Chapter 2
brON
Iwake up face-first in a couch that smells like old cologne, synth-whiskey, and bad decisions with excellent lighting.
For a few dense, punishing seconds, I don’t move.
I lie there half folded over the armrest with one boot still on, my cheek mashed into cracked blue upholstery, and let my soul crawl reluctantly back into my body.
My tongue feels furred over. My skull feels packed with broken glass and spite.
Somewhere in the apartment, something electronic chirps in a low-battery death rattle every thirty seconds, just to make sure I know the universe is still personally invested in my discomfort.
I peel one eye open.
Light spears through the slats of the window shades and hits me right in the face like a personal insult.
The apartment is a battlefield. Shirt over the lamp.
Empty bottles on the low table. Three betting slips stuck to the floor by something sticky I don’t care enough to identify.
One sequined jacket draped over the holo-projector like it had the decency to pass out before I did.
“Mm,” I mutter to nobody. “Gorgeous. Thriving.”
My comm is buzzing somewhere under me.
I groan, shove a hand between the couch cushions, and come up with a spoon, a cufflink, and a crumpled wristband from a club I vaguely remember leaving through the kitchen. The buzzing continues, insectile and accusatory. I twist, pat around, and finally fish my comm out from under my ribs.
Nine missed calls.
Six messages.
Three debt notices.
One extremely unhelpful reminder from my finance app that says SPENDING TREND ALERT: UNUSUAL ACTIVITY DETECTED.
“No kidding,” I tell it hoarsely.
I fumble the comm too close to my face and immediately regret possessing eyes. The screen glare drills straight into the back of my brain. I shut one eye, scroll with the other, and piece together enough of last night to make myself wince.
I won a little.
Then I lost a lot.
Then I became convinced that statistically my luck had to turn.
That is the sort of sentence people say right before their bodies are found in ornamental water features.
I drop the comm on my chest and stare at the ceiling.
The ceiling, for its part, is doing a subtle rotational thing I don’t approve of.
“Right,” I say to it. “Today we become a man of restraint and fiscal sobriety.”
Something slams into my front door hard enough to shake the wall.
I freeze.
A second later, another hit. Not knocking. Not even pounding. This is the kind of impact that says hello, I have skipped all social customs and come directly to violence.
My mouth goes dry so fast it hurts.
The third kick blows the lock plate clean off.
The door flies inward with a metallic crack, bangs against the wall, and rebounds halfway. Cold hallway air rushes in, carrying the greasy, spiced smell of the lower-tier corridor and the heavier scent beneath it—leather, engine oil, ozone weapons.
Odex.
Well. Fantastic.
Three enforcers come in first, all broad shoulders and ugly purpose, tusked and gray-skinned and dressed in dark fitted armor that says private security if you’re a coward and thug if you’ve ever met one. Their boots thud over my floor. One of them kicks aside a bottle without looking.
Mysk strolls in after them like he’s arriving late to his own birthday.
He is not Odex by birth, but he has spent so much money trying to look more menacing that the effect is almost artistic.
His coat is black reptile leather with a blood-red lining.
His rings flash. His beard is trimmed to a predatory point.
He smells like expensive smoke, bitter resin perfume, and the kind of confidence people cultivate when they’ve outsourced the stabbing.
He takes in the apartment, then me on the couch, and smiles with genuine delight.
“Bronwyn Varek,” he says. “I had hoped to find you at your most pathetic.”
I slowly push myself upright. Every joint protests. “Mysk. You shouldn’t have. I’m underdressed for company.”
One of the enforcers snorts.
Mysk’s eyes glint. “And yet you remain committed to charm. It almost makes me sentimental.”
I plant my feet on the floor and stand. Bad idea. The room tips, lurches, and then grudgingly settles into place again. I drag a hand through my hair and try to look less like something dredged from a canal.
“What is this?” I ask. “No message? No appointment window? You kick in my door before noon now?”
Mysk steps farther inside, gaze drifting over my apartment with leisurely contempt. “I sent many messages.”
“I’ve been busy.”
“You’ve been drunk.”
“That too.”
He stops at the low table and picks up one of the betting slips between two fingers. “You owe me a great deal of money.”
“I’m aware.”
“Are you?” He glances up. “Because your recent behavior suggests confusion.”
The enforcers spread out behind him, not touching anything, which somehow feels ruder than if they had started looting the place. They’re here to make a shape in the room. A threat with shoulders.
I cross to the kitchenette, every movement measured because I refuse to look hurried in my own home while men who break locks for fun assess the resale value of my organs.
