I can explain.

She’s been taking little bits.

I caught her.

That’s all this is.

I handled it wrong, maybe, but I was protecting the house.”

Damian let him talk until he ran out of breath.

Then he asked, “How much did she take tonight?”

Ricky blinked.

“What?”

“How much did Clara take tonight?”

Ricky’s eyes flicked to the ledger, then to the slips, then to Vincent.

He had the expression of a man searching for the right lie in a room where someone had moved all the furniture.

“Forty,” he said finally.

“Like before.”

Vincent shut the ledger with a soft snap.

Clara’s hands tightened around the towel.

Damian looked at Ricky for a long second.

“Tonight’s drawer was short four hundred.”

Ricky opened his mouth.

Closed it.

Rainwater dripped from his jacket cuff onto the floor.

“I meant she’s been doing it in pieces,” he said.

“You know how they are.

They take a little here, a little there—”

“Who is they?”

Ricky swallowed.

“Cleaners.

Staff.

People who think nobody sees them.”

Clara had survived years of men like Ricky by making herself small.

In apartments where the lock stuck, in buses where strangers pressed too close, in back rooms where managers paid in cash and called it generosity, she had learned that silence was often the only shield she could afford.

But the ledger on the table changed the room.

So did the torn band.

So did Damian’s question.

Who is they?

For the first time that night, Ricky was the one expected to answer.

Damian picked up the strip from the money clip and laid it beside the strip from the drain.

The torn edges kissed together almost perfectly.

“You were beating her beside your own trash,” he said.

Ricky’s face tightened.

“Anybody could have dropped that.”

“Anybody did not blame her before the count was finished.”

“She admitted she stole.”

“She did.” Damian’s voice remained even.

“Forty dollars.

Three days ago.

A stupid, desperate theft from an unlocked drawer.

She told the truth about it while bleeding on my leather.

You are lying clean and dry.”

Ricky’s eyes flashed toward Clara with a hatred that made her brace against the chair.

Damian saw it.

“Look at me,” he said.

Ricky obeyed.

“How many nights?” Damian asked.

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“How many nights did you correct the register and blame whoever could least afford to argue?”

Ricky said nothing.

Damian did not ask again.

He turned to Vincent.

“Keys.”

One guard stepped behind Ricky and removed the club keys from his belt.

Another took his phone.

Vincent reached into Ricky’s jacket and pulled out a folded stack of cash, then placed it on the table without ceremony.

Ricky’s voice cracked.

“Boss, come on.”

“You used my club as cover,” Damian said.

“You used my staff as cover.

Then you bled a cleaner in my alley ten minutes before I walked through it.”

“She stole from you.”

“And I will deal with her.” Damian’s tone sharpened for the first time.

“You do not get to hide behind her forty dollars.”

Ricky looked at Clara again, but this time he could not make the room follow his anger.

His boots were planted on expensive carpet.

His hands were empty.

The men on either side of