9. Greer
GREER
The way Zaria turns to Cain, that shift in her body language from relaxed to lethal, makes me step back instinctively. I'm still holding the giant panda under one arm like an idiot while she transforms into someone else entirely.
"Fuck off, Cain."
"Can't." He wipes blood from his knuckles onto his jeans, leaving dark streaks. "Wish I could. Trust me, interrupting whatever this is—" he gestures vaguely between us "—isn't how I wanted to spend my night."
"Then why are you here?" Her voice drops into that dangerous register I've only heard when she's about to hurt someone.
"We need to talk. Alone."
Zaria glances back at me, and I see the calculation happening behind her eyes. The weighing of whether I'm part of her world enough to hear this, or if I'm still the outsider she needs to protect from business.
My chest tightens. This is the moment. Either she keeps me separate from the real work, or she lets me in fully.
"It's fine," she says, still looking at me. "He can hear."
The relief that floods through me is almost embarrassing in its intensity. My whole life, people have shut me out. Protected me. Kept me clean and safe and completely fucking isolated from anything that mattered.
My parents sent me to boarding school to keep me away from whatever messy divorce proceedings they were navigating.
Lilah never told me how bad things were with Dylan until she was nearly dead.
Hayes wouldn't explain his family business beyond vague references to "deals" and "territory" until Dylan kidnapped me and I learned exactly what violence looked like up close.
Everyone always decided I was too good, too clean, too normal to handle the truth.
But Zaria just looked at me and decided I could hear it. Decided I belonged here enough that she didn't need to send me away while the adults talked.
"Your funeral." Cain leans against the Challenger, crossing his arms. "We had a problem at the docks tonight.
Rasheed was supposed to oversee the incoming shipment—cash and product both.
Everything was going smooth until about ten PM when he just fucking vanished.
Took a hundred and forty thousand in cash and twenty kilos of product with him. "
Zaria goes very still. "Rasheed."
"Yeah."
"Rasheed who's worked for my father since he was nineteen. Rasheed who I trusted to handle dock operations for three years without a single issue. That Rasheed."
"That's the one." Cain's expression is grim. "No warning, no signs he was planning to run. Just grabbed the money and product during the handoff and disappeared. We've got people looking, but he knows our territory too well. He'll go to ground somewhere we can't easily reach."
I watch Zaria process this, see the fury building behind her carefully controlled features. This isn't just about the money or drugs—it's about betrayal. Someone she trusted spitting on that trust and making her look weak in the process.
"How many people know?" she asks.
"Right now? Just our crew who was there. Maybe six people total. But by morning, everyone's going to hear about it. And the Okafors are going to use it as proof you can't hold your father's territory. That Bennett's daughter can't even keep her own people loyal."
"Fuck." She runs a hand over her face, exhaustion suddenly visible in the set of her shoulders. "Alright. Get everyone together. We're hunting his ass down tonight. I don't care if we have to turn over every rock in Jersey?—"
"Z." Cain's voice gentles slightly. "You've been up for twenty hours. You killed someone tonight, ran an operation, and—" he glances at me "—whatever this is. You need to sleep before we start tearing the city apart looking for him."
"I don't need?—"
"You do. I'll coordinate the search, wake you in four hours with updates. But you're no good to anyone if you're running on fumes."
I can see her wanting to argue, to push through on pure stubbornness and rage. But Cain's right—she's been running hard since I met her at Marco's earlier tonight, and the adrenaline crash is probably going to hit soon.
She looks at me again, and I see something vulnerable flash across her expression before she buries it. "I've got to go handle this."
"I know." I hand her the panda, which is absurd given the circumstances but makes her lips twitch slightly. "Go do what you need to do."
"You're just going to go home? Back to your normal life?"
There's a challenge in the question. A test of whether I meant what I said about wanting to get lost in her world, or if I'm just a tourist who'll run when things get real.
"I'm going to go home," I confirm, watching relief and disappointment war on her face. "Get some sleep like Cain suggested. Text me when you find him."
She studies me for another moment, then nods and slides into the driver's seat with the giant panda taking up most of the passenger side. Cain follows on his motorcycle, and I watch them leave the parking lot before pulling out my phone.
