Total pages in book: 102
Estimated words: 97537 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 488(@200wpm)___ 390(@250wpm)___ 325(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 97537 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 488(@200wpm)___ 390(@250wpm)___ 325(@300wpm)
Ozzy replies with a pepper emoji and a knife. Render sends a skull, a key, and a dragon. Knight sends ON 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 word bright to someone and expect it to work.
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 are not shy 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 say I’m relaxed and not arrest 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 his eyes 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 as yes.
“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.