2. Knox
TWO
KNOX
Mari sits at the clubhouse bar at three in the morning with Leveaux's threat beside her laptop and anger holding her upright.
Fear is there too. I saw it in the parking lot, one flash before she turned it into a problem to solve. Anyone else would've missed it.
I don't miss things about Mari.
That's been the problem since the week she arrived.
Ghost is checking the security footage from the Pit. Razor has the photograph bagged and is tracing the number. Forge is on his way back from Inessa's place because threats against our people don't wait until business hours.
Mari has built a map of the eleven betting accounts across three screens.
"They were funded from separate wallets," she says. "But the deposits all passed through the same exchange within forty minutes. Whoever did this wanted the accounts to look unrelated at first glance, not under scrutiny."
I set a mug of coffee beside her.
She looks at it. "This is fresh."
"That's generally how coffee works."
"At this hour, you usually give me whatever's been cooking since midnight."
"You've had a difficult evening."
Her gaze lifts to mine. "Is this comfort coffee, Knox?"
"Drink it before I reconsider."
She wraps both hands around the mug. I know she'll take one sip, forget it while she works, and complain when it's cold.
I know she sleeps with the television on when storms roll through because silence makes the thunder worse.
I know Mémère raised her after her mother left, and that Mari still talks to the old woman when life refuses to make sense.
I know too much for a man who keeps insisting she's only a colleague.
Forge walks in wearing jeans, boots, and the expression of a president who has been dragged away from a warm bed for something worth killing over.
"Show me," he says.
Mari does. The attack on the book. The text. The photograph.
Forge reads the words on the back twice. "Leveaux?"
"That's the name he used," I say. "Could be somebody borrowing it."
"It isn't," Mari says.
We both look at her.
She rotates the laptop. "The funding exchange is based in New Orleans. Four of the accounts used prepaid numbers bought within six blocks of Leveaux's venue. One of the account holders placed bets on his last three cards. He isn't hiding because this is a warning, not an attack."
Forge studies her the way he studies a new weapon. "What would the attack look like?"
"He overwhelms the live book with linked bets before I can move the line.
Or he compromises our settlement accounts and diverts payouts.
Or he makes the Pit look unreliable, so fighters and bettors move to him.
" She taps the photograph. "But this says he needs something I control.
If he could simply take us down, he wouldn't need to scare me first."
"Access," I say.
"Or cooperation."
My phone rings.
Unknown number.
The room goes quiet when I answer.
"Barrera."
A man's voice comes through, smooth and calm. "I was hoping Mariana might pick up."
Every muscle in my back locks. "You don't call her."
"Then perhaps you should stop answering her invitations."
"You slashed her tire and took pictures outside her home. That's not an invitation."
"A little theater. No one touched her."
"You don't get credit for restraint after threatening a woman."
Mari reaches for the phone. I shake my head.
She holds out her hand and mouths, My name is in this.
I put the call on speaker instead.
"Mr. Leveaux," she says. Her voice is steady enough to cut glass. "You spent fourteen thousand dollars tonight to prove my security caught your security. Expensive theater."
A pause.
Then he laughs once. "Mémère Castex would've liked you."
Mari goes still.
I grip the phone harder. "How do you know about her grandmother?"
"New Orleans remembers people. Especially people who controlled profitable rooms for forty years."
"What do you want?" Mari asks.
"A joint card. My fighters, your venue, your book. The Gulf Coast is too small for two operations wasting money trying to outgrow one another."
"You haven't been invited into our operation," Forge says.
"Forge. Good. All the necessary people are there." Leveaux sounds pleased, which makes me want to put my fist through the phone. "Meet me Saturday. Noon. Your clubhouse, if familiar walls make you feel safer. I'll bring Cortez and one adviser. You bring whoever understands your money."
"And if we decline?" Mari asks.
"Then tonight's test becomes a demonstration."
The line goes dead.
Forge looks at me. "We take the meeting."
"Agreed."
Mari closes one spreadsheet and opens another. "I need everything Razor can find on Leveaux's backers, his payout history, and his fighter contracts. If he wants a joint card badly enough to threaten me, the event isn't the prize. The book is."
"You're not going home," I say.
Her hands pause over the keyboard. "We covered this. One night."
"That was before he proved he knows your grandmother's name."
"My grandmother ran an illegal card room for half a century. Half of New Orleans knew her name."
"He knows where you live."
"Then Ghost checks the apartment, Razor improves the cameras, and I continue doing my job."
"Your job isn't worth your life."
Her chair scrapes back. "Don't do that."
"Do what?"
"Turn me into something you need to store safely while the men solve the problem. He targeted me because I run the book. Locking me away tells him he picked the right pressure point."
"Keeping you breathing isn't an insult to your competence."
"Deciding for me is."
Forge's gaze moves between us. Razor suddenly finds the far wall fascinating.
I force my voice lower. "You can work from here. You can run every number and make every decision. But until we know who took that photograph, you don't sleep alone in an apartment with one street-facing door."
