Chapter 4: The Storage Room
FALLON
The back room always smelled the same: damp cardboard, spilled liquor seeping into concrete, the bar’s late-night residue folded into the air. I was halfway through the inventory—tallying a case of cheap bourbon whose seal had split—when the muffled change in the music at the front door told me someone had come in.
A door closed, the chatter thinned, then the storage door eased shut behind me. I didn’t look up immediately; habit keeps you finishing the count. A shoe heel clicked against concrete, careful, not the sloppy boot of someone just staggering in. The air shifted a degree tighter.
“Still hiding in back rooms, Grace?” A voice, low and measured, from the doorway.
I finished the line on my clipboard before I turned. He was framed in the doorway—lean, jacket dark, curls damp—not exactly shadow and threat but close enough to make the room small. He stayed in the threshold, one shoulder against the frame, keeping the exit between us. The leather smelled faintly of gas and night air, nothing like the easy familiarity of old friends; he’d come to speak, not reminisce.
“It’s inventory,” I said, flat. “Some of us actually work.”
He smiled, slow, watching the rows of crates as if inventory told him stories. “Heard your brother came by,” he said. Nothing clipped in the way Roman’s visits sometimes were—this was a probe, casual on the surface but sharp beneath. “Liam still playing guardian?”
The name landed with a prickle. I kept my eyes on the clipboard. “He visited. We talked.”
“You heard a bike out front?” His question wasn’t small. He didn’t step forward, just watched, gauging. “Someone said mine’s been circling your block.”
“I heard something,” I admitted, the truth not a confession so much as an inconvenience. “That night—maybe. I didn’t think it was anything.”
He let that sit. When he spoke again his voice lowered, careful. “There’s a difference between being noticed and being pulled in. You keep your head down—don’t make that line blurry.”
A crash of laughter and a barked order from the bar sliced through the doorframe; Marco’s head popped in. “Fallon, we need a cleanup on eleven!” He met Enzo for half a second, took in the charged air, and left the door ajar behind him.
Enzo didn’t move toward the bar. He stepped just far enough in to shut the door on the noise, then looked back at me. “I’ve got a run tomorrow night—coastal highway, ten. If you’re not just counting bottles, show at the garage.”
He said it like an offer and a test both. He turned and left the way he’d come, the door sighing closed on the sound of his boots. The clipboard in my hands suddenly felt too light; the bourbon’s sticky smear had blurred the numbers into a smear that made no sense.
Counting was what I did to keep the world orderly. Standing there with the echo of his words, the urge to keep counting collided with the part of me that remembered speed, risk, and the sharp clarity that came with both. Not knowing him didn’t make the invitation safer. It made it deliberate.