Page 25 of Branding the Bat

Trevor didn't answer.

Amani slid off the counter. He was shorter than Trevor, leaner, but when he stood in front of him there was a quality to his presence that had nothing to do with size. He was Lady Leo's son. He'd grown up in this club, in this world, surrounded by predators and power dynamics and the daily negotiation of trust. He knew what exploitation looked like. He'd been taught to spot it by the woman who'd built an empire on the principle that consent was non-negotiable.

"Does Sero know?" Amani asked. "About any of this? The business, the Grizzly, the serum?"

"No."

"Does he know that whatever you extract from your sessions is being sold?"

"No."

"Does he know that his body is producing something you're profiting from?"

"No."

Amani was quiet for a moment. When he spoke, his voice was careful and cold. "You took something from him without his consent. That's what you're telling me."

"The pleasure was real. The pain was real. The session—"

"I didn't ask about the session. I asked about consent." Amani stepped closer. "In this club, if a Dom takes something from a sub that wasn't negotiated, a photograph, a recording, a biological sample, anything, that Dom gets banned. Permanently. It doesn't matter if the sub enjoyed the scene. It doesn't matter if the Dom had good intentions. Consent isn't about whether the experience was positive. It's about whether the person knew what was happening and agreed to it."

"I know."

"Do you? Because from where I'm standing, you've been running a secret extraction operation on a man who trusts you, and now you're sitting in my bar asking me for help because the criminals you sell to are getting dangerous." Amani's voice rose, not to a shout, but to a register that Trevor had never heard from him. Anger. Real anger. "You put Sero at risk, Trevor. Not just emotionally, physically. If the Grizzly finds out who your source is, what do you think happens?"

Trevor thought about the Playground. The warehouse in the desert. The expensive cars and the real chains and the absolute absence of anything resembling consent. He thought about Sero in that place. Sero, who hung in his closet when he was sad and ate persimmons that Trevor had learned to cut for him.

"That's why I'm here," Trevor said. "I need to get out. I need to end the business and keep Sero safe. And I don't know how to do either without the Grizzly coming after both of us."

Amani stared at him. The anger was still there, but behind it, Trevor could see the gears turning, the lion calculating. Amani wasn't just a bartender. He was Lady Leo's son, and Lady Leo had dealt with sharks and bears and worse for longer than Trevor had been alive.

"You don't deserve my help," Amani said. "But Sero does." He picked up his coffee and took a long drink. "I need to think about this. Don't do anything stupid until I call you. Don't send the Grizzly anything else. Don't run. If you disappear, the Grizzly will come looking, and the first place they'll check is everyone you've been seen with. Including Sero."

"I won't run."

"And Trevor?" Amani set his cup down with a click. "You're going to tell Sero. Everything. The machine, the serum, the Grizzly, all of it. If you don't tell him, I will."

"I'll tell him."

"When?"

"After Wednesday."

"No. Before. You don't get to use him one more time and then confess. Tell him before the next session, or I tell him myself."

Trevor opened his mouth to argue, to explain that the session was important, that it was where Sero felt safest, that pulling the rug out before Wednesday would—

But Amani's face said there was nothing to argue about. This wasn't a negotiation. This was a condition.

"Before Wednesday," Trevor said.

"Good. Now get out of my club."

***

Sero was having a good Monday.

He'd woken up in his own bed. He'd gone home from Trevor's on Sunday morning, kissed him goodbye in the doorway, and walked the twenty minutes back to his apartment in warm autumn sunlight. The walk had been pleasant. The air had smelled like dust and distance, the way Vegas always smelled in the spaces between buildings where the desert crept in. He'd stopped at the grocery store and bought persimmons, three of them, Fuyu, flat on the bottom, because Trevor had bought them for him and now persimmons were a thing that made him feel something.