Chapter 7: Whiskey and Vulnerabilities
The sterile smell of the med kit still clung to Jess’s hands days later, a ghost she couldn’t wash off. Val had vanished after that night. No calls, no texts, just an empty upstairs and a bar that felt too loud, too bright, and utterly defenseless.
Five nights.
Jess had run the bar on autopilot, smiling at regulars, counting bottles, listening for the creak of the back door that never came. Every headlight slicing past the front window was a dark SUV. Every unfamiliar face was a cheap suit with a badge. The fear curdled into a quiet, simmering anger. Val had drawn a target on the bar, bled on its floor, and then just… left. Left Jess holding a gun in the dark, holding a bandage, holding the bag.
Tonight, the last patron had stumbled out just after one. Instead of going home to her empty apartment, she’d locked the front door, killed the main lights, and poured three fingers of the cheap Polish vodka she kept for crushing heartbreak or unvarnished despair. She took it to the corner booth, the one where Marco had pressed the Glock into her hand.
She didn’t drink to feel better. She drank to feel nothing.
The vodka was a clear, brutal heat. It didn’t warm; it scalded. She welcomed the blur. The buzzing neon sign outside the back door painted the stained glass in sickly blues and pinks, a throbbing heartbeat of light. She was on her second glass, maybe her third, her head leaning against the cool, sticky wall when the back door opened.
No aggressive bang this time. A careful, almost silent push.
Jess’s body went rigid, her hand instinctively curling around the empty glass as if it were a weapon. Her heart hammered against her ribs, a trapped bird. She squinted through the gloom.
Val moved into the bar’s dim amber light like a shadow materializing. She looked different. Not hurt. Not disheveled. She was dressed in a simple, dark turtleneck and trousers, her hair pulled back in a severe knot. But her face was stripped bare of its usual impenetrable armor. She looked exhausted, older. Her eyes scanned the room and found Jess immediately, a solitary figure swallowed by the dark booth.
For a long moment, Val just stood there. Jess watched her, waiting for a sharp comment, a dismissive quip. None came.
Val walked over, her footsteps silent on the worn floorboards. She stopped beside the booth, looking down at Jess, at the near-empty bottle on the table, the glass held loosely in a limp hand. Jess stared back, a defiant, vodka-fueled fog glazing her fear. She expected a lecture. She wanted a fight.
Val’s sharp intake of breath was soft, almost imperceptible. Then, with a gentleness that was more shocking than any violence, she reached down. Her fingers, cool and sure, pried the vodka glass from Jess’s unresisting grip. She set it quietly on the table.
Without a word, Val slid into the booth across from her. The leather creaked. The predator’s poise was gone, replaced by a weary stillness. Up close, Jess could see the faint purple shadows under Val’s eyes, a tightness around her mouth that hadn’t been there before.
Val reached across the table. Her calloused fingertips, the same ones that had handled weapons and illicit goods with brutal efficiency, brushed the feathery bangs from Jess’s damp forehead. The touch was light, almost clinical, but it sent a current through Jess that the vodka couldn’t touch.
“You reek of despair and rail vodka,” Val said finally, her voice rough from disuse. It wasn’t an accusation. It was a flat statement, devoid of its usual edge.
Jess’s laugh was a hollow, broken sound. “What’s it to you?”
“You tell me.” Val’s eyes held hers, that uncomfortable, penetrating stare. “Five days. You could have changed the locks. Called that cop ex-boyfriend of yours. You didn’t.”
“He’s not a cop anymore,” Jess mumbled, looking away at the glowing sign. “And changing the locks wouldn’t keep them out. It would just keep you out.”
“True.”
The silence stretched, filled only by the low buzz of the neon. Val’s gaze dropped to Jess’s left hand, resting on the table. The cut across her palm had faded to a thin pink line.
“Hand healed okay?” Val asked.
“It’s fine.”
“My side’s better too. Thanks for that.” Val paused. “The stitches were good. Neat.”
Jess just nodded, a tight, angry motion. The gratitude felt like a needle. “Where did you go?”
“Needed to clean up. Couldn’t do it here. Had to make some calls. Unpleasant ones.” Val leaned back, studying the ceiling where the bullet holes had been patched with fresh drywall. A visible, pale scar on the old wood. “Had to find out who sent the amateurs. Who they really worked for.”
“And?” The word clawed its way out of Jess’s throat.
“It’s complicated.”
“It always is with you.” Jess’s anger surged, cutting through the vodka haze. “They were in my bar, Val. They shot up my ceiling. You bled on my floor. And then you just disappeared. What was I supposed to do? Sit here and wait for the next ones to come through the front door?”
