Section 54
Beside Me
Lucky
There are a lot of ways a man can ruin his own life. Some are dramatic: gambling debts, bad tattoos, falling off roofs.
Some are quieter.
Like standing in the middle of a half-rebuilt nightclub thinking about the way a woman said I’m considering it like she hadn’t just tossed a grenade into your entire emotional infrastructure.
It’s been two days since that conversation. Two days of contractors, permits, shipments, security installs, and Gia pretending she didn’t alter the axis of my existence over takeout noodles.
I haven’t brought it up.
Mostly because I enjoy breathing.
Also because if she’s going to make a decision like that, she’ll do it in her own time, with all the ceremony of a guillotine blade.
Still, I’ve noticed things.
She asks for my opinion now before I give it. Which foreman is competent and which one is compensating with volume. She passes me details she used to just absorb herself. Little pieces of trust tucked into practical things, like she thinks if she wraps it in logistics I won’t notice.
Unfortunately for her, I do in fact have eyes.
By seven that evening, Red has finally emptied of everyone except the last cleaning crew and the two of us.
The place is almost ready.
The floors gleam again. The bar is stocked.
Lighting runs clean across the room in deliberate pools of gold and shadow.
The new office sits above the main floor where the sightlines are better, the access points tighter, the exits clearer.
The whole place looks like Red learned from the fire and came back meaner.
Which, honestly, mood.
I’m in the new office finishing the final security rotation when I hear the door close behind me. I don’t even have to look up to know it’s her. There are no contractors here now. No buffer.
That usually means trouble or honesty. With her, the overlap is concerning.
“You’re still here,” she says.
I glance at the papers in front of me. “Devastating observation skills as always.”
She steps further into the room. “You were supposed to leave an hour ago.”
“I was finishing the final access schedule.”
“You delegated half of that.”
“Growth.”
She makes a quiet sound in the back of her throat that might be approval in one of her less hostile dialects.
Then she says, “Sit.”
I lean back in the chair.
“Is this the kind of conversation where sitting helps?”
“Yes.”
“Ah,” I say. “So definitely ominous.”
She ignores that and moves to the window.
The new office has the best view in the building. From here you can see the whole club floor, the entrance, both bars, the balcony line, and, through the glass, the city beyond. Whoever designed it was either a control freak or in love with one.
Gia stands with her back to me for a moment, looking down at the room like she’s checking the pulse of something she built from bone and ash.
Then she turns.
And I know immediately this is not about staffing.
“I’ve been thinking,” she says.
I can’t help it—I grin.
Her eyes narrow. “You should see someone about that reflex,” she says.
“I’m just saying, that phrase has really become the emotional equivalent of hearing a pin get pulled.”
“I’m serious.”
That wipes the grin off my face.
“Okay,” I say.
Gia folds her hands behind her back, then seems to realize that makes her look too formal and lets them fall again.
“I want you.”
“Oh. Right here? Now? I mean—”
“I want you to replace Frank. And I’m not elevating you because I want to sleep with you,” she says.
Her expression hardens a fraction. “I fail to see the humor.”
“Sorry,” I say, still wrecked by the sentence. “You just really know how to make a man feel valued.”
“I am being serious.”
“I know.” I rub a hand over my jaw. “That’s why it’s funny.”
She doesn’t laugh.
The corner of her mouth does something subtle and dangerous.
“You understand,” I say, more quietly now, “that this isn’t a promotion.”
“I’m aware.”
I’ve had people trust me before. With money. With violence. With secrets they thought would keep me obedient.
This is different.
This feels like standing in front of something breakable and being told: I know you could drop it. I’m handing it to you anyway.
“It sounds,” I say, “like the worst decision in the history of organized crime.”
This time she almost smiles.
“It also sounds,” I continue, “like you’re asking for something that doesn’t fit neatly inside a job description.”
Her eyes hold mine.
“Perhaps it doesn’t.”
Well, there goes the rest of my structural integrity.
She steps forward. We’re close now. Enough that her perfume reaches me cleanly—something that has somehow become synonymous with danger and relief at the same time.
“You sure?” I ask.
It’s not really about the role anymore.
Or not only about the role.
