesn’t.
“Why did you stay?” she says.
I blink. “Here?”
“With Valenti,” she says. “Then after. With me.”
She goes right between the ribs, and I wouldn’t expect any less of her.
I look through the missing wall where you can barely see the edge of the floor below. Workers moving. Sparks from a welder flashing blue-white.
“Benefits package was incredible,” I say instinctively.
She waits.
That’s the problem with Gia. She doesn’t fill silence for you. She just lets it sharpen until lying feels inefficient.
So I exhale.
Shift my weight.
Tell the truth.
“Valenti pulled me in young,” I say. “Not kid-young, but young enough to still think older men with power might know what they’re doing.”
Her face gives nothing away.
“My old man was in and out,” I continue. “Mostly out. Mom was good people, but… tired. You know? We never had enough of anything except bad luck.”
I rub at the edge of my bandaged wrist. “Valenti liked strays. Especially the kind he could make useful.”
“He recruited you.”
“I’d been discharged from the army with scars to prove it. He gave me structure when I didn’t know where to find it,” I say. “Money. Work. Rules. Which felt a lot like safety, then.”
“That sounds familiar.”
There’s something dry in the way she says it that makes me look at her.
“Yeah,” I say quietly. “Funny how that works.”
I pace once across the room, then back. Too much energy under my skin to stand still with this kind of conversation happening.
“He wasn’t always bad to me,” I say. “That’s the shitty part, I guess. Men like that don’t build loyalty by being monsters all the time. They build it by making sure you remember the few times they weren’t.”
Gia’s gaze doesn’t leave me.
“He paid for my training,” I continue. “Covered bills when my mother got sick. Put food on the table when there wouldn’t have been any otherwise. Then he used every bit of gratitude like a leash.”
She goes still.
“He trusted me,” I say. “The farther up I moved, the uglier things got. By then it wasn’t just a job. It was a system. People depending on me. Me depending on it.”
“And leaving would have cost you.”
“Everything.” I laugh once, no humor in it. “Maybe not my life right away. But close enough.”
She nods once. “So why didn’t it, after he died?”
I could make a joke.
I almost do.
Instead I hear myself say, “Because you weren’t him.”
There’s a tiny change in her mouth. Her eyes. Nothing anyone else would catch.
She doesn’t interrupt.
The construction noises suddenly seem very far away.
So I keep going.
“You were different. Smarter. Less… soaked in old blood.”
“And that inspired loyalty?”
“No.” I shake my head. “At first it inspired curiosity. Loyalty came later.”
“How?”
I look around the ruined office.
At the chalk marks. The stripped walls. The place where she could have died.
“You notice things,” I say. “You remember what people are good at. You don’t confuse fear with respect, even when you use both.” I shrug. “You make room for competence. That matters more than you think.”
She looks away first this time.
Anywhere but me.
“I’m still using fear,” she says.
“Sure.”
“That doesn’t concern you?”
“It should,” I say. “But I’ve met the alternative.”
“Why did you protect me?” she asks, quieter now.
There it is. The question she’s probably been asking since before she let herself ask any of this out loud.
“Partly because it was my job,” I say, weighing my words carefully. “Then because I realized other people in your orbit kept mistaking your self-control for invulnerability.” I meet her eyes. “And partly because nobody else was saying no to the men who thought they owned pieces of you.”
Something in her expression shifts. Not enough to call it soft. But enough.
“He told me,” she says after a moment, “that I clouded your judgment.”
“Frank was a dramatic bitch.”
A real smile flickers this time and is gone before I can blink.
I continue. “My judgment was fine. My priorities changed.”
“To me.”
“Yes.”
She takes that in without any visible reaction.
Outside, someone yells for a ladder. A drill starts up. The world keeps moving, which feels rude considering the emotional climate in this room.
Gia steps closer.
Close enough that I can smell her perfume under the smoke and plaster dust.
Belladonna and blood orange.
“Why,” she asks, “did you go back that night?”
This is it. Just us and the worst decision I’ve made in months, which is saying something.
I could tell her the tactical truth. But that’s not the important part.
“Because you’d have gone in eventually.”
That makes her frown. “That’s not an answer.”
“It is.” I hold her gaze. “I knew you’d try to solve it yourself. I also knew that if there was anything in there that could help, you’d need it before Frank made his move.” I shrug carefully. “And because I couldn’t stand the thought of you walking into that blind.”
She looks angry at that.
Good. Easier than the alternatives.
She’s taking me apart in sections.
Employment. Loyalty. Protection.
Like if she asks the questions in the right order, the answer won’t be what she already knows it is.
“You could have died,” she says.
“So could you.”
“I usually don’t make stupid decisions.”
I raise an eyebrow.
She narrows her eyes.
“Fine,” she says. “I make fewer stupid decisions.”
“That’s fair.”
We’re close enough now that breathing feels like a negotiation.
There’s dust on the shoulder of her coat. Without thinking, I brush it off. Her eyes drop briefly to my hand.
I take it back slower than I should.
“You’ve become… disruptive,” she says quietly.
“…Disruptive?”
“You make me reckless.”
My mouth moves before my brain catches up.
“You make me employed.”
For one suspended second I think: well, that was the wrong sentence to say with this much sincerity in my chest.
Then her mouth does that thing again—not quite a smile, but close.
“And insufferable,” she adds.
“I contain multitudes.”
“You contain concussions.”
“Also true.”
We’re still too close.
The joke buys me exactly one second of breathing room and nothing else.
Her gaze flicks to my mouth.
Then back to my eyes.
Mine does the same.
Warning bells go off in my head with the stupid, inevitable gravity of this moment.
And then someone shouts from the hallway, “Boss? We need your sign-off on the revised electrical plan.”
Gia steps back first.
Her face resets in real time.
“Coming,” she calls.
She looks at me one more time before moving toward the door.
“Try not to bleed on the blueprints,” she says.
I glance down at my bandages. “No promises.”
She leaves.
I stand in the stripped-out office and let out a breath I’ve been holding since she asked why I stayed.