My rideshare arrives fifteen minutes later—a tired-looking guy in a Honda who doesn't ask why I'm standing alone in a beach parking lot at two-thirty in the morning. I give him an address three blocks from where I actually parked my car earlier, then spend the drive planning.
Zaria thinks I'm going home to sleep like a good boy.
She's wrong.
By three AM, I'm back at my car and pulling up the contacts I've accumulated over the past weeks of haunting Jersey bars.
It's surprising how quickly you can build a network when you show up consistently, tip well, and listen more than you talk.
Bartenders are information brokers whether they mean to be or not—they hear everything, see everyone, and remember the regulars who treat them like actual people instead of service machines.
I text Marco first, the owner of the bar where I first saw Zaria fight. He knows I'm connected to her now—everyone does after I started showing up asking about Viper—and he's been friendly in that careful way people are when they're not sure if you're important yet.
Greer: Need a favor. Guy named Rasheed, works the docks, might be hiding out somewhere tonight. You hear anything?
The response comes back faster than expected.
Marco: Why you looking for Rasheed?
Greer: He fucked over someone I care about.
Three dots appear and disappear several times before his response comes through.
Marco: Heard he was at Lucky's earlier asking about cheap rooms. That's all I got.
Greer: Appreciate it.
Lucky's is a dive bar on the southern edge of Bennett territory, the kind of place with hourly room rentals upstairs and no questions asked.
I text two more bartenders I've developed rapport with, asking if anyone's seen Rasheed tonight, and get similar information—he's been moving around, nervous, asking about places to lay low.
The last text comes from a woman named Simone who tends bar at a place called The Anchor. She's in her fifties, seen everything, and took a liking to me after I helped her throw out a handsy customer two weeks ago.
Simone: Rasheed's probably at the motel on Walker Street. His cousin owns it. That's where he always crashes when he's in trouble.
Simone: You going after him?
Greer: Maybe.
Simone: Be careful, honey. Rasheed's mean when he's cornered.
I appreciate the concern, but I'm not worried about Rasheed being mean.
I've been taking lessons from Hayes for a while now—ever since I recovered after Dylan beat the shit out of me.
Hayes insisted on it, made me come over three times a week to learn how to protect myself.
How to throw a proper punch, where to hit to disable someone quickly, how to use leverage when someone's bigger than you.
"You're never getting caught like that again," Hayes had said the first night, wrapping my hands in boxing tape. "I don't care if you never use this. But you're learning how to fight back."
I'd been a decent student because rage is a hell of a motivator. Every time I hit the bag or sparred with Hayes, I was hitting Dylan's face. Hitting the helplessness I felt tied to that chair. Hitting the weakness that let me become a victim.
Now those lessons are going to help me hunt down someone who fucked over Zaria.
The irony isn't lost on me—Hayes taught me to defend myself, and I'm using those skills to become exactly the kind of person Hayes is. Violent. Decisive. Willing to hurt people who threaten what's mine.
Zaria would probably find that hilarious.
I park two blocks from the motel on Walker Street and walk the rest of the way, hands in my pockets, looking like just another person wandering Jersey at four AM. The motel is exactly what I expected—peeling paint, flickering neon sign, rooms that probably rent by the hour and don't require ID.
The office is empty, no one at the desk. I walk around the side of the building, checking cars in the lot until I find what I'm looking for—a dark blue sedan with dock worker permits in the window. Rasheed's car.
Room 7 is on the ground floor, curtains drawn, a thin slice of light visible at the bottom of the door. I can hear a TV playing inside, some late-night infomercial selling kitchen knives.
I knock. "Maintenance. Got a leak complaint from the room next door."
"Fuck off, there's no leak."
"Need to check anyway. Insurance liability."
Silence. Then footsteps approaching the door.
The second it opens a crack, I slam my shoulder into it, using my full weight to drive it open. Rasheed stumbles back, cursing, and I'm inside with the door closed behind me before he can recover.
He's mid-thirties, muscled from years of dock work, with a duffel bag on the bed that's probably full of Zaria's money and product. His eyes widen when he sees me—not recognition exactly, but the realization that I'm not maintenance.
"Who the fuck?—"
I punch him in the throat.
It's one of the first things Hayes taught me—throat shots disable people fast, make them panic because suddenly they can't breathe right. Rasheed gags, hands flying to his neck, and I follow up with a knee to his stomach that doubles him over.
