Chapter 1
The room was smoke-thick, the kind that clings to your throat and burns your eyes like you’ve been staring at the sun too long. My back pressed against peeling wallpaper as I watched Harry stumble over his cards, fingers fumbling just enough, words slurring around the edges like watercolors bleeding into paper. Two whiskeys past gone, they thought. They were wrong.
Harry Morton’s veins ran with ice water when money was on the line. Sober as a judge, sharp as a stiletto — and smart enough to know men believe whatever makes them feel like they’re winning.
They bought it hook, line, and sinker. Their faces glowed with that special kind of greed that always comes before the fall. I’d seen it a dozen times — the setup, the play, the kill. Never got old, that moment when realization dawned like a cold sunrise.
“Your friend’s gonna get himself killed one of these nights,” Winnie muttered beside me, her voice carrying the weight of too many close calls. She adjusted her horn-rimmed glasses, the ones hanging from a chain around her neck when she wasn’t skewering the world through them. The amber light caught the lenses, briefly hiding her eyes.
“He’s been getting himself killed since Budapest.” Rain-slick cobblestones, gunfire—some things don’t fade.
She gave me that look — the one that could strip paint off a Buick and see the rust underneath. “And you’ve been idiot enough to keep following him.”
I didn’t argue. Loyalty’s a habit I can’t break, whether it’s earned or not—familiar as the scar on my rib. Winnie nudged my arm with her elbow, just enough for me to know she was still there, watching out even when she pretended not to care. That was Winnie—her loyalty came out sideways, never head-on.
Harry was in full flight now, dealing cards with a grin sharp enough to draw blood. He tossed chips in lazy arcs; the soft click of plastic on felt sounded like a countdown, as if the outcome were already written.
It always was.
—
Budapest. The bar reeked of piss and cheap gin the moment you stepped inside—stale sweat draping every cracked leather stool, cigarette smoke clawing at your throat, a busted jukebox rattling an off-kilter blues riff somewhere in the haze. No mistaking where you were: exactly the sort of den your mother warned you about. Still, with your senses on high alert and your spine wired tight, it felt like home. This was a place full of men who knew how to break bones better than they knew how to tie ties. Harry and I had no business being here, which of course made it the perfect spot.
She worked the tables, balancing pint glasses like they were live grenades. Beautiful in a hard-lived way—every smile borrowed, worn because she had to, not because she wanted to. When the biggest son of a bitch in the joint decided her tray grazing his chest was an invitation, his meaty paw clamped onto her arm and the room snapped hard to attention.
Harry slid in smooth as oil, pried her free like he was disentangling barbed wire, turning imminent danger into a punch-drunk joke. The man’s eyes narrowed, red-rimmed cavernous holes promising pain. I swung first—bad idea. His fists hit like anvils, and I was scrap metal. The table buckled beneath me, the floor even less forgiving. He let me up only to punch again, waiting for an encore. I spat blood and mouthed, “Six and a half—thought you had more in you.” His next blow rattled my teeth like dice.
“Much better,” I wheezed. “But hell, Joanie Wilder hit harder when she was five.” He didn’t laugh. Neither did I.
Then Harry’s voice cut through the ringing, smooth as a razor: “Easy, friend. You’ve made your point. Big man, tough guy—sure the ladies love you. How about a pint on me and we call it even?”
Miracle of miracles, it worked. Harry half-dragged me outside into the damp night. My head pounded, my ribs felt on fire, and there she was—our waitress—perched on a warped bench under a lone streetlamp. Flowers at her feet glowed like someone had painted them onto the darkness. She didn’t move. Harry didn’t ask her name. Neither did I.
Some things stick without explanation, like scars.
The bruises from that night faded, but the aftermath didn’t. A hotel room, a bottle of vodka pressed to my ribs, Harry joking that next time he’d let me get my own ass kicked. Still, we walked out together. That was what counted.
—
Back in the present, the smoke cleared just enough for me to see Harry’s grin stretch wider. He was in full flight now, running the table like he’d written the rules himself. Chips clicked across the felt in lazy arcs, the sound like a countdown, and the poor bastards never saw it coming. The whiskey in my glass caught the amber light, turning the same color as my regrets.
Beside me, Winnie folded her arms, unimpressed. “You ever get tired of picking fights you can’t win?”
“My mama asked me the same thing once,” I muttered. “Should’ve listened.” The weight of her absence pressed against me like an old bruise.
Winnie didn’t laugh. She never did when I said something true. Her silence had more honesty than most people’s promises.
Across the table, Harry raked in the last pot, sober as a priest giving a sermon. The others stared at their empty wallets, trying to figure out how a stumbling drunk had gutted them so clean. Harry gave them his warmest smile, as if losing to him was a privilege. I’d been watching him run this con for fifteen years, and part of me still wanted to believe the act.
“Gentlemen,” he said, rising with a flourish. “Steak and eggs taste better when they’re on someone else’s tab. Don’t wait up.”
