5. Greer
GREER
Istand in front of my bedroom mirror, buttoning my shirt with methodical precision.
Light blue oxford, sleeves rolled to expose forearms, paired with dark slacks that actually fit properly instead of the slightly-too-loose professional standard.
The transformation is subtle but deliberate—still clean-cut enough to satisfy whatever Zaria seems to prefer, but different.
Sharper edges showing through the polished exterior.
My hair refuses to cooperate, staying messily tousled no matter how many times I try to fix it. Eventually I give up, running my hands through it one last time and accepting that some things can't be controlled.
The face looking back at me isn't quite the same one from a month ago. Something in my eyes has shifted, hardened. Like all the careful compartmentalization I've been doing—work during the day, Jersey at night, never letting the two worlds touch—is starting to show cracks in the facade.
I've been going to Jersey every night for five weeks now.
Sometimes I find Zaria immediately, sometimes I have to hunt through three or four locations before I track her down.
But I always find her. And she always pushes back, testing me, trying to scare me off with warnings and mockery and that sharp tongue that cuts as much as it draws me in.
The bartenders know me now. Tommy behind the bar at Sal's, Vaughn at the underground spot near the docks, even Dante who runs the quieter establishment on Fifth Street.
If I walk in and Zaria isn't there, someone will point me in the right direction.
"Viper's at the warehouse tonight" or "Heard she's meeting someone at the north side club. "
I slip on my watch—expensive, a gift from Hayes last Christmas that I rarely wore before but now feels appropriate—and head downstairs.
My messenger bag sits by the door, untouched since Friday.
I haven't brought work home in two weeks.
Haven't cared about the quarterly reports or client presentations or any of the shit that used to consume my attention.
Jake asked if I was okay last Thursday. Said I seemed "different" and "distracted." I'd deflected with some vague comment about stress and a new workout routine, and he'd accepted it because people always accept surface explanations when the truth would be too complicated.
I'm grabbing my keys when the doorbell rings.
Lilah.
I can see her through the front window, bundled in one of Hayes's jackets that's three sizes too big for her, her curls escaping from under a knit cap. She looks cold and worried and I feel guilt twist in my stomach because I've been avoiding her.
I open the door before she can ring again. "Hey."
"Hey yourself." She slips past me into the warmth, immediately shedding the jacket. Her amber eyes sweep over me, taking in the buttoned shirt, the nicer slacks, the way I'm clearly dressed to go out. "Going somewhere?"
"Just... meeting some friends from work. Getting drinks."
The lie comes too easily. I've been practicing variations of it for weeks now—telling Hayes I'm busy with projects, telling my coworkers I'm spending time with family, constructing a web of excuses that keeps everyone at comfortable distance from the truth.
Lilah's expression shifts into something softer but also more concerned. "That's good. Hayes and I were getting worried you'd become a hermit. We've barely seen you in a month."
"I know. I'm sorry." And I am. Lilah is the one person I've never blamed for anything—not for Dylan, not for the kidnapping, not for any of the violence that's touched our lives.
She's been through enough without adding my shit to her plate.
"I've just been trying to get out more. Make connections outside of family, you know? "
"That's healthy." But she's still watching me with that perceptive intensity that's always been able to see through my bullshit. "Hayes misses having you around. He won't say it outright because that's not his style, but he keeps finding excuses to mention you."
"Tell him I'll come by soon. This weekend maybe? We can do that thing where he pretends he's going to teach me poker and I pretend I don't know he's letting me win."
Lilah smiles, genuine warmth breaking through the concern. "He'd like that. I would too." She moves further into the house, touching the frame of a photo on the entry table—the one of us from years ago, before everything got complicated. "You seem different."
My pulse kicks up. "Different how?"
"I don't know. More confident maybe? Or just... something in your eyes. Like you're finally moving past—" She stops herself, but we both know what she means. Past the kidnapping. Past the trauma that's been sitting on my chest for nine months, making ordinary life feel suffocating and wrong.
"I'm working through it," I say, which is technically true. Just not in any way she'd approve of.
