Chapter 2 TWO

Nadia

The Ravage Kings' clubhouse used to be a shipping office, back when Ironport's harbor still made money honestly. You could tell from the bones of it — high windows, a loading bay converted into a garage full of motorcycles in various states of undress, metal stairs up to what I assumed were living quarters. It smelled like motor oil and coffee and, underneath that, cigarette smoke that had soaked so deep into the walls it had become part of the architecture.

Damien didn't explain anything on the ride over. He didn't explain anything walking me in, either, just steered me through the garage with a hand that hovered near my back without touching it, like he'd already decided I was something breakable he didn't want the responsibility of breaking.

The man waiting for us just inside the door was built like a filing cabinet and looked at me like I was a bill that had come due unexpectedly. "Who's this."

"Nadia Kane," Damien said. "Salvi's trying to marry her into the family to cover a debt her father racked up."

Filing Cabinet's eyebrows went up a fraction of an inch, which on him probably counted as a full facial expression. "That so."

"Jax." Damien said the name like a warning. "Get Sofia — " he glanced at me.

"Reyes," I supplied, startled he'd remembered I'd mentioned her at all. "Sofia Reyes."

"—get Sofia Reyes a message that her friend's safe. Nobody outside this building needs to know where."

Jax looked at me for a long moment, the kind of look that itemizes a person — threat level, use, cost. "You know what you just walked into, sweetheart?"

"No," I said honestly. "I know what I just walked out of. I'm still working out if this is better."

Something that might, on a more cooperative face, have been the beginning of a smile crossed Jax's mouth. "She's got a mouth on her, Ghost."

Ghost. I filed that away — a nickname, or a title, something that meant more than it said.

"Get the message to her friend," Damien said again, and Jax went, and then it was just the two of us in a garage that smelled like a hundred years of engine grease, and Damien was looking at me like I was a problem he hadn't decided how to solve yet.

"Why do you care," I said. "About the Salvi name. You went somewhere when I said it."

"I didn't go anywhere."

"You did. You went somewhere for about four seconds and it wasn't a good place."

He didn't answer that. Instead: "You said your father owed them money. How long ago did he die?"

"Eight months. Car accident." I heard myself say it the way I always did, flat, pre-worn from repetition, and watched Damien's face do the four-second thing again, faster this time, like he was used to swallowing it.

"Was it," he said carefully, "an accident."

The question sat in my chest like a swallowed stone. I'd asked myself that at two in the morning more times than I wanted to admit, and never let myself finish the thought, because finishing the thought meant admitting my father hadn't just died, he'd been removed, and if that was true then someone had decided his life was worth less than whatever he owed.

"I don't know," I said. "I didn't know he owed anyone anything until an hour ago, so. Maybe you tell me. You clearly know something about the Salvi family that you're not saying."

Damien looked at me for a long moment — really looked, not the assessing glance from the garage doorway but something slower, like he was deciding how much truth I could carry tonight on top of everything else.

"Six years ago," he said, "the Salvi family killed my brother over a debt that wasn't even his. Tommy was twenty-four. He ran a delivery for a friend who owed them money, didn't know what was in the package, got caught by a Salvi crew who decided an example was more useful to them than an explanation." His voice didn't rise. That was almost worse than if it had. "So no, Nadia Kane, I don't know your father's business. But I know exactly what it looks like when the Salvi family decides someone's debt is more valuable dead or married off than forgiven. And I am telling you right now — you're not walking back out that door to find out which one they've decided for you."

The garage was very quiet. Somewhere above us a radio was playing low, tinny, a song I didn't recognize.

"So what," I said, and my voice came out smaller than I meant it to, "you're keeping me. Like leverage."

"I'm keeping you safe." A beat. "Whether that's also leverage is a conversation for tomorrow, when you've slept and I've thought less like a man whose brother just got mentioned and more like a president who has a club to protect."

"That's not a no."

"It's not a no," he agreed. "It's an honest maybe. You'll get a lot more honest maybes out of me than you'll get pretty lies, if that's a trade you're willing to make."

I thought about Vittorio Salvi's card sitting in my jacket pocket, black with silver lettering. I thought about my father's duffel bag, half-packed for eight months like he'd known. I thought about the fact that I had, technically, just been kidnapped by a motorcycle club, and that it was somehow still the safest I'd felt all night.

"Fine," I said. "Honest maybes. I can work with that."

Something in Damien's shoulders came down half an inch, like he'd been braced for me to run and hadn't quite believed I wouldn't. "Elena," he called up the stairs, and a young woman appeared at the railing, dark-haired, curious. "Get her a room made up. She's staying."

Elena looked at me with open, unguarded interest — the first person all night who'd looked at me like a person instead of a problem or a price tag. "Hi," she said. "I'm Elena. Damien's sister. Ignore him, he broods for a living, it's very tiresome."

"I'm right here," Damien said.

"I know," Elena said cheerfully, already heading up the stairs, gesturing for me to follow. "Come on. I'll find you something that isn't covered in road."

I glanced back once. Damien was still standing in the middle of the garage, watching me go, his jaw tight with something that wasn't quite done processing my father's name and his brother's death in the same five minutes.

I didn't know yet that I'd just moved into the middle of a six-year-old war.