They walked out of the office together and back into the main room of the club.

The evening had fully settled in while they had been gone.

The place had filled up, most tables occupied now, the lighting doing what it was designed to do at this hour, keeping each table in its own warm isolated pool while the stage drew everything else.

The music had found a deeper gear, the baseline heavier than it had been earlier, sitting in the chest rather than just the ears.

The performers on stage had changed, the energy in the room tracking the shift, attention pulled forward in waves every few minutes.

Kelvin was where they had left him.

He was sitting in the same chair but everything else about the situation had changed considerably.

The seating area around him had been rearranged slightly, a low curved section that faced away from the main floor, semi-private without being fully removed from the room.

Two candles on the table.

A bottle of something expensive sitting in ice.

Two glasses.

A woman was with him.

She was sitting sideways across his lap with one arm around his shoulders, wearing what the club’s performers wore which was minimal and deliberate, her body close to his, talking to him with her face near his ear.

Another woman stood behind his chair with her hands on his shoulders, her fingers moving in slow deliberate circles through the fabric of his hoodie.

A third was sitting on the edge of the table facing him, her legs crossed, leaning forward slightly, saying something that made Kelvin’s face do something involuntary.

Kelvin himself was sitting with the posture of a man who had been visited by something he had previously only theorized about and was now processing it in real time while also trying to appear like this was a normal Tuesday for him.

He was failing at the second part.

Liam stopped at the edge of the section and looked at all of it.

Then he looked at Camille beside him.

She looked back at him with an expression that said you’re welcome without using any words.

Liam walked over and stopped at the edge of Kelvin’s immediate space.

Kelvin noticed him and looked up and for just a second something passed across his face that was pure contentment, the kind that sits so deep it doesn’t know what to do with itself.

"I’m thinking," Liam said, "I should just leave you here and go home."

Kelvin looked at him. Then he looked at the woman on his lap. Then at the one behind him. Then at the one on the table. Then back at Liam.

"Yes please," he said.

Liam smiled. "Get up."

Kelvin didn’t move for a moment.

"Kelvin."

"I heard you."

"Then get up."

Kelvin exhaled through his nose with the energy of a man being asked to leave somewhere he had only just arrived, even though he had been there for the better part of an hour.

He said something quietly to the woman on his lap, something Liam couldn’t hear, and she smiled and shifted off him, standing and stepping back.

The one behind his chair lifted her hands from his shoulders. The one on the table uncrossed her legs and straightened up.

Kelvin stood.

He adjusted his hoodie. Straightened his collar. Ran one hand over his head once. Then he turned toward the exit with the dignity of someone who had decided that dignity was the move here.

He had taken exactly two steps when the woman who had been on his lap came back around and tapped him on the arm. He turned. She held out a small card between two fingers and looked at him with a very specific expression, then made a slow phone gesture with her other hand, her pinky and thumb extended, her eyes holding his.

Kelvin took the card.

He looked at it. Then at her. Then at the card again.

He put it in his pocket with great care.

She turned and walked back toward the stage, her hips moving in the particular way that the lighting and the music and the whole environment seemed specifically designed to showcase, the fabric of her outfit shifting with each step, her ass moving with a momentum that had its own internal logic.

Kelvin watched her go.

Liam watched Kelvin watch her go.

Then Liam looked at him with the most composed expression he could manage.

Kelvin turned and saw it immediately. "Don’t," he said.

Liam said nothing. Just kept the expression.

"I said don’t give me that look."

"I’m not doing anything."

"You’re doing the look."

"I’m just standing here."

Kelvin pointed at him. "You’ve been out here collecting women left and right and you want to give me a look? I’m an SSS ranked goat, Liam. Don’t forget that."

Liam laughed. A real one. "I’m not taking anything from you man."

"Good." Kelvin turned toward the exit. "Now let’s go before I decide to stay."

They walked out together, through the entrance corridor and through the heavy door and out into the night air, which hit them both differently after the warmth and the bass of the interior. The parking lot was fuller than when they had arrived, the neon sign above the entrance fully lit now, the red silhouette glowing against the dark sky.

They walked to the Range Rover.

Doors opened. Doors closed. Engine on.

Kelvin pulled out of the lot and onto the street and drove.

Liam looked out the window. The street was quiet at this hour, the kind of quiet that only exists in specific pockets of a city after a certain time, the main roads still moving but the side streets settled.

He glanced at Kelvin.

Kelvin was driving with both hands on the wheel, eyes forward, expression completely neutral. Not talking. Not doing the thing he usually did where silence lasted approximately forty five seconds before something came out of him that had been building since before the silence started.

Just driving. Quiet. Composed.

Liam looked at him.

Looked away at before looking back at Kelvin.

"Kelvin."

Kelvin didn’t say a word and just kept driving.

"Kelvin."

Still nothing. Eyes on the road.

"Kelvin."