"Good. That's good." She turns back to face me fully, and I can see her reading the details—my hair that won't stay neat, the way I'm standing like I'm ready to bolt, the edge in my posture that didn't used to be there.
But she doesn't push. Lilah's been on the receiving end of too many invasive questions to inflict them on someone else.
"Just... be careful, okay? Whatever you're doing, whoever these work friends are, just be careful. "
"Always am."
"Greer." My name comes out quiet, heavy with all the things she's not saying. "You know you can talk to me, right? About anything. I wouldn't judge."
I cross to her, pulling her into a hug that's probably tighter than necessary.
She's so small against me, delicate in ways that make me want to protect her from everything, even though she's proven she's stronger than anyone gives her credit for.
"I know. And I'm fine, I promise. Just exploring life outside of work and family obligations. It's healthy, remember?"
She hugs back, then pulls away to study my face one more time. Whatever she sees there must satisfy her because she nods. "Okay. But come see us this weekend. Hayes will cook, I'll make sure of it, and we can just hang out like normal people."
"It's a date."
She grabs the oversized jacket, heading for the door. "Have fun with your work friends. And text me when you get home so I know you're safe."
"Will do."
I watch her walk to her car, wait until she's pulling out of the driveway before closing the door. The guilt sits heavier now, thick and uncomfortable. I'm lying to everyone—to Lilah, to Hayes, to my coworkers, to myself about why I can't stop going back to Jersey every night.
But I grab my keys anyway and head out.
The drive to Jersey takes forty minutes in light traffic. I've made this trip so many times now that I don't need GPS anymore, can navigate the familiar turns and exits on autopilot while my mind runs through possibilities.
Maybe she'll be at the warehouse. Or the bar on Fifth Street. Or that underground club near the docks where the fights happen twice a week.
I park in a lot three blocks from my first guess—Sal's restaurant with its back room meetings and garlic-scented air.
The neighborhood is different at night, grittier.
Groups of men smoking outside buildings, cars with tinted windows idling on corners, the sense that illegal business is happening just out of sight.
Nine months ago this would have terrified me. Now it feels right, like I'm finally in a place where the ugliness isn't hidden behind polite conversation and corporate politeness.
The bar I'm looking for—Marco's—sits between a pawn shop and a laundromat.
Red neon sign, blacked-out windows, the kind of place that doesn't advertise what happens inside.
I've been here twice before, know that it's Bennett territory, that the bartender is a guy named Rico who's worked for Malcolm Bennett for fifteen years.
Inside, it's dimly lit with that familiar mix of cigarette smoke and spilled beer. Pool table in the back, booths along one wall, bar running the length of the other. Maybe thirty people scattered throughout, most of them looking like they belong to this world in ways I'm still pretending to.
Rico spots me immediately, nods toward the back. "She's out in the alley. Business."
"Thanks."
I head through the bar toward the rear exit, ignoring the looks from a few guys who recognize me as a regular now. The door leads to a narrow alley lit by a single overhead light, dumpsters on one side, the brick wall of the adjacent building on the other.
Zaria's there with Cain and another guy I don't recognize—younger, maybe mid-twenties, wearing the kind of clothes that blend into any crowd. They're huddled close, voices low but intense.
"—can't just let them take the northern route," the younger guy is saying. "That's direct disrespect. If we don't respond?—"
"We respond smart, not loud." Zaria's voice cuts through with that authority that makes people listen.
"The Okafors moved product through our checkpoint without paying tribute.
That's the line. So we hit their shipment Thursday night, take what's ours, and make it clear that free passage costs money in Bennett territory. "
"What if they escalate?" Cain asks.
"Then we escalate harder. But we don't start wars over hypotheticals. We make one clean move, take what we're owed, and let them decide if they want this to go further."
The younger guy nods, clearly satisfied with the plan. "I'll get our crew ready for Thursday. How many you want on this?"
"Six. Enough to handle security but not so many it looks like an invasion. In and out, professional, no unnecessary violence unless they force it."
They're planning a hit. An actual criminal operation involving theft and potential violence. And Zaria's orchestrating it with the same calm efficiency she brings to everything else, reading the situation strategically instead of emotionally.
