“Yes.”
Ron laughs behind me. “One little slap and the dragon melts.”
Kauss’s eyes close.
His control is not calm. It is agony.
Lenrog speaks from behind the table. “Ron, be silent.”
“No.” Ron’s voice cracks. “No, I’m done being silent while everyone treats me like some joke. He gets to be respected? This thing? This gutter monster?”
Kauss opens his eyes.
I catch his hand before he can move.
His fingers close around mine carefully, automatically, despite everything.
Lenrog looks at that small contact, and his face changes with swift calculation. “Miss Mercy, stand to Kauss’s left.”
I glare at him. “I’m not taking stage direction from the criminal patriarch portion of tonight’s nightmare.”
A flicker of amusement crosses his mouth. “Fair.”
Kauss does not look away from Ron. “You will never touch her again.”
Ron sneers. “Or what? You’ll almost kill me again? You’ll ask permission from the old man first?”
“No,” Kauss says.
That single word terrifies me.
But then he continues.
“If you touch her again, no one in this city will have time to grant permission.”
Lenrog sighs. “A dramatic but understandable statement.”
Ron looks between them, hatred curdling into humiliation. “You’re both against me.”
“You are against yourself,” Lenrog says.
His calm makes Ron look even more unstable.
Two restaurant guards step closer at Lenrog’s signal. This time Ron’s men do not move to stop them. Maybe they finally understand the difference between a gang and power. Maybe they are just tired of standing too close to a collapsing man.
Lenrog says, “Take him downstairs. Separate him from his friends.”
Ron explodes. “Don’t you touch me!”
The guards seize him anyway.
He struggles, snarling, cursing his father, cursing Kauss, cursing me in language ugly enough to make my stomach tighten. Kauss starts forward when my name turns foul in Ron’s mouth. I squeeze his hand hard.
“Don’t,” I whisper.
He stops.
Ron is dragged toward the rear hall, still shouting. “This isn’t over! You hear me? This isn’t over!”
