Page 86 of Make Them Bleed
Inside, we will be waiting.
29
Juno
The first thing I notice about Club Greed is that the air has opinions. It smells like bergamot and old money, like someone taught a thunderstorm to swagger. A velvet rope cuts the entry in half, and a woman with cheekbones that could open safes—Adele, per Arrow’s briefing—smiles like she knows all my secrets and has rated them four stars.
“Welcome,” she purrs, voice warm and velvety. “House rules on the screen. Phones in the lockers.” She flicks her gaze to our wrists and gives me a yellow band. “Yellow bands—conversation only.”
Arrow thanks her with that mild, corporate-angel tone he uses when he’s pretending not to be the most dangerous person in the room. He slips our phones into Faraday-lined lockers, accepts two numbered bands like they’re boarding passes to a strange country, and touches the small of my back in a way that feels like both permission and check-in. My pulse doesn’t flatten. Instead, it sharpens.
Greed’s foyer is all hushed lighting, framed stills of black-and-white bodies arranged like art (consent-coded captions beneath each one), and a long bar carved from something so glossy I can see both our faces upside down. A mural of a G arches over the back bar; the glass shelves double into infinity in the mirror behind it, bottles marching like jewel-toned soldiers toward a horizon only they can see.
We swing by the far end of the bar, and the bartender slides us sparkling water with lime wedges as if she can read our minds. The soundtrack is low and silk-smooth. The place is packed with people, and some of them arenotshy at all. I blush as a couple of women make out with a man on the couch.
I pretend to sip. Arrow actually does, which is impressive. He appears unfazed by everything. He wears a white-button down, no tie, shirt open at the throat just enough to sayI’m relaxedand notarrest me. He blends so well he creates a negative space. Like if you stopped looking actively, you wouldn’t see him at all. And yet I can feel him. I always do.
“Pride?” he murmurs.
“Pride,” I say, and we drift past Lust (obvious), past Gluttony (there’s a buffet and some truly committed whipped cream architecture), past Sloth (pillows, god help me), and into Pride: a gallery with plush white banquettes along the walls, a mirrored ceiling that feels like a sky made of facets, and a central installation: a ring of frames that look empty until you catch them from the right angle and realize they’re polarized glass, hiding and revealing scenes in a slow, curated pulse.
We take a corner banquette near the exit that sees everything—the door, the bar station, the frames, the full sweep of sin in good lighting. Arrow angles himself so he can watch the room with hiseyes and the mirrors with the rest of his brain. He sets our water on the low table. His knee touches mine, a line that’s ridiculous in a room where two people three couches over are testing the strength of a zipper like an Olympic sport.
Pride hums with permission. People make out. Some do more. The Greedy Girls glide like priests of a tender religion, checking in with a glance, a hand to their own wrist to ask band colors again before anyone’s mouth goes where mouths go. It’s consensual choreography, and it’s doing things to my ability to breathe evenly.
Arrow’s finger draws lazy circles on my knee, casual and devastating. It’s nothing and everything. I lean in like gravity is a rumor and he’s the only true thing here. His breath warms the delicate skin beneath my ear. He doesn’t touch it, because if he does I will forget why we’re here.
“Okay?” he asks, voice so low it feels private.
“Unfair,” I whisper back, which doubles asyes.
“Unfair isn’t a safe word,” he says, and presses one dry, careful kiss to the corner of my mouth that lights a fuse I did not authorize.
“Hey,” a voice says gently, and we blink apart as if we’re teenagers caught on a church pew. A woman stands near our table, green band, kind smile, and her hair in tight curls. A man stands a respectful few feet behind her, hands in his pockets like he knows where they’ve been invited to go and is willing to wait. “You two are beautiful,” she says, no hunger in it, only admiration. “If you want to watch, we’re over there.” She nods toward a blank frame that will not be blank if viewed at the rightangle. “Or if you want company…?” She gestures to her own wrist, green band bright. “We’re good with yellow, too.”
Arrow’s thumb presses once to the side of my knee:your call.My heart does a weird, grateful thing.
“Thank you,” I say, meaning it because she asked instead of assumed. “We’re… first-timers.”
Her eyes soften. “Then you’re doing great. Yellow is a good first night. If you change your minds, my name’s Desire. That’s Brad. We’ll be around.”
“Have fun,” Brad adds, giving us a quick nod.
They drift. I exhale a breath I didn’t know I’d been bracing. Arrow’s mouth is so close to my hair that if he were anyone else, I’d be mad. Because he’s him, I lean. The room’s heat has nothing on the line of his thigh fitted to mine.
“We can leave,” he says, not because he wants to, but because he’ll walk me out even if I’m the one who dragged us in.
“We can’t,” I say, because we came here to hunt, not to hide. “But if you keep drawing circles I am going to?—”
He stops drawing circles. His hand slides closer to the hem of my dress, warm through the fabric, not crossing—because yes, but also because we have a job.
I try to watch like a detective and not like a girl whose pulse is trying to tap out Morse code forplease.Pride’s frames flick to reveal a tableau: a couple in masks, kissing slow. Another flick shows nothing and everything: my reflection and, beyond it, a man I know from boring cookouts with store-bought potato salad and Bob’s jokes about cholesterol.
“Arrow.” I don’t say it out loud. I breathe it, and his posture shifts by a molecule. “Look over there.”
He follows my gaze. Three couches down, under a painting of a laurel-wreathed mirror, sits Paul Felder. He’s out of his navy polo and into a suit that fits too well to be new. His green band glows like an invitation. He works with Bob—city contracts, I think, Procurement or Utilities, the office with bad ceiling tiles and pep talks about fiscal responsibility. He’s not doing anything illegal—talking to a woman with a sequined mask, her hand light on his forearm as she laughs —but the last place I expected to see Bob’s favorite second-in-command was at Club Greed.
I lift my hand without thinking, a reflex wave from a thousand barbecues. Arrow’s fingers close around mine, and he presses our hands back into my lap. I glare at him. He tips his head a fraction.
