16. Greer
GREER
When Zaria pulls back, reaching for her pants, I half expect her to disappear again. To walk back into Marco's bar or vanish into some car and leave me standing in this alley with the taste of her still in my mouth and no idea when I'll see her again.
Instead, she grabs my wrist once we're both dressed.
"Come on."
"Where—"
"Somewhere we can actually talk." She glances at the bar's back door like someone might walk out any second. "Not here."
I follow her to her Challenger parked two blocks away. She drives, and I watch her profile in the streetlights—the sharp line of her jaw, the way her fingers tap against the steering wheel, the slight swelling of her lips from kissing me.
We head east, toward the shore. The urban sprawl gradually gives way to emptier streets, then to a two-lane road that runs parallel to the coast. She takes a turn onto what looks like an access road, overgrown and barely visible, and follows it until we reach a small cove tucked between two rocky outcroppings.
The beach is mostly deserted this time of night—just sand and rocks and the sound of waves hitting the shore. A few broken pilings jut from the water where some old dock used to be. The moon reflects off the surface, turning everything silver and black.
Zaria parks and gets out without explanation. I follow her down to the sand, watching as she finds a flat rock near the water's edge and sits, staring out at the ocean like she's trying to figure out what to say.
I sit beside her, close enough that our shoulders almost touch but not quite. Giving her space even though every instinct screams to close the distance, to touch her, to make sure she's real and not some hallucination my desperate brain conjured up.
"You shouldn't have come back tonight," she says finally.
The words hit harder than they should. "Because of what just happened?"
"No." She shakes her head, pulling her knees up and wrapping her arms around them. "Because you're going to get yourself killed, Greer. You keep inserting yourself into situations you don't understand, going after problems that aren't yours to solve?—"
"They are mine." The correction comes out sharper than I intend. "The second I decided you were mine, your problems became mine too."
Her head turns, eyes finding mine in the darkness. "That's exactly what I'm talking about. You don't think like someone who's been in this world. You think like someone who's read about it, fantasized about it, but doesn't actually understand what it costs."
"Then teach me." I shift to face her fully. "Show me what I'm missing. Because walking away isn't an option anymore, sweetheart. It hasn't been for weeks."
"You don't know what you're asking for."
"I know exactly what I'm asking for." My hand finds hers where it rests on her knee, fingers threading through hers. "I'm asking to be part of your life. All of it. Not just the parts you think are safe or clean enough for someone like me."
She laughs, but there's no humor in it. "Nothing about my life is safe or clean."
"Good." I squeeze her hand. "I'm tired of safe and clean.
I've been playing at normalcy for thirty years, following rules and checking boxes and being the good son, the stable friend, the reliable brother.
And you know what? It's fucking hollow. Every single day felt like going through motions, like I was waiting for something to wake me up. "
"And I'm that something?" Her voice carries skepticism and something softer underneath. "I'm the violence you've been craving?"
"You're everything I've been craving." The admission comes easier than it should. "The violence, yes. But also the challenge. The way you look at me like you're trying to figure out if I'm serious or just playing at darkness. The way you test me and push me and refuse to make anything easy."
She's quiet for a long moment, thumb tracing absent patterns against the back of my hand. The ocean crashes against the shore, filling the silence between us with white noise that somehow makes the moment feel more intimate.
"You're not meant for this life," she says eventually. "You have a real job, a real life, family that cares about you. Why throw that away for?—"
"For you." I cut her off before she can finish minimizing what this is. "I'm not throwing anything away. I'm choosing something different. Something that actually makes me feel alive instead of just existing."
"Until you get hurt." Her jaw clenches. "Until someone realizes you're important to me and uses that against me. Until?—"
"I'm being careful." I bring our joined hands up, pressing my lips to her knuckles. "I'm not stupid, Zaria. I know the risks. I've known them since the first night I watched you kill someone and couldn't stop thinking about you."
"That's not careful. That's obsessed."
"Same thing when it comes to you."
