The Collection: Kept

Matteo

Louis Sinclair had been a problem since I took the seat from Lorenzo.

Not my friend. Never had been. He was one of those men my brother kept around because history made a poor substitute for standards — late trucks, short weight, a laugh that got too loud when the room was already bought. Lorenzo had let it slide. Lorenzo had a screaming infant and a wife in the ground and a house that still smelled like her perfume if you stood in the wrong hallway. I didn’t. I inherited the books. I did not have to inherit Louis.

A dive was the right place to find him. Men like Louis didn’t do business where the glasses matched.

“Stay with the car,” I told Enzo.

He didn’t argue. He never did when the building looked like this.

The lot was broken asphalt and weeds through the cracks. A neon sign with one letter dead. Music leaked through the door anyway — something old and warped on a jukebox that should have been unplugged a decade ago. Cars in a line like people still spent money here on purpose. The air smelled like wet pavement and fryer oil and the kind of beer that came in cans.

I didn’t fit. That was the point. Wool and a watch that cost more than the building. Most of the bodies inside had given up the same way the brick had. Soft in the middle. Eyes that flicked to the door and then away, because looking too long at a man in a suit was how a night turned into a story you didn’t want to tell.

Most of them.

The redhead behind the bar hadn’t given up. She’d just gotten quieter about surviving.

She was cutting limes like they’d personally wronged her. Chin down. Shoulders pulled in, like she could make a body like that take up less space if she tried hard enough. No smile for the room. No little performance for the tip jar. The board was scarred. The knife was sharp enough. She used it like work, not like an audition.

Gorgeous was too clean a word. She wasn’t clean. Sharp little face. Mouth that looked like it had learned mean before it learned please.

I let myself have one full pass. Then I filed her. Then I found Louis.

He was where I expected him — back corner, ripped jeans, a band shirt he thought did him a favor, a stool he’d worn a dent into. A glass in front of him that wasn’t his first. He saw me before I finished crossing the sticky floor. The color left his face in a way I liked.

I pulled out the chair. Sat. Didn’t take off the jacket.

“Hey, bud.” Low. Close enough that the jukebox covered it for everyone except him. “You going to get me a drink out of this shithole, or do I need to get angry?”

His throat worked. He killed the shake before he used his voice. Smarter than the shirt. Not smart enough.

“Mr. Moretti.” A swallow. “Didn’t think I’d be seeing you this month. Everything— last shipment lined up.”

“This week’s did.” I let the quiet sit. “The three before it didn’t.”

He turned toward the bar like the girl could save him from arithmetic.

“Hey, Fire Crotch — I need your best scotch on the rocks.”

I cracked my neck.

The name sat in the air like something spilled. Ugly. Easy. The kind of thing a small man said when he wanted the room to know he could. I held the anger where it belonged. Louis first. The redhead was not a reason yet. I had not given her permission to be one.

Heels were what I was used to on a woman carrying a tray. Her feet were cheap flats — the kind you bought on an endcap and wore until the sole split. She came anyway. Set the glass down with a smile that had been nailed into place and didn’t reach anything.

“That’ll be twelve dollars, please.”

Close, I caught the rest of it.

Not a necklace. Not a tattoo some girl picked out of a book. The edge of something raised at her collarbone, pale and shiny where it had healed wrong, sitting where a nice girl would wear gold. Scar if you were generous. Brand if you’d ever seen a person marked like property and then taught to button a shirt over it.

I had.

“Jesus Christ, bitch, just put it on my tab.”

She flinched.

Small. Fast. The kind of flinch you only make if your body remembers a closed door better than it remembers a sentence. Her fists closed around nothing, like she wanted to hit him and had already done the math on what that would cost her in a place with no cameras that worked.

I licked my teeth.

“Louis.” Still quiet. Worse than loud. “I suggest you show a little respect. The woman has a name, does she not?”

His mouth opened. Shut. The fish look. I’d seen it on better men.

I looked at her then. Not at the limes. Not at the outline on her throat, even though it was already living under my skin.

“Thank you, darlin’. For future reference — that is not top shelf.” I tipped two fingers at the bottle on the high rack, the one she’d have needed a step stool and a death wish to reach. “This will do.”

It wouldn’t have. Not for anyone else in my life. She let out a breath so careful it was almost a prayer. Like not being punished was a trick the room might take back.

“Josaphine.” Tight. Almost swallowed. She said it like names were dangerous. “I… I won’t be able to comp it or anything.”

“I said it’s fine, Josaphine.” I didn’t lift my voice. I didn’t have to. The bar had already learned how to listen when I sat down. “Go back to your board. If these men call you anything other than your name, you don’t answer them. Disrespectful little fucks should already be in the parking lot.”

