Chapter 31 Reva
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
REVA
They dress me like I’m an offering on the altar of war.
That thought stalks me from the second Nash tells me we’re going back to Noir.
It’s not a suggestion. It’s a directive.
It comes after the shooting in the yard, after Shiloh covers me with his body in the bed of his truck and the night cracks wide open around us, after the men spend a grim, furious hour prowling Blackwood House with guns and hard eyes and clipped voices while I sit on the edge of my bed trying to keep my body from shaking apart while Homer sits in my lap trying to escape.
Someone is trying to kill me.
Or silence me.
Or scare me into running again.
Maybe it’s Deacon. Maybe it isn’t. But the men all come to the same conclusion with the kind of brutal efficiency I’m starting to understand is natural to them: Deacon is the starting point.
Noir is where threads cross.
Noir is where power pools and weapons need to be drawn.
And if somebody wants me dead badly enough to fire into Blackwood’s backyard, then putting me in front of Deacon will start bringing things to light.
It’s what I wanted. It’s exactly what I wanted. Which probably explains why excitement and dread have been twisting together inside me all evening until I can’t separate them anymore.
I am finally getting my opportunity.
I might also be walking into the mouth of the thing that has been devouring my life since I was seven years old. Systematically destroying every single thing I ever loved or thought I loved.
Nash gave me the choice in name only.
I argued on principle. Asked him what he’d do if I said no. If I refused to go. If I decided I wasn’t interested in being paraded into one of the darkest corners of his world just because he’d decided it was the smart play.
That he was getting his way.
He looked at me from where he stood by the window in my bedroom, sleeves rolled, expression flat and dark and unreadable.
“You can stay,” he said.
Lie.
“Or you can come.”
That was truth dressed in a lie, because his eyes told me what his mouth refused to.
You’re coming.
The hours since have ticked by like preparation for my own execution, which only pisses me off more. Anger is easier to sit with than fear. Anger doesn’t make my palms sweat or my stomach pitch or my throat feel lined with broken glass.
Sweat like sickness coats my skin anyway.
By the time I retreat to my bathroom, my pulse is high and ugly under my jaw. I shut the door harder than necessary and find the clothes already laid out for me on the bed when I come back out.
Makeup is lined along my vanity in a neat row like barbed wire strung along a fence.
The dress Nash wants me to wear isn’t mine. Not really. It’s a gift from them. It isn’t me. It’s too elegant, too deliberate, too much like strategy turned into silk.
Too fucking red.
Pointedly ignoring it, I shower for too long and scrub my skin until it’s pink and gleaming and no more free of dread than it was before.
I dry my hair slowly, glaring at the makeup in challenge. This is the price I have to pay for revenge.
I wish the reminder did some good. Instead, the longer I stare at my own face in the mirror, the easier it is for dread to creep in around the edges.
Finally, time runs out.
They’re outside my door. I can feel them there, restless and prowling, the energy in the hallway like a storm rubbing its hands together. I slide the dress up my body and stare at myself in the mirror like I just put on someone else’s skin.
Maybe I have always been wearing someone else’s skin.
From the moment loss struck and my childhood ended, I’ve been trapped in a long, ugly game of make-believe. Foster child. Good girl. Survivor. Avenger. Lover. Pawn. Guest. Prisoner.
Tonight, the dress is simply the newest costume.
I smooth a hand down the front and the fabric ripples around my fingertips like dark water. It skims my hips, hangs to the floor, the corset bodice cut low without crossing into vulgarity. The effect is worse for its restraint. Elegant. Dangerous. Like a knife in a velvet sheath.
The woman in the mirror looks composed enough to kill somebody and gorgeous enough to be invited to do it.
I leave my hair loose. Paint my eyes for war and my mouth red enough to pass for blood.
Seduction in lace and silk, but the dress hides nothing. There’s nowhere to stash a weapon in it. No room for a blade at the thigh or a gun at the waist, no matter how creative I got.
Which is why, when I reach for my bag at the foot of the bed and check inside anyway, some stupid hopeful part of me expecting to find the pistol there, panic flashes first and rage follows when it’s gone.
I know immediately who took it.
I stomp barefoot into the hallway, strangling the strap of the bag in one fist. Nash steps in front of me before I make it three feet. His gaze drops unerringly to the bag and one dark brow lifts.
