Chapter 9: Cold Calculations
The storage room air was thick, tasting of dust and the ghost of spilled bourbon. Jess slammed the crate of Bulleit onto the concrete floor harder than necessary. Glass rattled in protest. She wiped her forearm across her brow, pushing back the feathery bangs stuck there with sweat. The bar was prepped for the evening rush, but this inventory count felt like punishment. A self-imposed penance for the phone call she’d made two hours earlier.
Liam’s voice, warm and surprised, still echoed in her skull. “Jess? Wow. This is… out of the blue.” She’d kept it short, her script rehearsed and brittle. A favor. Information on a shell company. Meeting at The Griddle on Sunset, tomorrow at noon. Public. Busy. His hesitation had been a physical thing, a crackle on the line. “For you? Yeah. Okay. Noon.”
She’d hung up the bar phone feeling like she’d swallowed ground glass.
A shadow filled the doorway, blocking the dim light from the hall.
Jess didn’t need to look up. The shift in pressure, the specific silence, was its own announcement.
“We need to talk about Liam,” Val said. Her voice was neutral, clean of the frustration from the sunlit office. It was back to business. Back to logistics.
Jess straightened, her spine a rod of tension. She kept her eyes on the shelf, counting bottles of gin. Three. Two were half-empty, for well drinks. “No.”
“Jess.”
“No.” This time she looked. Val was leaning against the doorframe, a picture of casual elegance in a charcoal sheath dress. She looked entirely out of place in the cramped, grimy alcove. It made Jess feel dirtier. “We don’t need to talk. You gave me a directive. I executed it. Conversation over.”
Val’s expression didn’t change. “I need to know what you told him. The approach matters.”
“I told him I needed a favor. That’s it.” Jess turned back to the shelves, grabbing a bottle of cheap vodka. The label was peeling. “He didn’t ask why. Not yet.”
“He will.”
“Then I’ll lie.” The words came out flat, final. She slammed the vodka bottle onto a higher shelf. “That’s what you do, right? You lie. You manipulate. You use people. Consider this my on-the-job training.”
The buzzing of the single fluorescent bulb grew louder in the silence.
“This isn’t about training,” Val said, her voice dropping into a lower register. “This is about alignment. If your story and my coverage don’t match, he’s at risk. You’re at risk.”
Jess finally faced her fully, a dust-streaked rag clenched in one fist. “My story is that my ex-boyfriend, who still has a soft spot for me, is doing a favor for a friend. That’s all he gets to know. Your ‘coverage’ shouldn’t enter his universe. That was the whole point of your little speech about firewalls. Weren’t you listening to yourself?”
Val’s eyes narrowed. A flicker of that raw honesty from the office surfaced, quickly smothered. “I was. Which is why the details matter. Where you’re meeting. How you’ll signal if something feels wrong. What his routines are, so I can spot a tail.”
“No.” Jess took a step forward, into the narrow space between shelves. The smells of stale whiskey and damp wood wrapped around them. “No more. No favors. No complications. No shared trauma bonding sessions. Just square footage and rent checks from now on. That’s the line you wanted. It’s drawn. In fucking cement.”
She watched Val’s jaw tighten. Watched the muscles in her throat work as she swallowed some retort. For a long moment, Val just held her gaze, that beat longer than comfortable, trying to find a crack in the wall.
Jess didn’t blink.
“You’re angry,” Val stated.
“I’m pragmatic. You sold me the package. I bought it.” Jess tossed the rag onto a crate. “The Liam problem is handled. My end. Your end is making sure your shit doesn’t splash onto my bar or my… my past. Do your job. I’ll do mine.”
The word ‘past’ hung there. Liam was a ghost in this room now, a whole life that existed before the bar, before Val, before blood on a polished floor. A life that felt alien.
Val pushed off from the doorframe. She stood to her full height, the ceiling light casting sharp shadows under her cheekbones. “The Griddle. Tomorrow. Noon.” She’d overheard the call, then. Of course she had. “I’ll have a team there. You won’t see them. He won’t see them. If anything deviates, I’ll know.”
“I don’t want to know,” Jess said, turning her back, pretending to scrutinize a case of sour mix.
“You already do.”
There was no malice in it. Just a cold, factual correction. It was the truth, and it was the trap. Knowing things was the point of no return.
Jess heard the soft sigh of Val’s shoes on the concrete, the retreat. She didn’t turn around. She focused on the bottles, the counts, the mundane arithmetic of her legitimate world.
Just before the shadow lifted from the doorway, Val’s voice came again, quieter. “Don’t drink the coffee there. It’s terrible.”
And then she was gone.