She pulls her hand away, running it through her hair in frustration. "You don't get it. This isn't some game where you can learn the rules and win. People die in my world. Good people who were careful and smart and still ended up bleeding out in alleys or floating in the harbor."
"I know." The memory of Dylan surfaces—being tied to that chair, listening to him describe what he did to Lilah while his fists turned my face into a swollen mess. The way Hayes handled the aftermath, the casual efficiency of making a body disappear. "I'm not walking into this blind."
Her eyes narrow. "What does that mean?"
I hesitate, weighing how much to tell her. But if I want her to let me in, I need to stop hiding pieces of myself.
"Nine months ago, my sister's ex-boyfriend kidnapped me to force her back to him.
He tied me to a chair in his apartment and spent hours beating the shit out of me while telling me in explicit detail about every horrible thing he did to Lilah for three years.
The drugs, the abuse, the control." My throat tightens at the memory.
"I couldn't protect her from any of it. Couldn't even protect myself when it mattered. "
Zaria's expression shifts, hardening into something dangerous. "And Hayes killed him?"
"Yes." The word come out flat, matter-of-fact. "He and Lilah came for me. By the time I woke up, Dylan was gone and Hayes's people had cleaned everything up so professionally there was never any investigation. No body. No questions. Just gone."
She's silent, processing this new information about me. About what I've already survived and what I already know about violence and consequences.
"Hayes has been teaching me to fight since then," I continue.
"How to defend myself, how to hurt someone efficiently, how to end a threat before it ends me.
Not because I asked, but because he saw what happened and decided I needed to be able to protect myself if it happened again. But he swore it wouldn't."
I'm sure he never thought it would the first time, though, and he wasn't taking more chances. Not when I'm another brother to him—one without the Carelli name to protect me.
"That's why you could take down Rasheed." Understanding dawns in her eyes. "Why you move like someone who knows what they're doing even though you're supposed to be just some marketing guy."
"I am just some marketing guy." I meet her gaze steadily.
"But I'm also someone who's already been introduced to your world through blood and trauma.
Someone who understands that violence in protection of family isn't the same as violence for control.
Someone who isn't going to run when things get ugly because I've already seen ugly and survived it. "
She stares at me for a long moment, and I can see her walls starting to crack. See the calculation happening behind her eyes as she reassesses me, fits this new information into whatever framework she's built around who I am and what I'm capable of.
"You're still going to get hurt," she says finally, but there's less conviction in her voice now.
"Probably." I shift closer, eliminating the space between us. "But I'd rather get hurt living the life I want than stay safe living one that feels like slow death."
"This is insane." But she doesn't pull away when my hand finds her thigh. "You're insane for wanting this."
"Maybe." I lean in, lips brushing against her ear. "But it doesn't matter what you say, does it? I'm already here. Already yours. Already so deep into this that walking away would feel like cutting off a limb."
She turns her head, and suddenly we're so close I can feel her breath against my mouth. "You've consumed my life, and I don't want it any different."
Something in her expression shifts—the last resistance crumbling, walls dropping to reveal the want underneath. The fear of letting someone in warring with the relief of not fighting it anymore.
"Fuck," she breathes, and then she's kissing me again.
This kiss is different from the desperate violence in the alley. It's slower, deeper, like she's trying to memorize the shape of my mouth against hers. Like she's finally letting herself have this without the voice in her head screaming about all the reasons it's a bad idea.
When we finally break apart, she rests her forehead against mine.
"You're not going to make this easy, are you?"
"When have I ever made anything easy for you?" I can't help the smile. "I've been a pain in your ass since the first night I refused to leave that fight club."
"Such a pain in my ass." But there's affection in her voice now, warm and genuine. "Fine. You want in? You're in. But you follow my rules, you listen to Cain, and if I tell you to run, you fucking run. Understood?"
"Understood." I kiss her again, quick and claiming. "Though I should warn you—I'm terrible at following orders unless they come from you."
She laughs, and the sound does something to my chest. "I noticed."
The next three weeks blur together into something that feels more real than any other period of my life.