the reason.

He always does.”

Roman considered her for a long moment.

“Then what do you want?”

The question startled her more than any threat had.

David had never asked that without using it as bait.

Customers rarely asked it unless they wanted to hear themselves sound generous.

Roman Gallagher asked as if the answer might be operationally relevant.

Norah looked at the bourbon, the ledger, the guards, the door.

Then she looked at the message again.

She thought of the electric bill.

The rent envelope.

The way David used baby like a leash.

The way Roman had smirked when she said it by mistake, then gone still when he heard how it was used on her.

“I want my envelope back,” she said.

“And I want him to leave without following me home.”

Roman nodded once.

“Reasonable.”

“That doesn’t mean you get to scare him for fun.”

A faint trace of the earlier smirk returned.

“I rarely do anything for fun.”

“Then don’t start with me.”

Marco coughed into his fist like he was hiding a laugh.

Roman did not look at him, but the guard immediately found the wall fascinating.

Roman stood.

The movement changed the room.

Sitting, he had been dangerous.

Standing, he was a fact everyone else adjusted to.

He took his suit jacket from the booth and put it on with unhurried precision.

“You will stand at the service hall door,” he told Norah.

“You will ask for what is yours.

He will hand it to you.”

“And if he doesn’t?”

“Then he will learn the difference between a girlfriend he can bully and a business he cannot.”

Norah wanted to reject the line because it sounded too much like a threat.

But beneath it sat something she could use: witnesses, boundaries, a public hallway in a building David did not control.

She nodded once.

They moved through the side door into a narrow corridor lined with framed black-and-white photographs of performers who had sung at the Onyx decades before Norah was born.

The service lights were harsher here, exposing every scuff in the paint and every crease in Roman’s white shirt.

At the far end, David’s voice echoed.

“I know she’s back there!”

Norah’s feet slowed.

Roman did not touch her.

He only stopped beside her.

“Last chance to stay behind me.”

She hated how tempting it was.

“No,” she said.

The service hall opened near the kitchen entrance.

Two security men stood by the back door with David between them.

He wore the gray hoodie Eli had described, the hood half-fallen off his head, his hair damp with sweat.

In one fist, he clutched Norah’s envelope.

The sight of it hurt more than seeing him.

David’s eyes found her, then Roman, then the men behind them.

His anger faltered, replaced by calculation.

“Norah,” he said, instantly softer.

“Tell them this is a misunderstanding.”

There it was.

The switch.

The voice he used when strangers were watching.

Norah walked forward until only a few feet separated them.

“Give me the envelope.”

David held it against his chest.

“Can we talk like adults?”

“We are.

Give me the envelope.”

His gaze flicked to Roman.

“This is between us.”

“No,” Norah said.

“It stopped being between us when you came to my job and threatened to