Silence.

"Kel—"

They turned out of the street the club was on and onto the main road and Kelvin lasted approximately four more seconds.

Then he exploded.

"Oh my GOD," he said, both hands briefly leaving the wheel before finding it again. "Bro. BRO. I had to keep it together in there because she was right there watching me and I could not let her see me lose it but Liam."

He looked at him for a full second before looking back at the road. "She sat on my lap and then she—" He stopped. Shook his head. "And then the one behind me with the hands, that was a different situation entirely, I don’t even know how to describe what those hands were doing but I felt it in places that don’t normally get me hard this time was different man."

Liam was already laughing.

"And then the one on the table." Kelvin’s voice had gone slightly higher. "She leaned forward and said something to me that I cannot repeat out loud in a moving vehicle because I will drive us into something." He put both hands back on the wheel properly. "I just need you to know that tonight changed me as a person. Something is different now. I can feel it."

"That’s why you were sitting there all quiet," Liam said. "I knew something was off."

"I had to maintain!" Kelvin said. "The card girl was still looking at me, I couldn’t just sit there with my mouth open like—" He stopped himself. "I had to be cool. I had to be the version of me that gets the card. Not the version that loses his mind about the card."

Liam shook his head, still laughing. "I’m glad it worked out."

"Worked out." Kelvin repeated the words like they were an understatement of historic proportions. "Liam. Paradise. You took me to paradise tonight."

"So we’re good?"

Kelvin looked at him. Then back at the road. Then he held up one finger. "We are good. You are forgiven."

Liam nodded. "Good."

"However." Kelvin held the finger up a moment longer. "Forgiven is not the same as forgotten."

Liam looked at him. "What does that even mean."

"It means," Kelvin said, his voice settling into something more deliberate, "that from here on out, whatever you’re doing, whatever’s happening, whatever crew business or warehouse business or flag with a smiling reaper business is going on, I’m involved. You include me. No more finding out by climbing fences." He glanced at Liam. "That’s the price. Non negotiable."

Liam opened his mouth.

"That’s all," Kelvin said. "I’m done talking."

Liam closed his mouth.

The drive went on.

Twenty minutes of it, the city moving past the windows in the particular way it does late at night, the lights different, the streets belonging to different people than the ones who used them during the day.

They talked about other things, small things, the way people talk when the big things have already been said and the space between is comfortable enough to fill with anything.

A story about a professor.

Something Kelvin had seen on the way to campus that morning.

A back and forth about something neither of them would remember the specifics of tomorrow but that felt important in the moment.

By the time the Range Rover pulled up in front of Liam’s building it was late enough that the street was nearly empty.

Kelvin stopped the car.

Liam reached for the door handle.

"Hey," Kelvin said.

Liam looked back at him.

Kelvin pointed at him with two fingers. "SSS ranked," he said. "Don’t forget it."

Liam pushed the door open. "Go home, Kelvin."

"I’m just saying."

"Goodnight."

"SSS ranked, Liam. Look it up."

Liam got out and pushed the door shut and Kelvin’s window came down immediately.

"I’m a certified goat!" Kelvin called out, already pulling away from the curb.

"Drive!" Liam called back.

The Range Rover moved down the street, Kelvin’s laugh audible even through the closed windows, and then the tail lights turned the corner and the street went quiet.

Liam stood there for a second.

He looked up at his building.

’Finally,’ he thought. ’Actual sleep. A real bed. Nothing until morning.’

He turned toward the entrance.

A car was parked directly in front of it.

A Rolls Royce Phantom sat directly in front of the entrance, black, the kind of black that absorbed the streetlight rather than reflecting it. Long and low and completely still, the chrome trim the only thing giving the body any definition against the night.

He hadn’t noticed it when Kelvin pulled up, but it was there now, sitting directly in front of the entrance to his building in a spot that wasn’t a parking spot.

’Oh shit, Why does the universe not want me to get a fucking goodnight sleep’

He smiled slightly and walked toward it, crossing the pavement, bending forward slightly as he got close to look through the tinted glass of the window. 𝗳𝚛𝗲𝕖𝕨𝕖𝗯𝚗𝚘𝕧𝕖𝗹.𝗰𝗼𝕞

The window slid down.

A Desert Eagle looked back at him from approximately eight inches away, the barrel wide and dark and pointed directly at his face, held by a hand in a tailored suit sleeve, steady and completely unhurried.

Liam went still.

His eyes moved from the barrel to the hand holding it. Then up the sleeve to the shoulder. Then to the face behind the gun.

Suit. Dark. Well fitted. A tie sitting straight. Glasses, thin framed, sitting precisely on the bridge of the nose. The face behind them was calm and composed in the way that had nothing to do with being relaxed and everything to do with being completely certain of what they were doing.

The barrel didn’t move.

Liam looked at it.

Then he looked at the face behind it.

Neither of them said anything.