The storage room felt cavernous and suffocating all at once. Jess’s hands trembled. She balled them into fists, pressing her knuckles against the rough wood of the shelf until the grain bit into her skin. The phantom scent of Val’s perfume—something expensive and faintly floral—lingered, fighting with the smell of decay.
She had gotten what she asked for. Clear lines. A transaction. No ambiguous kindness.
So why did it feel like she’d just carved something out of her own chest and left it on the dirty floor?
The buzzing light flickered once, then died, plunging her into a darkness that was absolute and hot and smelled of everything she was trying to forget. She didn’t move. She just stood in the dark, breathing it in.
The light flickered back on with a reluctant hum. Jess blinked in the sudden fluorescence, the world resolving into stacks of crates and sticky bottles. Her knuckles ached. She uncurled her fists, examining the red marks the shelf had left. A petty, physical proof of the conversation.
Upstairs, Val’s heels clicked a staccato rhythm across the polished concrete of the loft. She didn’t sit. She paced to the floor-to-ceiling window, staring at the grid of downtown lights without seeing them. The scent of aged whiskey from the decanter on her desk did nothing to calm the static in her veins.
Marco stood by the door, a mountain of silent observation. He’d been there the whole time, a shadow in the hallway as Val went downstairs. He watched her now, the tight line of her shoulders beneath the sleek dress.
“She’s being unreasonable,” Val said to the window, her voice cool. “It’s a simple protocol discussion. Operational security. She acts like I’m asking her to slit his throat herself.”
Marco didn’t answer immediately. He let the silence stretch, a tool he used more effectively than most men used threats.
“You clipped her,” he said finally, his voice a low rumble.
Val turned, a sharp movement. “What?”
“With the jacket. With the… intensity.” Marco shifted his weight, choosing his words like stepping stones. “You let her see the engine. Then you slammed the hood and told her it’s just a car. Can’t be both, Val.”
“It is both.” She crossed her arms, defensive. “The reality is both. She needed to understand the stakes. Now she needs to follow the plan. It’s not personal.”
“Yeah.” Marco let out a slow breath. “It is, though.”
Val stared at him. The city’s glow outlined his massive frame. She shook her head, a dismissive jerk of her chin. “She’s angry about the Liam complication. She’s angry her clean world has a stain. That’s work.”
“You really don’t see it?” Marco’s question was soft, almost pitying.
“See what?”
He took a step further into the room, his gaze steady on her. “She’s not angry about the work. She’s angry about you. The push and pull. One minute you’re… close. The next you’re quoting operational guidelines. You let her in to see the blood, then you treat her like a hired courier.”
Val opened her mouth to argue, but no sound came out. The memory of Jess’s face in the office, the shared weight of the cleaned jacket, collided with the cold fury in the storage room.
Marco pressed on, his voice barely above a whisper. “I see how you look at her when you think no one’s watching. When she’s laughing with a regular downstairs. When she’s concentrating, wiping down the bar. You like her. You actually like her. Maybe more.”
“That’s irrelevant,” Val breathed, but the statement lacked its usual force.
“It’s the only thing that’s relevant,” he countered. “And she likes you back. But you keep putting up the professional wall every time she gets near it. So all she feels is the shove. She doesn’t feel the wanting behind it.”
The word ‘wanting’ hung in the air between them, stark and undeniable. Val looked away, back to the anonymous lights. Her reflection in the glass looked haunted, sharp features softened by the ghost of her own denial.
“This isn’t a good idea,” she said, but it sounded like she was trying to convince herself.
“Never said it was.” Marco shrugged. “Said it was true. So what are you gonna do? Keep yanking the chain until she finally snaps and walks away for real? Or you gonna own it?”
Val turned her head slightly, catching his eye in the glass. “Own what?”
“Her.” The word was absolute. “Do you want her, Val? Because if you do—which I know you do—then own it. Own her. Not her business. Not her bar. Her. Before someone else does, or before you push her so far she forgets how to come back.”
The silence that followed was thick, charged. Val’s mind replayed the storage room. Jess’s cold fury, the tremor in her own hands afterward. It wasn’t just professional frustration. It was the hurt of a line being drawn where connection had briefly flared.
She finally turned from the window. The metallic tang of old deals in the room tasted different now, like prelude.
Her eyes drifted to her mahogany desk. Draped over the back of her chair was the jacket Jess had returned. The one she’d cleaned. The dark stain was gone, but the memory of its texture was etched into Val’s fingertips.
She walked over, her steps deliberate now. She didn’t pick it up. She just ran a single finger along the leather collar, a slow, contemplative gesture.
“The Griddle,” she said, not to Marco, but to the quiet room. “Tomorrow.”
Marco nodded once, understanding. It wasn’t just about surveillance anymore.
It was about a different kind of alignment altogether.