Her gaze flicks over my face like she’s measuring the risk and deciding the numbers are ugly but manageable.
“No,” she says. “But I’m certain.”
Jesus Christ in a handbasket.
“Those are two different things.”
“I noticed.”
“Good,” I say, because if I don’t keep talking I’m going to do something reckless. “Just checking.”
She tilts her head. “You do understand I am still your employer.”
“How do you always manage to hide the sharpest thing inside the most practical sentence in the room?”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“Sure you do.”
I look away for half a second, toward the club below.
People are gone. Lights are low. Red sits waiting for tomorrow’s reopening like a beast with its eyes half open.
Then I look back at her.
“If I take that seat,” I say, “I’m not taking your throne.”
“Good,” she says immediately. “Because I’d shoot you.”
“That’s the healthiest thing you’ve ever said to me.”
“It was meant reassuringly.”
“It kind of was.”
Her mouth twitches.
God help me.
“Gia,” I say. “I need one thing clear.”
I keep going before my courage develops self-preservation instincts.
“I’m not doing this because I owe you. And I’m not staying because I don’t know how to leave.”
“I know,” she says quietly.
“I’ll stand beside you,” I say. “Gladly. Happily, actually, which is weird and probably should concern us both. But if I take that role, it’s because I choose it. And because you’re choosing me. Not because either of us got trapped there.”
The words hang between us, plain and true. More than a little frightening.
Gia’s throat moves once as she swallows.
“I’m choosing you,” she says, and there is no room in it to misunderstand. “That is the point.”
I don’t think anyone has ever said those words to me before.
It should knock me flat and end the night on its own.
Unfortunately she’s still standing three feet away looking at me like that, and I’ve never in my life been accused of making consistently excellent decisions under pressure.
I get out of the chair before I’ve fully planned it, which is a feat because my ribs still bother me.
We’re close enough now that if she wanted distance, she would have to take it.
“Say it again,” I say.
A terrible idea.
The kind I usually enjoy.
Her eyes narrow slightly. “Are you giving me orders now?”
“God, no. I like living.”
“Then don’t be greedy.”
“I’m already in love with a woman rebuilding a nightclub out of spite. Greedy was never the line.”
Fuck, okay.
That’s one way to do it.
I watch the impact hit her in real time—not shock exactly, because some part of her must have known. More like recognition arriving somewhere she’s been barricading for weeks.
Maybe longer.
“Lucky,” she says.
My name in her voice is its own kind of ruin.
“You don’t have to say it back,” I say, because apparently I’m committed to full emotional insolvency tonight.
“Good,” she says.
“That wasn’t comforting.”
“It wasn’t meant to be.”
I can see the pulse at the base of her throat. The tiny tension in her jaw. Her fingers touch the front of my shirt, light at first, like she’s not used to initiating contact without a tactical purpose. Then flatter, steadier, over my heart.
That does me in faster than any love confession, honestly.
“I don’t know how to do this well.”
“Neither do I.”
I lift my hand slowly, giving her time to stop me, and touch her jaw.
She leans into it. Such a tiny movement with such world-ending effect.
Our mouths mold together in a slow, soft motion. No crashing into each other like we’re trying to outrun another fire, not this time.
Careful at first. Warm. Testing. The kind of kiss that says I know exactly how dangerous this is and I’m here anyway.
One hand fists in my shirt.
Mine slides into her hair.
And then careful stops being sustainable.
The kiss deepens with all the tension we’ve been dragging around for weeks now—control and fear and relief and want and the absolute idiotic fact of us.
She kisses like she does everything else: deliberately, until she decides not to hold back anymore.
Which is, frankly, devastating.
I back her up exactly one step before catching myself, and pull away an inch.
I rest my forehead against hers and breathe.
“I assume you’re accepting,” she says.
I grin.
“There she is.”
“Lucky.”
“Yes,” I say, the answer landing deeper than the role. “I’m accepting.”
She nods once, like that settles everything.
“Good. There’s a breakfast meeting at nine, and I want you there.”
I stare at her.
“You kissed me and gave me a management role and now I get breakfast meetings?”
“Yes,” she says. “Is that a problem?”
“Absolutely the fuck not.”
That earns me a smile.
Honestly?
I’ve had worse nights.