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Brox doesn’t move, yet his presence pushes back. “I’m not demanding anything. I just want to talk to your boss. I’ll pay for the privilege.”
The man’s eyes flick to me. His smile turns ugly. “There’s only one kind of payment we take.”
Brox’s gaze cuts to him, and the temperature in the room drops. “First, your boss.”
A pause. My pulse climbs. I force myself not to step back, not to show fear.
The man at the bar, Rex, Brox’s lookalike, slides off his stool and stands slowly, hands visible, as if he knows sudden movement could get him killed.
“Everyone relax,” he says, his voice is rougher than Brox’s, less controlled. He looks at Brox with an evaluating stare. “This is… new.”
Brox doesn’t glance at me. Yet I feel him shift, subtly, to place me behind his shoulder, his body forming a shield.
“I came for answers,” Brox says. “Not trouble.”
“Trouble follows your face,” someone mutters.
The room’s attention bounces between the two men. The resemblance becomes a spectacle. I can feel it in the air–curiosity, suspicion.
The man with the gold necklace jerks his chin toward the back. “The boss will want to see this.”
Brox nods once. “Then take me to him.”
“Leave her here.” The man eyes me again.
Brox’s voice is calm. “She stays with me.”
The man considers, then gives a short laugh. “Fine.”
A door opens behind the bar. Not obvious unless you know. The men part enough for us to move.
Brox steps forward first. I follow, close enough that my shoulder nearly brushes his back. The other man, Rex, I realize, though no one had said his name yet, falls in beside us, still staring like he can’t decide whether he wants to punch Brox or shake his hand.
We pass through a narrow hallway and down a set of stairs that feel like they descend into the building’s spine. The air cools. The noise above dulls. The lights shift from amber to something darker.
The door at the bottom opens into a room that doesn’t match the bar at all. Plush seating. Dark wood. Thick carpet that eats footsteps. A table set with glasses and a bottle of whisky already waiting, as if they planned for this kind of meeting.
There are a few men sitting here with the weight of power. One of them—the boss—doesn’t rise when we enter. He sits at the center, thick around the middle, hunched, his gaze cold.
Brox stops a few feet from the table. The man’s eyes flick from Brox to Rex and back again. Something like irritation crosses his face.
“You gotta be kidding me.” he scoffs.
Rex lets out a harsh laugh. Brox doesn’t smile. One of the men next to the boss pours whisky into the empty glasses, and pushes them across the table, one toward Brox, one toward me.
“Drink,” he orders.
Brox takes his glass without hesitation and nudges me to pick up mine. I do. The whisky burns as it hits my tongue, warmth spreading down into my chest.
The men watch us drink as if it proves something.
Rex leans against a chair with the ease of someone who belongs here. He studies Brox up close now, eyes narrowing at details. “You got a name?”
Brox’s gaze stays on the boss. “Brox Boar.”
We get a ripple of reaction at that. Rex’s mouth twists. “Boar. That’s… unfortunate.”
One of the suited men chuckles. “If he’s here for money, he’s not getting any.”
