"Everything's for a price, Seth. You know that."
"And if I don't pay?"
Levi's hand came out of his pocket. Not a knife. A phone. He held it up like a weapon, which in a way it was.
"Then I make a call and tell them exactly where you are. And whoever these people are you're staying with, they'll have a very bad night."
Seth stared at the phone. At Levi's twitchy, desperate face. At the boy he'd once known, fifteen, sixteen, both of them living indoorways and stealing from gas stations and thinking they were invincible because they had nothing to lose.
Now Seth had something to lose. That was the problem.
"How much?" Seth asked.
Levi named a number. It was absurd, more money than he'd probably ever held at once, number you throw out when you know the real payment is going to be negotiated down to whatever crumbs the other person is willing to throw.
"I don't have that."
"Then find it. You've got forty-eight hours."
"Or what?"
"Or I make the call." Levi backed toward the alley entrance. "Don't be stupid, Seth. Just pay up and I disappear. Clean and simple."
Nothing about Levi had ever been clean or simple.
He was gone before Seth could respond, melting into the Corktown dark like the shadow he'd always been.
Seth stood in the cold and smoked his cigarette down to the filter and did not go inside to tell Zain.
Not yet.
He needed to think
He thought for six hours. Then Zain noticed.
"What happened."
Not a question. Zain was standing in the doorway of Seth's room at midnight, arms crossed, reading Seth's face with the focused attention of a man disarming an IED.
"Nothing."
"You've barely spoken since this afternoon. You skipped dinner. And you're sitting in the dark." Zain hit the light switch. Seth squinted. "Try again."
Seth could have lied. Should have, maybe, handled it himself, kept Lakefront out of it, kept Zain out of it. But Jack's wordswere still rattling around in his head:He looks at you like you're a complication.And Nate's:If you hurt him, I'll sedate you.
These people had given him something he hadn't had in years. Not just safety.investment.They'd invested in him, and if Levi's threat was real, that investment was at risk because of Seth's past, Seth's connections, Seth's weakness.
He told Zain everything.
Zain listened without interrupting. His face did the thing it did when he was processing, went still, went blank, everything pulled inward like a door slamming shut. When Seth finished, the silence stretched for ten seconds. Twenty.
Then Zain's fist hit the doorframe.
The sound was sharp. Wood cracked. Seth flinched, and hated himself for flinching, because this wasn't fear. He knew the difference between violence aimed at him and violence aimed at the world.
"That piece of shit," Zain said quietly.
"He's desperate. He's not thinking straight."
