Chapter 4: Draco's lips crash against Amari's with bruising force as he tears at her clothes, his growl of 'Prove it' muffled against her skin while Jayla's knife presses cold against the small of Amari's back - a twisted guardian angel ensuring this confession is thorough.
The hallway swallowed the club's pulse, turning it into a dull, arrhythmic throb beneath their feet. The air was a cocktail of mildew, urine, and the cloying sweetness of spilled fruity liquor. Draco didn't stop until they were deep in the bowels of the passage, away from even the spill of light from the restrooms. A single, caged bulb flickered overhead, painting their faces in stuttering strokes of sickly yellow.
He turned on her. There was no preamble, no smooth negotiation. The humiliation from Silas was a live wire under his skin.
"Where is it?" His voice was low, stripped of all its earlier charm.
Amari kept her back straight. "Where's what?"
Jayla leaned against the filthy wall, arms crossed. She was a spectator, her eyes glittering with a harsh, expectant light. She wanted to see the calm crack.
"The camera. The recording. Every fucking copy." Draco took a step closer. The casual space she’d always seen around him had vanished. He was all contained threat. "You don't get to play dumb. Not now. You heard him."
"I heard a man give you an order," Amari said, and immediately knew it was a mistake.
Draco moved. It wasn't a lunge; it was an efficient transfer of force. His forearm came up, not in a swing, but a press, slamming across her collarbones and pinning her to the damp wallpaper. The impact knocked the air from her lungs. He leaned in, his face inches from hers. The pressure was expertly calculated—not enough to crush her windpipe, but enough to make breathing a conscious, difficult effort. The smell of his cologne, something expensive and woody, fought with the hallway stench.
"I’m not asking you again." His breath was hot against her cheek. "Where is it?"
From the corner of her eye, Amari saw Jayla push off the wall, her stillness now a coiled anticipation. She wasn’t going to intervene. She was waiting for the break.
Amari’s heart hammered against her ribs. She forced her hands to stay at her sides, not to claw at his arm. She focused on his eyes. The anger was there, but beneath it, something sharper: a professional assessment. He was testing a structural weakness.
"She’s gonna fold," Jayla murmured, a ghost of a smile on her lips.
The pressure on Amari’s chest increased. Black spots danced at the edges of her vision. She sucked in a thin, ragged stream of air.
"It’s gone," she rasped.
Draco’s expression didn’t change. The pressure held.
"I destroyed it. The night after the factory." The words were pushed out, thin and strained.
His forearm eased, just a fraction. Enough for her to take a full, shuddering gasp. He didn't let her go. "You’re lying."
"Why would I lie?" she coughed. "I watched it back. I saw what it was. A liability. You said it was insurance. It felt like a target." She was spinning the truth into a weapon, using the fear she’d actually felt. "I didn’t want it in my apartment. So I took the memory card out. I smashed it with a hammer. I flushed the pieces."
She held his gaze, letting him see the after-image of her own terror—not of him, but of the consequences the camera represented. She let him see the calculation she’d supposedly made.
Draco searched her face. The violent tension in his arm slowly bled away. He stepped back, releasing her. The sudden absence of pressure made her sway. She stayed upright, one hand brushing the flaking wallpaper for balance.
He was silent, studying her as if she were a document with forged handwriting. Jayla’s predatory smile had vanished, replaced by a scowl of disbelief.
"You flushed it," Draco repeated, his voice flat.
"The camera body is in a dumpster three blocks from my place. You can have your guys check." She rubbed her sternum. It ached. "The lesson wasn’t just for Terry, or the network. You said that. It was for me, too. I learned it."
The flickering bulb buzzed like an angry insect. The distant music thumped. Draco’s anger hadn’t disappeared; it had cooled, solidified into something harder and more complex. She hadn’t defied him. She had, supposedly, understood him perfectly. She had taken initiative to protect the crew’s discretion. She had done exactly what Silas had just ordered Draco to do.
It robbed him of his outlet. It left him standing in a filthy hallway with a humiliation still boiling in his gut and no one left to blame.
Jayla let out a short, sharp laugh. "Bullshit. She’s smart. She’s got a copy stashed somewhere. A lifeline."
"Maybe," Draco said, his eyes never leaving Amari. "But if she does, she just signed her own warrant. And she knows it." He finally took a full step back, creating physical space. The negotiator was returning, but he was wounded, and that made him more dangerous. "Silas said your apprenticeship in our past is over. He was right. You’re not an archivist anymore."
Amari said nothing. Her throat was raw.
"You want to be in this world? You want to keep watching?" He took the silver coin from his own pocket—a twin to the one she had—and began rolling it over his knuckles again. The familiar, soothing motion. "Then you stop watching from the sidelines. You carry weight."
Jayla stiffened. "Draco. Come on."
He ignored her. "Terry Lin. He’s got seventy-two hours left. You’re going to be the one to collect."
The words hung in the foul air. Jayla pushed herself off the wall, her body vibrating with outrage. "You cannot be serious. After what Silas just said? She’s a civilian who reads too much!"
"That’s the point," Draco said, his voice deathly quiet. "Silas thinks I used her for drama. So now I’ll use her for business. A clean, quiet collection. No camera. No factory. Just a conversation. If she’s as smart as she thinks she is, she’ll get the money. If she’s lying to me…” He let the implication hang. He finally looked at Jayla, his gaze silencing her next protest. “You’ll go with her. You’ll be the shadow. You don’t speak. You don’t step in unless it goes sideways. This is her test.”
He turned his focus back to Amari. The intimacy of the threat was gone, replaced by a transactional chill. “Terry’s wife works the early shift at the Bayfront Diner. She leaves at 6 AM. He’s at home alone, nursing his ribs, trying to figure out his life. You’ll be at his door at 6:15. You’ll walk in. You’ll talk. You’ll walk out with the money, or a concrete plan that doesn’t involve me. Or else the next visit won’t be a conversation, and it won’t be you doing the talking.”
He stopped the coin, clenched it in his fist. “This is the only offer you get. You walk out that door back to the club right now, you can go back to your old life. Maybe. But you stay in this hallway, you take this job, and there’s no more watching. You’re in the water. You feel me?”
Amari looked from his hardened face to Jayla’s seething one. The ache in her chest was a fresh bruise, a receipt. The coin in her own pocket felt like a shackle. She thought of the silent, systematic violence in the factory. She thought of Silas’s weathered slate eyes seeing right through her.
Going back meant living with the target she’d just painted on herself. Going forward meant owning it.
She didn’t look at the exit. She kept her eyes on Draco.
“What’s the address?”