“My hobby,” Mysk says, “is recovering money from men who mistake their own charisma for collateral.”
“Harsh.”
“Accurate.”
I lift my chin. “There’s a disbursement pending. One week, maybe less. You’ll be paid.”
Mysk strolls closer until he’s standing a little too near for comfort, perfume and smoke wrapping around me. He studies my face the way some people study meat for freshness.
Then he smiles. “You’re lying.”
I smile back. “Only spiritually.”
He laughs, and for one awful second relief flickers in me.
Then he turns and snaps his fingers.
One of the enforcers steps out into the hallway and returns dragging a bundled length of heavy fabric. He drops it onto my already filthy floor with a dusty thump. The cloth unfurls in a dark red spill.
Curtains.
I stare at them.
For a moment nobody says anything.
Then I look at Mysk. “What in all hells is that?”
He folds his hands in front of him. “A visual aid.”
“A visual aid.”
“Yes.”
I blink at the curtains again. Velvet. Cheap but dramatic. The sort of thing a provincial lounge singer would reject as too subtle.
“Mysk,” I say carefully, “are you threatening me with window treatments?”
“With implications,” he says. “Curtains are symbolic. Final. Intimate. Domestic. One imagines them drawn at the end of an evening, at the end of a show, at the end of a life.” He smiles like a man very pleased with his own thesis. “You understand.”
I stare.
An enforcer shifts behind him, expression blank with the deep discipline of someone determined not to laugh in front of his employer.
I rub a hand over my mouth. “That is the stupidest threat I’ve ever heard.”
“It is memorable.”
“It’s ridiculous.”
“And yet here you are, remembering it.”
I point at the heap on the floor. “You kicked in my door to present drapery.”
His smile sharpens. “I kicked in your door so you would understand that my patience is now decorative. One week, Bron. Seven days. Produce the money, or I come back and close the curtains.”
The silence after that lands thick and strange.
I should say something clever. I usually do. That’s one of the perks of being me: there’s almost always a line. A shrug. A grin. A way to make a room tilt back in my favor.