“Yes.” Val’s answer was immediate, blunt. “Because running would have made you a target. Hiding would have made you weak. Sitting here, open, was the smartest thing you could have done. It showed you weren’t scared.”
“I was terrified!”
“I know.” Val’s voice dropped. “But they don’t.” She finally looked away, her shoulders slumping almost imperceptibly. “I had to make sure the trail led away from here. I had to be seen elsewhere, making noise, drawing their eyes. That’s where I’ve been. Making a spectacle of myself in all the wrong places so they’d look there, and not at this quiet little bar with its stubborn owner.”
The confession hung between them, raw and unexpected. Jess stared at her. The anger deflated, leaving behind a confusing mess of relief and resentment. Val had been protecting the bar. By leaving it.
“Did it work?” Jess asked quietly.
“For now.” Val rubbed a hand over her face. “The corporation… it’s a front. A shell within a shell. The men they sent were contractors. Stupid, aggressive ones. I’ve… dealt with the middleman. The direct orders won’t come from that direction again.”
“But they’ll come from somewhere else.”
“Probably.” Val met her eyes again. “This isn’t ending, Jess. It’s changing shape. They know they can’t just scare me out. They saw you. They know this place is… important. That makes it a leverage point.”
The weight of it settled over Jess, heavier than any drunk. The vodka churned in her stomach. “So what now? We just wait for the next bunch of amateurs in cheap suits?”
“No.” Val’s gaze sharpened, that familiar intensity bleeding back into her features. “Now, we stop reacting. We need something. Information. A name, a ledger, something they don’t want getting out. I can’t get it myself. I’m too watched now. My usual channels are… compromised.”
Jess felt a cold dread seep into her veins. “What are you saying?”
Val leaned forward, her voice dropping to a conspiratorial murmur that barely carried over the neon buzz. “Your ex. Liam. He’s a PI now. He’s connected, but he’s clean. Or clean enough. He could ask questions I can’t. He could look places I can’t go.”
“No.” The refusal was instinctive, violent. “Absolutely not. I am not dragging Liam into this. This is your mess.”
“It bled onto your floor!” Val’s control snapped for a second, her fist coming down softly but emphatically on the table. The glasses jumped. “It is your mess now. You’re in it. You have been since you took my rent. The only way out is through. And we can’t go through without knowing exactly what we’re walking into.”
Jess closed her eyes. The neon light painted red patterns on her eyelids. She saw Liam’s concerned face, his easy smile. She saw the dark stain of Val’s blood on her floor. The two images bled together, inseparable.
“He’ll say no,” she whispered.
“He won’t.” Val’s certainty was unnerving. “Not if you ask him.”
When Jess opened her eyes, Val was watching her, all traces of that fleeting gentleness gone. This was the Val from the upstairs world: calculating, ruthless, and utterly convinced of her path.
“Think about it,” Val said, not as a request, but as a final instruction. She pushed herself up from the booth, moving with her old, fluid grace, the moment of vulnerability sealed away once more. She glanced at the vodka bottle. “And for Christ’s sake, switch to bourbon. This stuff is for teenagers and funeral dirges.”
Val’s words hung in the air, a dry critique that did nothing to cut the thick silence between them. Jess watched her walk toward the interior staircase, that familiar, arrogant sway back in her shoulders. The sight fueled a sudden, dizzying rage. It mixed violently with the vodka, turning her stomach.
She tried to stand up from the booth to tell Val exactly where she could shove her bourbon recommendation. The room tipped. The floorboards seemed to warp and swim. Her knees buckled, and she caught herself on the table’s edge, sending the empty glass clattering onto its side.
Val stopped. She turned back, her silhouette a dark cutout against the stairwell’s gloom. She didn’t speak. She just watched as Jess, humiliated and unsteady, righted herself with a clumsy shove.
“I’m fine,” Jess slurred, the lie pathetic even to her own ears.
“You’re not.” Val’s voice held no mockery now. It was flat, observational. She retraced her steps, closing the distance. “You’re vibrating. And you’re pale. Come on.”
Before Jess could protest, Val’s hand was on her elbow. The grip was firm, unyielding, but it lacked its usual transactional force. There was a steadiness to it, a guidance. Jess’s body, treacherous with exhaustion and alcohol, leaned into the support.
Val guided Jess’s swaying form past the bar, through the door behind it that led to the small, cluttered office. It smelled of dusty paperwork, old leather, and the faint, always-present ghost of Val’s ozone scent. The overhead fluorescent flickered once, then glared with sterile intensity.