I grab a glass, fill it from the filter, and swallow half of it in one go.
The water tastes metallic and cold enough to ache in my teeth.
“How much did we say?” I ask.
Mysk laughs softly. “We?”
“Fine. How much did you say I owe, since apparently my participation in this relationship is advisory.”
He names the number.
I hold very still with the glass halfway to my mouth.
It is an astonishing number. A beautiful, dramatic, life-ending number. The kind of number that should arrive with orchestral accompaniment and a priest.
I lower the glass. “That can’t be right.”
Mysk tilts his head. “Would you like an itemized statement of your collapse?”
“Actually, yes.”
He gestures. One of the enforcers taps a slate and flicks the record onto my wall display.
There it is. Every dazzling act of idiocy. Every table. Every marker. Every extension. Every drunken little moment where I apparently looked fate in the eye and said, again.
My stomach turns.
I keep my face loose anyway. “Mm. Ugly font.”
Mysk smiles wider. “Still stalling.”
“Not stalling. Processing. There’s a difference.”
“There is,” he agrees. “Processing is what prey does right before it runs.”
I laugh under my breath and set the glass down. The apartment is too warm suddenly. I can smell my own stale sweat, the citrus cleaner from some long-ago optimistic attempt at domestic dignity, the electric tang from the busted door panel. My headache has become a bright hot spike between my eyes.
I spread my hands. “All right. So. Let’s not be theatrical.”
Mysk actually looks offended. “Bron. Everything worth doing is theatrical.”
“That explains your coat.”
One of the enforcers coughs into his fist to hide a laugh. Mysk doesn’t look at him, which is somehow worse.
I lean against the counter like I’m unconcerned, like my pulse isn’t hammering hard enough to bruise. “I have income coming.”
“Do you?”
“Yes.”
“From?”
I make a show of mild annoyance, as though I hate explaining success to less glamorous men. “Royalties. Licensing. An upcoming tour package. There’s a delay, that’s all.”
Mysk watches me. His eyes are small and black and bright as polished seeds.
“An upcoming tour,” he repeats.
“That’s what I said.”
“With whom?”
I wave vaguely. “Promoters. Venues. People who value art.”
“Name one.”
I click my tongue. “That is profoundly insulting. I don’t interrogate you about your hobbies.”
“My hobby,” Mysk says, “is recovering money from men who mistake their own charisma for collateral.”
“Harsh.”
“Accurate.”
I lift my chin. “There’s a disbursement pending. One week, maybe less. You’ll be paid.”
Mysk strolls closer until he’s standing a little too near for comfort, perfume and smoke wrapping around me. He studies my face the way some people study meat for freshness.
Then he smiles. “You’re lying.”
I smile back. “Only spiritually.”
He laughs, and for one awful second relief flickers in me.
Then he turns and snaps his fingers.
One of the enforcers steps out into the hallway and returns dragging a bundled length of heavy fabric. He drops it onto my already filthy floor with a dusty thump. The cloth unfurls in a dark red spill.
Curtains.
I stare at them.
For a moment nobody says anything.
Then I look at Mysk. “What in all hells is that?”
He folds his hands in front of him. “A visual aid.”
“A visual aid.”
“Yes.”
I blink at the curtains again. Velvet. Cheap but dramatic. The sort of thing a provincial lounge singer would reject as too subtle.
“Mysk,” I say carefully, “are you threatening me with window treatments?”
“With implications,” he says. “Curtains are symbolic. Final. Intimate. Domestic. One imagines them drawn at the end of an evening, at the end of a show, at the end of a life.” He smiles like a man very pleased with his own thesis. “You understand.”
I stare.
An enforcer shifts behind him, expression blank with the deep discipline of someone determined not to laugh in front of his employer.
I rub a hand over my mouth. “That is the stupidest threat I’ve ever heard.”
“It is memorable.”
“It’s ridiculous.”
“And yet here you are, remembering it.”
I point at the heap on the floor. “You kicked in my door to present drapery.”
His smile sharpens. “I kicked in your door so you would understand that my patience is now decorative. One week, Bron. Seven days. Produce the money, or I come back and close the curtains.”
The silence after that lands thick and strange.
I should say something clever. I usually do. That’s one of the perks of being me: there’s almost always a line. A shrug. A grin. A way to make a room tilt back in my favor.
But beneath the absurdity, I can hear the iron in his voice.
He means it.
The headache vanishes under a clean wash of adrenaline.
I draw a slow breath through my nose. “One week.”
“One week.”