Chapter 15 Reva #2
He must see something in my face, because his expression shifts—darkens, softens, both. His thumb moves against my wrist again, over the band, and this time he covers my hand between us with his own so I stop reaching for pain.
“Don’t mark yourself up any more before he sees you,” he murmurs. “Nash notices everything.”
I swallow. “Maybe I want him to.”
“No,” Shiloh says, and there’s a quiet certainty in it that makes me go still. “You want him to underestimate you. Just like you wanted all of us to.”
Silence stretches. His hand is still around my wrist. Mine is still in his. The kitten is curled between us, warm and cozy like all of this is perfectly normal.
The back lot falls away for a second—the smell, the heat, the noise—until there’s just the pressure of his thumb and the memory of his phone light on my nightstand.
I should pull free.
Instead I say, too softly, “Ever told me I should leave.”
Shiloh goes still.
Not dramatic. Not a full-body reaction. Just one of those small, controlled pauses men like them do when something lands exactly where it hurts.
“What did he say, exactly?” His voice is careful now.
I watch him while I answer. “He said I should really think about leaving. Before it’s too late.”
A muscle jumps in his jaw. There. Finally. Something.
I hate how badly I want to ask him what it means. I hate more that I don’t trust whatever answer he’d give.
Shiloh exhales through his nose and releases my wrist slowly, like letting go costs him something. “He didn’t fire you, Reva. If you were fired, he’d have said, ‘you’re fired.’”
“That’s not what I asked.”
“I’m telling you anyway.”
He glances toward the door, then back at me, and for one reckless second I think he’s going to say something useful.
Instead he reaches up, cups the side of my neck, and leans in.
It’s not the kind of kiss he gave me in bed. Not heat, not hunger, not comfort turning dangerous.
This is brief. Deliberate. His mouth to mine for the length of one breath.
A promise, maybe. Or an apology. Or a warning in a language I haven’t learned yet.
When he pulls back, his eyes stay on mine. He tugs the kitten free of my hands, shushing my immediate protest with a finger to my lips. “I’ll watch the little booger for you. You go on. Don’t let him smell blood in the water.”
My heart trips hard enough to hurt.
“Is that advice,” I ask, my voice thin because it won’t do anything else, “or a warning?”
A shadow of his usual grin returns, tired and crooked. “That depends how smart you plan to be.”
Then he steps back, and the air between us turns cold where his body was.
“Come on,” he says, all business again. “Keep your chin up when you walk in.”
I force my feet to move.
The back corridors of Noir feel different now that I know there are rooms inside the walls. The dark paneling I barely noticed before looks deliberate tonight—too smooth, too seamless, every polished board another lie disguised as architecture.
Shiloh reaches the hidden panel without hesitation and presses his hand to a place I wouldn’t have thought to touch. The seam gives. The wall swings inward.
The dark beyond doesn’t break so much as deepen. For one irrational second, I think of a throat opening.
He goes first. I follow, because if I hesitate now I’ll hate myself for it later.
The stairwell is narrow and cooler than the bar above, the manufactured walls of the bar giving way to rough-hewn stone. The air changes—less smoke and spilled liquor, more stone and old air-conditioning. The sounds of Noir fade behind us until all I hear is our footsteps and the thud of my pulse.
That bothers me more than it should.
At the bottom, the corridor branches into smaller halls, each one plain and unmarked. Nothing decorative. Nothing inviting. Function over atmosphere. This isn’t for show. Whatever happens down here, at least in this part, isn’t meant to charm anyone.
Shiloh takes a left and stops at the last door.
Holding the kitten tucked in the crook of his left elbow, he lifts his tight hand and raps once. Then he steps aside and tips his head toward the opening with a gallows kind of courtesy that would be funny if I weren’t suddenly fighting the urge to turn around and march right back upstairs.
I refuse to be run off. I refuse to fold now, when the path I came for is finally opening. No matter what Ever meant, no matter what Nash asks, I’m here for a reason.
I step into the office before I can lose my nerve. The door closes behind me. I don’t realize until the latch clicks that Shiloh hasn’t come in.
He’s the messenger, not the shield.
The room is clean, sparse, and almost aggressively practical. A row of shelves lines one wall, neat and mostly unlabeled from where I stand. The desk is rectangular, metal, and unadorned, positioned so Nash can see the door and anyone who enters it.
Everything in the room says the same thing: useful trumps pretty.
Nash sits behind the desk like he’s been there the whole time, waiting for me to stop orbiting his business and step into the center of it.
His gaze pins me before he says a word.
“Reva…McEntire.”