Val deposited her onto the worn leather couch. The material was cool against Jess’s burning skin. She sank into it, her head lolling back.
Then Val did something utterly disorienting. She knelt. Not a bend, but a deliberate descent onto one knee on the stained carpet before Jess, bringing them eye-to-eye. Her movements were clinical, precise, like a medic assessing a wound. Her sharp eyes catalogued everything: the tear-tracks through her mascara, the shaky hands, the haunted hollows in her expression.
Val’s lips thinned into a tight line. It wasn’t anger. It was something closer to troubled acknowledgment. She snapped her fingers, the sound sharp in the quiet office.
Marco appeared in the doorway, a mountain blocking the light. He didn’t ask questions. His face, as always, was an unreadable slab of calm.
“Aspirin,” Val said, her gaze never leaving Jess’s face. “The strong stuff from the kit. And black coffee. Now.”
Marco vanished. Val shrugged out of her tailored wool jacket in one fluid motion. She didn’t hand it to Jess. She stood, leaned over, and draped it over Jess’s trembling shoulders. The weight was immediate, surprisingly heavy, and warm from Val’s body heat. It smelled like her—expensive, sharp, and utterly foreign in this context of care.
Jess clutched the lapels, her fingers sinking into the fine material. She couldn’t look at her.
Marco returned. He placed two white tablets in Val’s outstretched palm, then set a steaming mug of inky black coffee on the desk beside them. He lingered for a second, his eyes on the top of Jess’s bowed head, before retreating back into the shadowed hall.
Val took the mug, held it for a moment testing the heat, then offered it. “Here. Small sips. Then the aspirin.”
Jess’s hands were too unsteady. Val saw it. She shifted her grip, guiding the mug to Jess’s lips herself, holding it there with an impersonal efficiency that made the act feel less like intimacy and more like necessary field medicine. The coffee was brutal, bitter, scalding a path through the vodka fog.
“Why?” Jess managed after a sip, her voice ragged.
“Why what?” Val took the mug back, waiting for her to swallow before offering it again.
“This.” Jess gestured weakly at the jacket, the coffee, Val kneeling on her office floor. “The… performance.”
“It’s not a performance.” Val’s answer was quiet. She placed the aspirin into Jess’s now-wet palm, closed her fingers around them. “You’re an asset. A compromised one right now, but an asset. This is maintenance.”
It was the coldest, most transactional explanation possible. Yet her actions—the jacket, the precise kneeling, the controlled gentleness—told a different, more complicated story. This was the softest Val had ever been with her, a vulnerability expressed through utility.
Jess swallowed the pills dry, wincing. “An asset. Right.”
“You are.” Val finally broke her intense ocular hold, looking down at her own hands, now empty. “You held the line. You didn’t run. You even patched me up. That means something in my world. It creates a… debt.”
She said the last word like it was distasteful, a primitive term for a feeling she couldn’t otherwise name.
“I don’t want your debt,” Jess mumbled, the coffee beginning to chase back the edges of the blur.
“Tough.” Val stood up, brushing invisible dust from her trousers. The moment of proximity was over, the mask resettling. But it was cracked. They had both seen behind it now. “The debt exists."
Jess pulled the jacket tighter. Closed her eyes.
This time she didn't open them again.
Val sat with the quiet of it. The particular quiet of someone sleeping in a room you're responsible for, which was a different kind of quiet from all the others — it had a weight to it, a small ongoing requirement of presence that Val found, to her considerable inconvenience, that she didn't want to leave.
She sat for longer than she should have. She looked at Jess sleeping in her jacket and she thought about debt and about the word she'd used and about the reason underneath it that had no word yet and perhaps didn't need one. Some things were more honest as the space around the word rather than the word itself.
Then she stood. Smoothed her sleeves. Looked at Marco.
"Stay until she wakes," she said quietly. "Don't let her leave without coffee and something to eat."
Marco nodded. Of course he did.
Val looked at Jess one more time. She didn't let herself look for too long.
Then she went to her desk, sat down, and got back to work — because that was what she did, and because the alternative was sitting in the chair across from the couch and watching Jess sleep until morning, which was something she was not going to do and had not, she told herself firmly, considered doing even briefly.
The city hummed outside. The lamp cast its warm circle. Jess slept.
Val worked. And if her eyes moved, every now and then, across the room to the couch — to the rise and fall of it, to her own jacket draped over someone else's shoulders — she kept that to herself. She was very good at keeping things to herself.
She had been good at it for a very long time.
It had never, until recently, felt like it was costing her anything.