"That's for betraying Zaria," I say conversationally, then grab the back of his head and drive it down into my rising knee. Cartilage crunches. Blood sprays. "And that's for making me cut my night with her short."
Rasheed crashes onto the floor, groaning and spitting blood. He's bigger than me, probably stronger in a fair fight. But this isn't fair—I'm already moving before he can orient himself, using the combat training Hayes drilled into me.
Kick to the ribs. Stomp on his hand when he tries to push himself up. Another punch to the face that splits his lip open.
It feels good. Christ, it feels good.
All the violence I've been craving since Dylan tied me to that chair and broke me—it's finally flowing out in a direction that matters. I'm not helpless now. I'm the one in control. The one making someone else bleed.
"Where's the money?" I grab Rasheed by his shirt, hauling him partially upright. "All of it. Where is it?"
"Fuck... you..."
I slam his head into the floor. Once. Twice. Three times until he's crying and trying to cover his face with broken hands.
"The money, Rasheed. I'm not asking again."
"Duffel... bag... on the bed..." He's sobbing now, blood pouring from his nose. "Please... I didn't... I didn't know she had?—"
"Had what? Someone willing to hunt you down for her?" I hit him again because the fear in his eyes is addictive. "She doesn't know I'm here. This is just me. Taking care of problems."
I check the duffel bag—cash bundled in neat stacks, plastic-wrapped packages that are definitely the product Cain mentioned. Everything Rasheed stole, still together because he's stupid and panicked and thought he could just disappear.
Rasheed tries to crawl toward the door while my back is turned. I grab his ankle, drag him back, and kick him hard enough that he curls into a fetal position.
"Here's what's going to happen." I crouch beside him, making sure he can see my face clearly. "I'm taking the money and product back. You're going to deliver a message for me."
"What... message..."
"That Zaria Bennett's reach is longer than you thought. That she has people you don't see coming. That running was the worst decision you ever made."
I hit him one more time—not hard enough to kill him, but hard enough that he'll be unconscious for a while. His eyes roll back, body going limp, and I stand up feeling that same electric satisfaction I got from watching Zaria kill the Okafor guy earlier.
This is who I'm becoming. Who I want to be.
Getting Rasheed's unconscious body to my car is harder than I expected—he's dead weight and I'm not exactly built for hauling bodies around. But I manage, dumping him in my trunk with the duffel bag of money and product, then driving toward Marco's bar with my heart racing.
The bar is closed, the alley behind it empty and dark. Perfect.
I drag Rasheed out of the trunk, propping him against the brick wall.
There's rope in my emergency kit—left over from when Hayes made me pack one after the kidnapping—and I use it to tie Rasheed's hands above his head to a fire escape ladder, stringing him up so he's hanging with his toes barely touching the ground.
He'll probably die like this. Either from exposure, or from someone finding him and finishing what I started, or from Zaria when she discovers him.
I don't care which.
I pull out the note I wrote in the car—blocky handwriting that matches the style from my last gift to her.
Found your thief. Money and product are safe. Consider this handled.
—G
I tuck the note into Rasheed's shirt pocket where she'll find it, then step back to survey my work.
Rasheed hangs there limply, blood dripping from his face onto the pavement below, wrists bound tight enough that he won't be able to free himself even if he wakes up.
The alley is secluded enough that he won't be found immediately, but visible enough that Zaria's people will spot him once they start searching this area.
The duffel bag full of stolen money and product sits in my trunk, waiting for me to return it to her. Proof that I can handle her problems. That I'm not just some tourist playing at darkness—I'm someone who'll get bloody for her without being asked.
My hands are shaking slightly as I drive away, adrenaline finally starting to fade. There's blood on my knuckles, probably some on my clothes, and my ribs ache from the physical exertion of beating someone unconscious and hauling them around.
But underneath the exhaustion, I'm smiling.
Because this is what being alive feels like. This is what I've been missing while sitting in my clean office analyzing marketing data and pretending my trauma didn't fundamentally change who I am.
I pull into an empty parking lot three blocks away and text Simone.
Greer: Thanks for the tip. Problem handled.
Then I head home, the duffel bag hidden in my trunk, ready to surprise Zaria with proof that I'm exactly what she needs.