him were not his drinking friends from the bar.

“What happens to me?” he asked.

Damian’s face gave him nothing.

“You leave through the service door.

You do not return to Coda.

You do not collect on this block.

You do not use my name to frighten women in alleys.

By morning, everyone who needs to know will know.”

Ricky seemed to prefer a threat he could picture.

The quietness of it unbalanced him.

“That’s it?” he said, too hopeful and too afraid.

Damian picked up the money clip and dropped it into Vincent’s open hand.

“That depends on whether any more of my money is found in your apartment, your car, or your mother’s basement.

You should hope your habit of being stupid is smaller than your habit of being greedy.”

The guards took Ricky out.

He did not look powerful then.

He looked wet, heavy, and unfinished, as though the alley had followed him inside but left without him.

The door closed behind him.

Clara sagged in the chair before she realized she had been holding herself rigid.

Pain rushed back in to claim the space fear had occupied.

Her ribs throbbed.

Her thigh pulsed.

Her mouth tasted of blood and towel cotton.

Damian turned to her.

She straightened as much as she could.

“I’ll pay it back,” she said quickly.

“The forty.

I’ll work it off.

I’ll—”

“Yes,” he said.

The simple answer cut through her panic.

She nodded, swallowing.

“Okay.”

“You stole from me.

That does not disappear because Ricky is worse.”

“I know.”

“But you are not responsible for his theft.” Damian gestured toward the ledger.

“And you are not responsible for cleaning up his violence.”

For some reason, that sentence nearly broke her.

Not because it was kind.

It was not.

Damian Russo was not absolving her.

He was dividing blame with a precision Clara had never been offered.

In her life, other people’s messes had a way of landing on her hands.

Her mother’s rent.

Her ex’s broken window.

A manager’s missing cash.

Ricky’s temper.

If Clara was near the damage, someone always decided she had caused it.

Damian looked to Vincent.

“Clinic first.

Use the north entrance.”

“No hospital?” Clara asked.

“If you want a hospital, Vincent will take you to one.”

She searched his face for the trick.

“And if I tell them Ricky did it?”

“That is your choice.”

The answer surprised her enough to make her forget the pain for one breath.

Damian continued, “It will be ugly.

Police will ask questions.

Ricky has friends who will lie.

Some of my people will pretend they saw nothing.

I will not promise you a clean road because clean roads do not run behind clubs like Coda.”

That sounded more honest than comfort would have.

“But if I don’t?” she asked.

“Then you still get your ribs checked, and Ricky still does not return.”

Clara looked down at her hands.

The towel trembled between them.

She thought of her apartment with its buzzing refrigerator and one good lamp.

She thought of the power bill pinned under a magnet shaped like an orange.

She thought of the forty dollars, gone into keeping one small square of the world lit.

“I don’t know what I want,” she admitted.

“For tonight,” Damian said, “want