The Calloway Club.
Grabbing my jacket, I punched my arms through the sleeves mid-run out the door.
I didn't like breaking promises. But Kite would understand.
He just had to.
- Chapter 34 -
Jacob
––––––––
“How did it go?” I tapped the side of my bluetooth, wandering through the busy bar.
The Calloway Club was funny. Bright and grimy at once, not too disgusting. But what kind of club opened before eight at night?
They'd painted the windows black. It made it feel like it was late, no sun getting in, all shadows and flickering lights over an almost empty floor. It was the perfect place for someone to hide out.
Kite's voice beeped through the tiny device. “Fine. She won't show.”
“You're sure?”
“Fucking—yes. I'm sure. She promised me.”
I wanted him to be right.
Wandering the place, I surveyed out of habit. There was no danger here, it was a simple business in a mildly bad part of the city. I had no expectation that Lars would appear.
Laying a trap for Marina wasn't fair. However, it was better than passing judgment on her before she'd had an opportunity to show us her true colors.
Kite's job had been to lay into her that she could not come here. She had to believe that this was a big deal. Otherwise, her promise would have been simple to make and keep.
I needed her to choose between her revenge... and us.
If we were second fiddle, then the fact was she could betray us any day. Now, or in the future.
A future that looked brighter by the minute.
Being able to touch her every day, wake up and know I could kiss her soft lips, was a luxury I ached to make real. Everything relied on her.
Trust.
It came down to a promise made in a coffee shop. I hadn't even been there, but Kite believed she meant her word.
All that was left to do was wait.
Migrating, I moved to the wide bar and sat in the middle. I had a direct line of sight with the entrance. Settling in, I linked my fingers in my lap and counted the seconds. The movement to my left told me a bartender was rushing around. Something to take the edge off sounded good.
I was halfway through turning, ready to speak to whoever could get me a glass.
“Shit,” Kite hissed in my ear.
Dreading what I already knew I would see, I turned towards the door. In her dark jacket, Marina should have blended into the crowd. To me, with my heart crushed under a wave of defeat and my eyes begging for this to be a mirage, I couldn't have missed her.
Marina had failed the test.
Her head shifted, finding me across the room. The flicker of relief she glowed with choked me. I wasn't just angry, this went further, shattering me in the bottom of my soul.
This was what heartbreak felt like.
I'd promised Kite a chance. It had been easy for me to offer it, because deep down, Marina was everything I wanted, perhaps even needed.
And she couldn't be trusted. Her fate was locked.
Fuck, I wanted to jump off of a cliff.
She was coming my way, uncertainty turning her eyes glossy. Without looking to my left, where the bartender's shadow was in my peripheral, I lifted a hand and spoke. “Whiskey, clean. Make it a double.”
A cliff wasn't in my near future. A drunken escape would have to do.
“Uh, sure man. Let me see your ID.”
If I wasn't so foggy with grief over the future-corpse walking my way, I would have thought the voice was familiar. I was too lost to focus.
Yanking out my wallet, I slammed my ID onto the bar and slid it his way without tearing my gaze from Marina. “Make it fast,” I hissed. She was seconds away from me.
His laugh was surprised. “Holy shit. Don't I know you?”
The grooves of my brain boiled. Turning, slow as tree-sap, I looked into the familiar face of my bartender. Rail-thin, socket cheeks, bruise colored eye bags.
Juice.
My would-be cocaine dealer.
His awkward smile grew bigger the longer he stared at me. “It is you!” Juice flashed his teeth, stunned by our encounter. He wasn't alone. “Man! You clean up good, Dennis! You quit the thug life like me?”
Battery acid jolted through my cells. My instinct was to turn and flee.
Juice was here, the only person who could connect me to Hecko.
I needed to think.
A plan, an escape, a way out.
Looking down, I spotted my ID. It wouldn't read the name 'Dennis.' He was going to learn my real name, and then, he'd wonder why I'd lied—who I was. He'd be able to give me up to anyone who asked.
“For real, though,” he said, leaning in close but speaking too loudly for the situation. “You did what I did, right? Left the game? Fuck, how could you not? Seeing Hecko's face all over the news cinched it for me. Him and Frank, they were dudes that I knew.” He ran a finger over his throat, frowning. “Ugly fucking business. I'm done with it. Got hired here yesterday, way better than selling dust.”
Licking my bottom lip, I judged the distance between my ID—that was luckily face down on the bar—and Juice.