My hand had gone tight on the glass. I felt the cheap rim bite my palm and still couldn’t explain the reaction. I didn’t know her. I didn’t collect wounded things. I collected debts.

“I think you owe Josaphine an apology, Louis.”

His jaw flexed. Pride, the cheap kind, wrestling with the part of him that wanted to keep his fingers.

“Sorry, Josaphine.”

She ran.

Not obvious. The kind of run you do when you’ve learned not to look like you’re fleeing — back straight, eyes down, knife already in reach before she finished the distance. I watched her hit the well. Watched her pick up the blade like it was the only honest thing in the building. Then I gave Louis my eyes again.

“There was an issue,” he said. Fast now. Selling. “Fentanyl. Laced. That’s why the weight—”

“Stick to the truth.” I turned the glass once. “I’d hate to scare the pretty woman behind the bar.”

I heard it. I didn’t take it back.

Both hands up.

“No need for that, man. I swear it won’t happen again.”

“I can skip my cut this month.” A swallow that clicked. “And next. My sister’s got a problem. It wasn’t me.”

Second lie. Sister. Problem. The oldest song in a short man’s mouth.

I let my palm hit the table hard enough that the jukebox skipped. Glassware chimed. The whole bar went thin, that animal quiet that meant everybody had decided at the same time not to see.

The knife slipped out of her hands.

I heard it hit the board. I didn’t look. Looking would have made this about her, and this part still had to be about a man who thought I was Lorenzo with a nicer coat.

“Lorenzo was loose on the reins.” I wasn’t. “One more short shipment — an ounce — and that pretty wife you’ve got at home learns you’re not coming back to her.”

Hands higher. Palms wet.

“Fuck me again and we don’t have a conversation. We have a hole.”

I knocked the scotch back. It was as bad as I thought. Burn without the pedigree.

“Two months. No cut. You make the weight whole and you keep your mouth shut while you do it.” I set the empty glass down so he had to look at it. “If I have to sit in this chair again, I don’t talk to you. I talk to the woman who still thinks you’re coming home. She can explain the empty side of the bed however she wants. That part won’t be my problem.”

His mouth did the fish thing again.

“It won’t happen. I swear—”

“Then we’re done.”

I stood.

The chair legs barked on the floor. Enzo would already be watching the door from the lot. Louis was handled. The redhead was a lime tray and a flinch and a name I didn’t need and a mark I had not asked to see.

I went to the bar anyway.

The wood was sticky under my cuff. She looked up like she’d felt me coming and had decided not to run this time. Blue eyes. Too big for the rest of that face. They dropped to my cufflinks before they made it back to my mouth — cataloguing, the way people did when they’d learned that jewelry on a man was sometimes a warning.

I’d never had the urge to hide those before.

“What nights do you work?”

Her brows pulled together. Mean-narrow. Not pretty-narrow.

“I don’t give my schedule to creeps in nice suits.” A lick of her lips she probably hated herself for. “Can I get you anything else?”

That was it.

Not the body. Not the limes. The shut door in her voice. A woman in a room like this didn’t talk to a man in my clothes unless she wanted something — money, a ride, a problem solved. She wanted me gone. She said it with her spine still in her back.

I looked at her properly then. The cheap shirt. The brand at the collar she kept trying not to aim at me. The way she stood like the floor might change its mind and become a grave. The refusal.

Pushing would have made me Louis with a better watch.

“No.”

I set the card on the wood. Black stock. No title. An address she could ignore and a number she wouldn’t call if she had any sense.

“That’s a club. You’re wasted here.”

I left it between us like a choice. I was good at waiting when I wanted something I hadn’t decided how to take.

Outside, the lot felt colder than it was. Enzo opened the door and didn’t ask. He never asked when my face looked like this.

I sat. Watched the dive shrink in the glass. The neon letter still dead. The jukebox still leaking.

“The redhead behind the bar,” I said. “Josaphine. No last name if she can help it. Cash. Off every book that matters.” I loosened the cuff she had stared at. “Have Chelsea drift through. Not a recruitment speech. I want to know if she shows up tomorrow. I want to know if anyone puts a hand on her. I want to know if that mark on her throat has friends.”

Enzo’s eyes flicked once to the rearview.

“And Louis?”

“Two months. No cut. If the next truck is light, you stop being patient.” I looked at my palm. The table had left a line in it.

The club would still be standing when I got there. Kimberly would still purr. The books would still need a man who wasn’t Lorenzo.

None of that was why my hand had gone tight on a twelve-dollar glass.

I didn’t collect wounded things.

I had still left my card on her bar.