He swept past us, winnings stuffed into his jacket, leaving the room buzzing with the bitter silence of men who’d been played. The scent of his cologne lingered — expensive, like everything else he pretended to be.
Winnie shook her head. “One day he’s going to drag you under with him.”
“One day,” I said. “But not tonight.” I wondered how many “one days” I had left before she stopped warning me.
She followed me out, the cool night air cutting the smoke from our lungs. Harry vanished into the dark, bound for whatever bed or bottle he chose. Me? I turned toward the office. A converted auto shop doesn’t sound like much, but it was mine, and I’d spent six years hammering it into something that almost felt like a life. The concrete still smelled faintly of motor oil and possibility.
Quiet, and I hadn’t been on speaking terms for a long time.
—
The office sat in a converted auto shop, all concrete bones and rusted memory. I’d spent six years hammering it into something that passed for home—a desk with three mismatched drawer handles, a filing cabinet that screamed like a wounded animal when opened, a couch too short to sleep on but perfect for passing out, and an oil stain on the floor that refused to quit no matter how many times I scrubbed. Motor oil and stale coffee were the perfumes of my kingdom, familiar as my own sweat.
I unlocked the door, pushed it open, and froze. The air was wrong—disturbed, like someone had left their breath behind for me to choke on.
A silhouette sat in my chair, legs crossed, posture too relaxed for a burglar. The lamp glowed low, shadows shrouding her face.
She waited, letting the silence draw out, until her voice—familiar, dangerous—finally cut through.
“Hello, Percy.”
Joanie Wilder. My name in her mouth tasted like old promises.
The name I’d thrown at a bruiser years ago like a desperate insult came back now in the flesh, older but no less striking. She wore her beauty like armor, polished but heavy, every line of her face carved by the years between then and now. Time had been kind to her in the way it’s kind to expensive things.
Behind me, Winnie stiffened. I felt it more than saw it—the temperature dropping between my shoulder blades. “You picked the wrong office,” she said flatly. The scrape of her glasses against the chain was louder than her voice, but the steel in her tone cut sharper than any blade. Winnie, always ready to bleed for me.
Joanie’s gaze slid over Winnie, dismissive, her perfume curling through the office, sharp and expensive—the same scent I remembered from a night in Chicago, when nothing ended clean.
“You don’t remember me, do you, Percy?”
“Budapest,” I said, though I wasn’t sure. The smell of piss and gin, the flowers under the streetlamp, the way scars settle into your bones and stay there.
Joanie tilted her head, that smile curving just enough to sting. “No. From before.” Three words that opened a trapdoor under my feet.
Winnie stepped closer, folding her arms across her chest like a barrier. “He doesn’t need what you’re selling.”
I didn’t answer. Couldn’t. The weight of Joanie’s presence pressed the air thin, like the room itself hadn’t prepared for this moment. My Ruger sat in the small of my back, cold and patient, and for the first time in a long while, I wasn’t sure if I needed it for her or for me. Some ghosts you shoot. Others you just surrender to.
—
Joanie’s eyes lingered on me a beat too long, then flicked to the shadow just over my shoulder. Winnie stood slightly behind me to my left, close enough that I could feel her presence like a second spine. She didn’t need to speak—the weight of her silence said enough.
“I’d like a word with Percy,” Joanie said smoothly. Her perfume curled through the air, sharp and expensive, trying to sweeten the request. The scent took me back to that night in Chicago—champagne promises and bloody conclusions. “Alone.”
Winnie didn’t move. Not an inch.
The only sound was the faint scrape of her thumb brushing the chain of her glasses, steady, deliberate. A metronome counting down Joanie’s welcome. Her stance told me everything: if Joanie wanted me alone, she’d have to drag Winnie out by force, and Joanie wasn’t built for that fight. Not the physical kind, anyway.
Joanie’s smile faltered, just enough to crack the polish. She leaned back in the chair, crossed her legs again, and relented with a sigh that carried the weight of someone used to getting her way. “Very well. We’ll do this the hard way, with an audience.”
Her gaze locked on me, that old familiarity burning like acid, eating through the years between us. The scar under my shirt itched, like it remembered her better than I did.
“I need your help, Percy.”
The words landed heavy, like she’d rehearsed them and still hated saying them. Like each syllable cost her something.
Behind me, Winnie shifted her weight, arms still folded. The soft creak of her leather jacket was a comfort I didn’t deserve but desperately needed. Her silence sharpened the edges of the room.
“Funny,” I said, lowering myself into the chair across from Joanie. “Last time I saw you, I was bleeding out on a bar floor. You didn’t seem too worried about my help then.”
Joanie tilted her head, unbothered. The light caught the silver at her temples that hadn’t been there before. “People change.”
“Not the ones that matter,” I said. The bitterness tasted like old pennies.
Her eyes held mine, steady and unblinking. “That’s why I came.”