The false surname in his mouth rings awkwardly in the room.
“That’s right.” His lips quirk upward, and I make myself hold his stare. My fingers twitch at my sides, wanting the rubber bands, wanting the sting, wanting anything to bleed off the charge under my skin. Not here. Not in front of him.
Not when he’s watching me with the calm patience of a man who already assumes time is on his side.
“How fancy. Why New Orleans?” he asks, running the words together until they’re one long, drawn-out syllable.
I blink once. The question isn’t what I expected.
I thought he’d start with Noir. With the house. With the questions I’ve been asking. I thought he’d come at me from the side and make me chase the point.
Instead, he goes straight to the geography.
I swallow and give him the version of the truth I built for this. “Far enough away to feel safe. Close enough that I don’t feel stranded.”
“Safe from whom?”
The follow-up is immediate. No pause. No shift in tone.
“An ex.”
I keep my face neutral. Tired, maybe. Wary. Not performative. The runaway script works best when I don’t oversell it.
Nash doesn’t react, other than a small nod. “Why Noir?”
“I heard you were hiring. The money’s good.” I lift one shoulder. “And this is the busiest place in town.”
“Who told you that?”
I almost smile. “Your front door. You had a help wanted sign.”
His expression doesn’t move. The silence stretches just long enough to make my skin tighten.
“Not good enough,” he says finally, voice low and even. “Noir is mine. I know what moves through it. People. Money. Trouble. You don’t end up under my roof by accident.”
There it is. Not an accusation, exactly.
More possession. Territoriality. The statement of a man used to tracking every variable in his orbit.
His eyes are different down here than they were upstairs—darker, deeper blue, less glint and more pressure. Like the room strips away what little warmth he shows in public and leaves only the sharp parts.
I should be careful.
Instead, I hear myself say, “If you already know why I’m here, why ask?”
He leans back a fraction, studying me. “Because I want to hear what you choose to say.”
That answer catches me off guard in a way I don’t let show. He’s not just collecting facts. He’s collecting my lies.
I lift my chin, and in spite of myself, snap a rubber band.
“Then I choose to tell you I needed a job,” I say. “I needed somewhere people mind their own business if the tips are good enough.”
The corner of his mouth almost moves. Not a smile. Not even close.
“And do they?” It should be a joke. In his voice, it sounds like a warning.
I shift my weight to keep my knees from locking. “Apparently not well enough.”
His gaze drops briefly to my wrist, where the bands sit bright against my skin, then returns to my face.
“Why are you asking my staff about men for hire, Reva McEntire?”
The question slices right through my cover story. I go still.
I make myself breathe through the jolt. “You make it sound worse than it is.”
“Do I? It’s no small thing, a girl coming in here asking for a contract killer. We tend to take that kind of thing seriously.”
A snap answer rises first—because he’s infuriating, because he’s dissecting me without lifting his voice, because I’m tired and angry and still not over the stockroom—but I shove it down.
A fight won’t help here.
I try another angle. “If someone’s gonna offer contract services, they shouldn’t judge those who hire them.”
“Mmm. I reserve that right.”
“I’ve been hurt,” I say, letting some strain bleed into my voice. “Maybe I wanted to know what my options were if he came looking again.”
Nash says nothing.
It’s the worst kind of silence—attentive, unimpressed, and impossible to fill without making a mistake.
I push, because the silence dares me to. “Maybe I wanted to know where a woman goes in a place like this if she needs someone stronger than she is.”
“You want protection?” he asks.
“I don’t think I want the strings that come with protection, exactly.”
His gaze sharpens almost invisibly.
The way he’s looking at me now—cool, clinical, detached—gets under my skin harder than if he’d made an outright threat. He doesn’t look at me with lust, or pity. He watches me with assessment, as if I’ve been reduced to a problem set on his desk.
Useful or not useful.
Liar or simply desperate.
Risk or leverage.
I can feel anger climbing up my throat, hot enough to burn away caution. He doesn’t see a person when he looks at me. He sees a variable.
What an asshole.
“Fine,” I say, and the word comes out sharper than I intended. “As you have already figured out, I am looking to hire a…k—” I stumble a little over the word, never having actually said this part aloud— “killer.”
The room goes still in a new way. Nash’s eyes narrow—not dramatically, not with shock, but with a quick, controlled focus that feels worse than either.
“For what?”
His tone doesn’t change. Mine does.
The answer comes cold and steady, because there’s no way of dressing this part up.
“I want to kill a man named Deacon Cross.”
Saying the name out loud in this room feels like striking a match.
And Nash looks like he caught the scent of smoke.