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)
Man Four is shorter, compact, eyes like a fox. Restless leg jig. He keeps touching his ear as if there’s an itch under the skin. Scars along his knuckles too, but messier, recent.
Man Five is young—early twenties, maybe, jaw tight in a way that suggests he’s auditioning for a role he’s over-practiced in the mirror. His tie is a fraction too slim. His laugh, when it comes, is a fraction too loud. He’s the kind of man who brings knives to poker and loses his shirt to a bluff, then learns how to count cards.
They fan through the room like a slow wave. Staff in black cuffs do that dance that’s part welcome, part warning. Pride tilts to include them without admitting it.
Man One clocks Paul the way sharks clock the silhouette of a seal. His smile clicks into place like a blade in a pocket. He raises his hand—casual, careless—and shapes his fingers into a gun. Thumb up. Index extended. He winks. Pew.
My blood goes to ice. All the air in Club Greed rushes out a slit in the side of the world and I’m a vacuum.
Arrow’s body is still, which is how I know he’s vibrating. I nudge him, fingernails biting his thigh. He doesn’t look at me. He doesn’t look away. His voice—a breath, a ghost—slips into our tiny channel. “We’ve got them.”
The Five. In a room with mirrors and rules and a ceiling that reflects our faces back at us when we look up for help.
Paul startles like the finger-shot grazed him. It didn’t. That’s the point. He forces a smile, the kind you give a boss you don’t like at a party you didn’t want to attend. The woman in sequins pats his arm; her eyes are wide above the mask.
“Names,” I whisper, this time audibly. The word tastes like a dare.
Arrow’s mouth hardly moves. “Not yet.” His hand slips off my knee and finds my fingers instead, lacing them, which might be the only thing keeping me anchored to the couch.
Staff drift closer to the Five like planets nervous about a gravity well. I catch a half-soft greeting: “Good evening, gentlemen… your usual table?” Not names. Greed is too careful to toss those around like confetti.
“Look at their wrists,” Arrow breathes. “Cuffs, watches, habits.”
I do. Man One’s onyx ring sits low; the scar on his index—left hand—matches the angle in the freeze-frame in my head from Arby’s feed when a glove elbowed and a hand curled, index straight, thumb flicked. Man Two’s red band reads like a man who wants to be off-limits until he chooses to be a problem. Man Three’s gold chain catches in his throat when he laughs; his pinky ring is engraved—tiny letters I can’t read on sight. Man Four never stops scanning—door, bar, exit, frames, door again. Man Five’s shoes squeak. It’s stupid, but I file it: youth buys bad varnish.
“Breathe,” Arrow reminds me, and it turns out I need the instruction.
We watch. Pride watches. Felt eyes behind masks watch. The Five don’t touch anyone. They claim a low table near the center like a chess piece planted deep in your side of the board. The servers bring them something amber and expensive. Man Three talks with his hands. Man Two nods once, which in some languages is a paragraph.
I return my attention back to Paul. The woman in sequins excuses herself, hand warm on Paul’s shoulder, and Paul stands like he remembers where he is. He doesn’t go to the Five. He goes to the bar. The bartender asks him something with her eyes. He shakes his head minutely. The Five don’t watch him go. They don’t need to.
“Field notes,” Arrow says, clinically calm and a little vicious. “Man One: onyx ring, knuckle scar, watch—black ceramic, likely Hublot or Rado. Vetiver and smoke. Man Two: military habit, red band, no tie, slight limp left foot on the pivot. Man Three: pinky ring engraved, tassel loafers—idiot—laughs like a microphone. Man Four: touch to ear every thirty seconds like it’s programmed. Man Five: fidgeter, too much cologne, jaw clench on the downbeat.”
I file them like poses on a police lineup, like saints in stained glass if saints were rotten.
Pride shifts again. Someone changes the track. A Greedy Girl drops a napkin and Man Four notices and gives the woman a look that would make a lesser person apologize to their ancestors. The Greedy Girl doesn’t flinch. Club Greed trains its staff well.
“Do we leave?” I ask, because I want to do anything but sit.
“We observe,” Arrow says. “Then we learn their exits. Then we leave. We don’t poke a hive indoors.”
He’s right. I hate him for it for exactly one second and then I love him for it so much I want to start a fight and make up in the same breath.