Page 32 of Make Them Bleed (Pretty Deadly Things #1)

He leans a fraction closer. “You were at the Delphine, weren’t you? I thought I saw you in passing. All the masks.” He smiles like a man who loves a theme. “And now we are here without them.”

I flex my hand on my thigh to avoid putting it through the table. He’s not guessing; he’s testing. The word masks may as well be a flare.

Juno doesn’t rise to it. “Did you like the party?” she asks. “I heard it was a funeral with better lighting.”

He freezes again. Tiny. But it’s there.

“Funeral?” he echoes, buys time with a sip. “One must be careful with metaphors. They take on lives of their own.”

“I like mine dead,” she says.

His eyes sharpen. He raises his glass in a small salute. “A woman who knows what she likes.”

“And what she doesn’t,” she returns.

I text one word to our group thread: fishing . It’s enough. Nobody rushes the rail. We let it breathe.

“Tell me,” he says, turning the charm up half a click, “what do you do when you are not correcting strangers at bars?”

Juno looks past him to the mirror and meets her own eyes like she’s reminding herself who she is. “I tell stories,” she says. “Sometimes they have monsters in them.”

“And sometimes the monsters are metaphors,” he says, delighted at his own cleverness. “I am Nico, by the way. Nicolas.”

“Juno,” she says.

“Like the goddess,” he says, which is one of those lines that works on ninety percent of rooms and hits the ten percent as a warning. Juno smiles like she’s heard it and survived.

“Arrow,” Ozzy says in my ear, his voice low: “He just unlocked his phone. Name confirmed. Contacts app language set to French. He scrolled fast—call log shows a ‘G.’ Could be Gray.”

“Copy,” I whisper, throat hot.

I stand, casual, and move to the corner where a brass coat tree offers me a new angle. My pen mic points past a decanter to catch the reflection of Nico’s mouth. I need him talking. I need sentences I can stitch to other nights.

“Tell me a story,” Nico says to Juno. “A short one. Two sentences.”

She acts like she’s thinking. She is. Her face is steel wrapped in velvet. “Okay,” she says. “Once there was a man who liked to call women bright girl because he thought it made him seem kind and not predatory. Turns out it made him easy to find.”

His smile doesn’t break. It shouldn’t; he’s been practicing it since prep school. But his grip tightens on the glass by a millimeter and Megan clocks it the way bartenders clock weather.

“Strong opening,” he says. “Weak ending.”

“Working on it,” she says. “It’s a draft.”

He laughs. He’s not nervous enough. That’s useful too.

“Do you come here often?” he asks. Asks it like a man doing a bit, which somehow makes it worse.

“Only when I’m stalking someone,” she says.

Another blink. He’s starting to respect her, which is dangerous.

I move back to A3 and drop into the chair, enough that I look like I arrived with a book and forgot it. Megan pivots and sets a water in front of me without asking, the silent bartender way of telling me to live long enough to pay my tab.

Nico glances at me, dismisses me as furniture—which is what I hoped. He turns his body to face Juno fully now. “Tell me your favorite drink,” he says.

“Free,” she says.

He’s having too much fun. The smartest thing he could do is leave. The second smartest is to make her feel safe enough to be careless. He chooses door number two.

“You remind me of someone,” he says. “A bright girl I used to sit with here. She laughed like she had secrets.”

Juno stills in that way you wouldn’t notice unless you know her pulse. I pinch the inside of my wrist hard enough to leave marks.

“She didn’t like your ring,” Juno says.

He looks at it, amused. “Everyone likes my ring.”

“She didn’t. She said it made you look like you belonged to something you couldn’t name.”

His eyes glitter. He takes the bait. “We all belong to things we can’t name.”

Render murmurs, “That’s practically a confession. Of pretension.”

“Hold,” I warn. “Let him monologue.”

“I do business,” he says, almost bored. “Imports, exports. Boats. Bored people with money who want their toys to feel like purpose. I facilitate purpose.”

“And do you facilitate funerals?” Juno asks, voice a hair softer than before. The pen mic trembles in my fingers with how much tension is in that whisper.

A beat. Then he smiles. “Only for old habits.”

Gage: “Got that. Clean. That line goes in the museum.”

“Etta replied,” Render says suddenly. “Two minutes ago. ‘You mean Nico A? He’s Gray’s friend. Old money. Don’t get tangled; he collects girls who like puzzles.’ ”

Collects. I taste copper.

Nico slides a card across the bar—unbranded, crisp, a number and a name that is absolutely a front. “You should tell me a longer story,” he says. “Sometimes the ending is better if you let it breathe.”

Juno looks at the card but doesn’t touch it. “I like to write my own endings.”

“You will,” he says, as if blessing a child. “If you stop trying to narrate other people’s.”

I stand. My body makes the choice my brain would veto. I walk to the bar and take the empty stool on Juno’s other side. Nico turns slightly; Juno remains still, but I feel her relax a millimeter because I am a predictable animal.