“You don’t need that,” he says, calm as a grave. “And it wasn’t yours anyway.”
“How do you know?”
His mouth barely moves. “Because if you pull a weapon in that place, you die. And you took it from me, little wolf.”
I want to scratch the smugness from his face. I want to hurt him just enough to see if the expression changes. I want to go up on my toes and kiss him senseless and hate myself for wanting that too.
Instead I let the bag drop at my feet rather than throw it at him.
“Jackass.”
He stares at me long enough for the self-hatred to begin welling where my pride gives out.
Then he just says, even and low, “Get your shoes.”
He’s done playing. We’re wasting time.
Ever escorts me back inside without a word.
Silent and grounding, as always. Shiloh hovers close when I come back out in heels, too charming and too smooth for any of this to feel normal, but there’s a tension in him tonight that no smile can hide.
The men move like a unit around me. Even when one of them isn’t touching me, the others are there—a brush of fingers at the small of my back, a gust of breath near my temple, a hand waiting at my elbow.
This, I think as we walk, is what “claimed” looks like in their world.
Hot night air does nothing against the charge of their presence. My skin warms despite the sickness in my gut.
We don’t use the bar entrance of Noir, nor the paneled entrance that led below the first time.
Instead they take me outside, around to the annex attached to the main building where a trick of the light hides a secondary door so well I would never have found it on my own. Once Nash shows it to me, though, it becomes impossible to miss.
The sounds change with every stone step we take downward. Lower bass. Murmured deals. The clack of chips. Laughter with teeth in it.
I’ve seen parts of Noir Night already. Enough to know it isn’t a fantasy. Enough to know all the cages and card tables and curtained rooms are all very real.
But this entrance is different. This is not the curious, illicit descent of a girl sneaking in through a side door with a friend and a bad plan.
This is processional. Beautiful. Dangerous in a very different way.
The stairs open onto the main floor where the lighting is warmer and the shadows are deeper than memory. It’s more crowded tonight. Richer. More dangerous.
Every eye in the room turns.
Patrons pack the space, already drinking, already gambling, already watching one another with the gleaming appetite of predators who know there is no law below ground but the kind men like Nash enforce.
And the men I’m starting to fall for—God help me—are part of the ecosystem.
Native to it. Feared in it. Beautiful in it in the way venomous things often are.
They own this world and move through it accordingly.
My stomach twists, dripping heat and dread in equal measure, and Nash is there at my side with his hand firm on my lower back. His fingers are warning and claim both.
“Smile,” he says under his breath. “Don’t talk unless I tell you.”
Then he maneuvers me into position like a hostess. Like an asset. Like bait.
The realization makes my pulse leap, but I don’t fight him. Not outwardly.
This is their world, and I will absolutely listen to direction if it means I survive the night.
Shiloh and Ever fan out around him at once, their masks already in place. They know where to go, who to greet, which tables matter, who needs to be warmed up and who already belongs to them.
Servers slide through the room in black on black, easy to overlook by design.
I’m the only bright thing in motion.
A splash of blood on snow.
Exactly the way Nash intended. And I don’t hate him for handing me the red dress anymore. There’s power in his act. I just couldn’t see it.
This place isn’t what I expected it to be, and somehow it’s everything I feared it would be.
The gaming tables sit beneath low ceilings that make the underground space feel close and pressurized, but the furnishings are lush.
Plush seating. Black lacquer. Crystal. Gold-edged cards.
Every corner whispers money and vice in equal measure.
Private doors branch off into the more secluded rooms where higher-paying patrons can indulge whatever version of depravity they prefer.
Somewhere nearby, a woman laughs. The sound is noxious and acidic. It scrapes at the back of my teeth.
Nash keeps his hand on me, and with everyone watching, I lean into the contact before I can stop myself. He doesn’t shy from it. If anything, his palm presses more firmly against my back, and when our eyes lock for one charged second, there’s something in his I haven’t seen before.
Something more dangerous than tenderness.
Devotion mixed with obsession. Something I never thought I’d see in his gaze.
He turns away to greet an arriving couple, the woman clinging to the arm of a much older man in diamonds and boredom. Ever materializes to escort them away from us, deeper into the room. Shiloh says something low to a dealer and gets a grin in return.
Time loses shape in a place like this. It’s designed to.