I must make some sound because all three of them turn toward me simultaneously.
Zaria's expression goes from focused to furious in half a second. She storms toward me, and I have just enough time to see Cain grab the younger guy's arm, pulling him back toward the bar's rear entrance to give us privacy.
"What the fuck are you doing here?"
"Looking for you."
"Why? So you can eavesdrop on private conversations?
So you can play pretend at being part of this world?
" She's in my space now, close enough that I can smell her perfume—something dark and expensive that shouldn't work but does.
"You need to learn that you can't be in my life.
You can't just show up wherever I am, inserting yourself into shit that doesn't concern you. "
"Maybe I want it to concern me."
"Well it doesn't. It won't." Her voice is sharp, cutting, designed to drive me back. "Enough is enough, Greer. This isn't a game. This isn't some exciting adventure you get to play at when your corporate job gets boring. This is real, and you're going to get yourself killed if you keep pushing."
The dismissal in her tone—the assumption that I'm still just playing tourist in her world—hits harder than it should. Because she's right that I started this as someone lost and looking for an outlet. But that's not what this is anymore.
I've spent nearly a year letting Hayes train me. Boxing, self-defense, how to read violence before it happens. He thinks it's about processing trauma, about making sure I'm never helpless again like I was in that chair while Dylan beat me unconscious.
And maybe it started that way.
But now it's morphed into something else—into preparing for this, for Zaria's world, for being useful instead of protected. Hayes showed me how violence works, how power operates, how to survive in spaces where weakness gets you killed.
I didn't tell him I was applying those lessons here. Didn't tell anyone.
"You're right," I say quietly.
Zaria blinks, clearly not expecting agreement. "What?"
"You're right. I can't just keep showing up, pretending I understand this world when I don't. When I'm just—" I step back, creating distance. "I'm sorry for interrupting your meeting. Won't happen again."
I turn and walk toward the alley entrance, every muscle in my body screaming to stay, to fight, to make her understand that I'm not the same person who first stumbled into that underground fight club four weeks ago.
But she thinks I'm playing, and maybe proving otherwise requires different tactics than just showing up every night and taking whatever abuse she throws my way.
"Greer—"
I don't stop. Don't look back. Just head through the bar toward the front exit, ignoring Rico's questioning look, ignoring the way my chest feels tight and wrong.
The problem is I heard enough of that conversation to know the Okafors are pushing boundaries, testing Bennett territory, and that Zaria's planning a response for Thursday night. Six people, northern route, intercepting a shipment.
And all I can think is that six might not be enough if the Okafors are expecting trouble. That Zaria's smart and strategic but she's also young, holding together her father's empire through reputation and calculated violence.
Hayes taught me how to analyze situations, how to predict problems before they become crises. It's what I do at work—find patterns, identify weaknesses, optimize operations.
This feels the same. Except instead of marketing campaigns, it's Zaria's safety. And instead of quarterly reports, it's making sure she doesn't walk into a situation that goes sideways because she's trying to prove strength to people who think Malcolm's daughter is vulnerable.
I reach my car, unlock it, slide behind the wheel without starting the engine.
What Zaria doesn't know—what I haven't told her because she won't let me close enough to explain—is that Hayes has been training me for nearly a year. That I'm not the same soft civilian who got kidnapped and beaten. That I understand violence now in ways I never wanted to but can't unlearn.
I know how to throw a punch that connects properly. How to read body language for threats. How to move in a fight, where to hit to disable instead of just hurt. Hayes made sure I'd never be helpless again.
And watching Zaria plan an operation against a crew that's been systematically testing her territory makes every instinct Hayes drilled into me scream that something's going to go wrong.
Six people might not be enough.
The Okafors might be expecting retaliation.
Zaria might be walking into a trap designed specifically to eliminate Malcolm Bennett's daughter while she's vulnerable and trying to prove herself.
I start the engine, but I don't head home.
I need to know more about Thursday night's plan. Need to understand what she's actually walking into.
And then I need to figure out how to help without her knowing, because Zaria's made it clear she doesn't want me in her life.
But that doesn't mean I'm going to let her get hurt.