Page 85 of Make Them Bleed

“Yes.”

“We should tell her something.”

“I’m sending her a packet that says ‘I’m not being weird, you’re being weird’ in legalese. If anything gets spicy, she has the trail to pick up without us there to get arrested.”

Juno exhales, a long ribbon of air. “You’re good at this.”

“Planning? Or lying on your bed pretending I’m not thinking about kissing you?”

“Yes,” she says, and the corner of her mouth tilts.

I let myself smile back, then sober. The thing I’ve wanted to say since the door opened is a pressure in my throat. It comes out before I can translate it into something safer.

“I’ll find the men responsible,” I say, voice low and even. “And I will end them.”

Her eyes widen, some new mix of shock and recognition. I don’t mean it as an Instagram threat; I meanendin the way you end a story that’s harming the listener—by closing the book, by breaking the pen, by removing the author from play. My hands curl reflexively.

She studies my face, searching for the place where vow becomes bravado. She finds none. Her eyes soften, and she lifts a hand and cups my jaw.

“Don’t die doing it,” she says. “That’s not romantic. That’s stupid.”

“I’m too petty to die,” I say, and she snorts, half-sob, half-laugh.

“Promise me something else,” she says.

“Anything.”

“That you’ll always tell me the plan, even when you think I’ll hate it.”

“Standing order,” I say. Then, because it’s true and it needs air, “I will always take care of you.”

Her eyes shine, and for a second I think I’ve overpromised—like I’ve sworn to outrun gravity. But she nods like she was waiting for exactly that arrangement of words and tucks herself closer, hand fisted in my shirt.

We lie there and let the hurt turn into a quieter thing. After a while she asks if she can borrow my chest for a nap and I tell her my chest doesn’t charge hourly rates. She threatens to review me on a freelancer site. We almost laugh ourselves into breathing like regular people.

By six, we’ve moved from horizontal to operational. She showers as I sit at her kitchen table texting the team, and compiling the Club Greed checklist: clean IDs; cash; a simple ring we can pass as a fidget not a mic; gum. I pen-print a tiny map of the Pride gallery and circle corners with sightlines. I writeLemonin the corner and doodle a lemon because I am under-slept andnotokay.

Juno emerges, hair up, the black dress carving lines I have to respect with all the discipline I can muster. She catches my eyes, sees all of it, and lifts her chin.

“Ready?” I ask.

“No,” she says.

I smile, kissing the top of her head. “I’ll be beside you the whole time.”

We lock her door—she checks the knob twice, then a third time—and head down into a city that doesn’t know it’s about to introduce us to a sin in a nice suit.

In the car, I shoot a final text to the group:

Club Greed. 10 p.m. In. Pride. Let’s go.

Ozzy replies with a pepper emoji and a knife. Render sends a skull, a key, and a dragon. Knight sendsON YOUR SIX. Gage sends nothing, which is how he says he’s in place.

On the way, Juno stares out the window, watching Saint Pierce reflect itself in puddles. At a red light, without looking at me, she slides her hand across the console and finds mine.

I take it. Squeeze once. And she squeezes back.

At the curb, the rope is velvet and ridiculous, the neon discreet, the doorman bored in a way that suggests he enjoys being surprised. Inside, someone is going to take our phones and hand us rules. Inside, someone is going to mistake yellow for an invitation. Inside, a man with a compass rose on his ring might say the wordbrightto someone and expect it to work.