“Good evening,” Nico says, polite as a threat. “We are discussing literature.”

“Not my subject,” I say. “I do math.”

“Useful,” he says.

“Unforgiving,” I correct.

He laughs and slides off the stool with the economy of a man who never overcommits. “I will see you around,” he tells Juno, not me. To Megan, with a nod that assumes familiarity, “Merci, chérie.”

Megan’s smile is a weapon. “It’s Megan ,” she says.

He goes. The door hushes on his exit. For a second the room simmers with all the conversations we didn’t want to overhear. Then the hum reasserts itself and the world acts normal around the hole a man like that leaves when he walks away.

“Bike,” I say into comms.

“On him,” Knight replies, already out the door. “Black sedan, matte, plate confirms NRS-0417. He’s not in a hurry.”

Gage: “Cams picking up the trail. He’s heading toward the river.”

Ozzy: “Smoker shows NEREUS-NAV-PRO moving. RSSI dropping. He’s out.”

Megan plants both hands on the bar and leans toward us. “If you’re going to keep doing this in my bar,” she says, “you bring me cake next time.”

“Render promised you cake,” I say.

“I promise you to watch your back in here,” she counters. “But don’t turn my floor into an op again without warning.”

“Understood,” I say, honestly.

She flicks the card Nico left with the disdain of a woman who’s seen too many men gift bad choices. “You want this?”

Juno finally touches the card like it’s evidence, not a present. “Yes.”

“Prints,” Gage reminds, already wearing gloves in my mind.

Megan smiles. “Have a good night.”

We tip like we’re paying rent and slide out into the night air.

The sky is the color of promises it won’t keep.

Knight’s voice steadies in my ear as he narrates the tail: “He’s taking Bay past the boatyards.

Slowing at the Marina Club. Yep. Gate’s opening.

He didn’t touch the call box—badge access. Parking under. He’s out.”

Render: “Marina network pinged a member card: Nicolas Armand . Time stamp matches.”

Gage: “Got him on the elevator cam feed. Level G to P2. Then gone. I can put him on the north stairwell on a two-minute delay.”

“Give me the slip,” I say.

“Nereus slip D4,” Juno answers before comms do, voice flat with purpose.

“Knight,” I order. “Park and breathe. Do not get made. Ozzy, hold the lot exit. If he leaves in the next fifteen, I want the car path.”

“Copy,” they chorus.

Juno and I stand under the Atlas sign bleeding gold onto the sidewalk. The night’s adrenaline recedes, leaving a clean, humming edge.

“You okay?” I ask, because I’m allowed one habit I won’t break.

She looks at me—really looks. “He’s smarter than I wanted him to be.”

“He thinks that’s all he needs,” I say. “Men who collect puzzles assume they’re the only ones with hands.”

A tiny, dangerous smile. “He liked me.”

“He underestimated you,” I correct. “Liking is optional. Underestimating is mandatory for people like him.”

She nods once. “Did you get enough?”

“Voiceprint, ring crest, device name. Card with a number that routes through a VoIP in Monaco. Call log with a ‘G.’ We have a stack,” I say. “Tomorrow we yank a thread.”

“Which one?” she asks.

“The one labeled Gray ,” Render answers in my ear before I can. “Breakfast club can have a dinner date. I can lay a false invite if we want him in a place with three exits and a bad acoustic ceiling.”

“Do it,” I say. “And flood Huxley’s inbox with the packet that doesn’t get any of us indicted.”

Juno’s hand slips into mine like a reflex and then stops like she remembered something. She doesn’t pull away. Neither do I.

“I don’t want him to say bright girl to anyone ever again,” she whispers.

“Then we take his voice away,” I say. “We make it evidence.”

The comms chirp. Knight: “He’s on foot—north slips. Phone to ear, laughing at something. I’m not close enough to hear.”

Render: “I got him reflected in a porthole.”

Ozzy: “Lot exit still cold. I’m bored, send snacks.”

“Hold positions,” I say. To Juno, “We did good.”

She exhales like she’s been holding her breath since the moment he said her name. “We did… something,” she says. “Good enough to make tomorrow worth it.”

I nod once, and we walk—down the block, past the noodle shop that smells like home, under a mural of magenta fish in an ocean of blue that looks like it knows more than we do. We don’t rush the next thing. We let the night file itself in our bones.

My phone buzzes with a number that isn’t in my contacts. I route it to a sandbox and listen anyway. A man’s voice, muffled, ocean in the background. “You made a new friend tonight, bright girl.” Click.

I send the audio to the group with the note gift from a coward and flag the number for Gage to pull apart. Juno’s jaw sets. She doesn’t look afraid. She looks like someone who just put a pin in a map and can see the path from here to there.

“Tomorrow, bagels,” I say. “Then we make Gray late for his meeting.”

“Tomorrow,” she echoes. She squeezes my hand once, quick and hard, like a seal on a document that matters. “But tonight I want you to own me.”