"Where exactly do you suggest I sleep?"
"My place."
The words leave before I consider how they sound.
Silence lands hard.
Mari's expression changes by half a degree. Enough that I see it.
Forge coughs into his fist. "That seems secure."
I consider murdering my president.
Mari folds her arms. "Your house has one bedroom."
"It has a couch."
"You are six-one."
"The couch and I have an understanding."
"I'll stay at the clubhouse."
"Too many people know this location."
"And nobody knows yours?"
"People know where I live. They also know better than to come through the door."
Something hot and furious flashes in her eyes. "That's exactly the kind of ridiculous masculine logic I despise."
"You can despise it from my guest room."
"You just said you had one bedroom."
"The office has a foldout bed."
"That isn't a guest room."
"It becomes one when a guest is difficult enough."
Forge's mouth twitches. Mari sees it and points at him. "Don't encourage him."
"Wouldn't dream of it," Forge says, lying badly.
She turns back to me. "I am not leaving my work."
"I'm not asking you to."
"I make my own calls."
"Always have."
"And you don't stand over me every second like a prison guard."
"I have a club to run. I couldn't manage every second if I wanted to."
She considers me, reading the offer for hidden terms.
"Three nights," she says. "Until Saturday's meeting. After that, we reassess."
"Fine."
"And I'm driving myself."
"Your tire is slashed."
"Tomorrow. After you replace it."
"I'm not your mechanic."
"You're the man who kidnapped me with comfort coffee. Expand your skill set."
Razor laughs. Actually laughs. It might be the first time I've heard the sound this year.
Mari returns to her laptop as if the matter is settled. It is, because she decided it was.
I move to the far end of the bar and call Ghost.
"Anything?"
"Camera on the east lot was looped for seven minutes," he says. "Whoever did it knew our system. Not well enough to erase the original file, but well enough to delay us. I'm restoring it."
"Inside help?"
"Maybe. Or someone got access to the old plans."
I look at Mari. She's explaining a transaction trail to Forge, one hand moving as she talks. Angry, brilliant, alive.
Leveaux called her the necessary person in the room. He was right, and that's what makes the threat worse. Men like him don't waste effort on decoration. He studied the Pit and found its heart.
He just mistook the heart for something soft.
At dawn, I drive Mari to my house in her car because she refuses to abandon it after a prospect changes the tire. She spends the ride answering messages and pretending the photograph isn't folded inside the evidence bag at her feet.
My place sits twenty minutes outside Baton Rouge on a quiet strip of land with more trees than neighbors. Small brick house, detached garage, fence around the back. Nothing a man with club connections couldn't find. Enough open ground that he'd regret approaching.
I carry her laptop bag inside. She carries everything else.
"Office is down the hall," I say. "Clean sheets are in the cabinet. Bathroom's yours."
She looks around the living room. Leather couch. Old coffee table. One framed photograph of my mother and sister. No decoration I didn't inherit or need.
"This is exactly what I expected," she says.
"I'm not sure that's flattering."
"It isn't."
I should leave it there. Instead I ask, "What did you expect?"
She looks at me over her shoulder. "A place built for leaving quickly."
The answer lands too close.
"My apartment looks lived in," I tell her.
"Your apartment looks like somebody made a decision to stay." She nods toward the photograph on the shelf. "Your mother and sister?"
"My mother, Rosa. My sister, Elena. Picture's old. Elena has two girls now."
"Do they live nearby?"
"San Antonio."
"Do you visit?"
"When I can."
Mari gives me the same look she uses when a fighter claims a late payment is already on the way. "That means not enough."
"The club keeps me busy."
"The club keeps everybody busy. Wreck still manages to call his mother every Sunday, loudly enough that half the clubhouse knows what she cooked."
I lean against the counter. "You collect information on all of us?"
"Only the information people announce at full volume." She crosses to the photograph but doesn't touch it. "Mémère used to say a home tells you what its owner expects next. Hers expected company. Mine expects work, coffee, and occasionally Cécile arriving with food I didn't request."
"And mine?"
Her gaze moves over the bare walls and the clear surfaces. "Yours expects an alarm call."
I should make a joke. Instead, I look around and see the room through her eyes: nothing left out, nothing that would slow me down if Forge called, no evidence that I expect anyone to wait here.
"Empty is easier," I say.
"Easier isn't always safer."
The words are quiet. They land anyway.
She turns toward the office, giving me the dignity of not watching while I absorb them.
"Get some sleep, Mari."
"Are you?"
"Eventually."
"That's a no."
She walks toward the office, then stops.
"Knox."
"Yeah?"
"Thank you for asking instead of ordering. Eventually."
"Don't get sentimental."
"I'd hate to frighten you."
The office door closes behind her.
I stand in my empty living room and listen to the faint movements of a woman I've wanted for longer than I've been willing to admit making herself at home in the one place I've never brought her.
Leveaux thinks he found my vulnerability.
The truth is worse.
He found the one person who can talk me out of a bad decision, and the one person I might burn every good decision to protect.