Escaping The Cheater For My Hitman Stepbrother

The underground bar on Millford didn't have a sign, but it had a new bartender.

Me.

Three nights a week, I wiped down the sticky counter and poured drinks for men who smelled like bad decisions. The pay was cash, off the books, and it kept the parts supplier from cutting us off for another month.

The crowd was thick tonight. Smoke hung in layers beneath the low ceiling, and the bass from the speakers vibrated through the soles of my boots. I was polishing a rocks glass with a rag that had seen better days when a voice cut through the noise like a paper cut — thin, sweet, and designed to sting.

"Kira! Oh my God, I've been looking everywhere for you."

Chloe Ashford. Five-foot-four of bleached hair and manufactured concern, squeezed into a red faux-leather jacket that creaked when she moved. She carried two glasses of whiskey, one in each hand, weaving through the crowd with the practiced grace of someone who'd learned to walk in heels before she'd learned honesty.

She set both glasses on the bar and slid one toward me.

"Drink with me. You look like you need it."

"I'm working, Chloe."

"One sip." She pushed the glass closer. Her nails were painted the same red as her jacket, chipped at the tips. "Come on. I heard about you and Julian. I'm worried about you."

I kept polishing the glass. "Who told you?"

"Julian did. He called me crying, Kira. Actually crying. Said you threw a tire at him and kicked him out."

"I didn't kick him out. He never lived with me."

"That's not what he said." She leaned on the bar, tilting her head with that look — the one that mimicked sympathy the way a parrot mimics speech. "He said you've been acting strange. Paranoid. He thinks maybe you're seeing someone else."

The glass in my hand squeaked against the rag. I set it down.

"Chloe, did Julian send you here?"

"What? No. I came because I care."

"You came because he asked you to find out if Dante is sleeping in my shop."

Her smile twitched. Just a fraction. The mask held, but the seams showed.

"Who's Dante?"

Before I could answer, a hand reached over my shoulder.

Not mine. Not Chloe's.

A rough, scarred hand — knuckles like river stones — caught the whiskey glass mid-slide, two inches from my fingers. Dante lifted it off the bar in one smooth motion, and before Chloe could register what was happening, he flipped his wrist and sent the entire contents across the front of her jacket.

The whiskey hit the red faux-leather with a wet slap. The smell punched through the smoke — cheap bourbon, high proof, the kind that could strip varnish.

Chloe screamed.

Not a real scream. A performance. She jumped back, arms wide, mouth open, the jacket dripping.

"What the fuck! Are you serious right now?"

Dante set the empty glass upside down on the bar. He didn't look at her. His eyes swept the room once — a quick inventory — then settled on the second glass, the one Chloe had kept for herself. He picked it up, sniffed it, and put it back down.

"Hers is watered," he said to me. "Yours wasn't."

The implication landed like a slap. I looked at Chloe. She was dabbing at her jacket with a cocktail napkin, but her hands were shaking, and not from the cold.

"That's insane," she spat. "I grabbed two drinks from the same bottle."

"Different pours," Dante said. "Different color."

Chloe's eyes darted to me, then to him, then back to me. The performance was crumbling. I could see her calculating — how much to deny, how fast to leave.

"You know what? Forget it. I was trying to be a good friend, and this is what I get." She snatched her handbag off the bar stool — a slouchy faux-suede thing with a broken clasp that left it gaping open. "You two deserve each other."

She turned to storm off.

I moved.

In the half-second it took Chloe to spin on her heel, I reached across the bar and slipped my fingers into the open mouth of her bag. My knuckles brushed a lipstick tube, a crumpled receipt, and then something stiff — laminated plastic with a bent corner.

I pulled it free and palmed it against my thigh.

Chloe didn't notice. She was already shoving through the crowd, one hand pressing the soaked jacket away from her skin, the other waving off a bouncer who'd started toward the commotion.

Dante watched her go. Then he looked at my closed fist.

"What'd you take?"

"Don't know yet."

He nodded once and stepped back into the crowd, disappearing between bodies like smoke through a grate.

---

The back alley behind the bar was narrow enough to touch both walls if you stretched your arms. A single streetlamp buzzed at the far end, throwing a cone of yellow light that turned the puddles into mirrors.

I leaned against the brick wall and held the card under the lamp.

A VIP membership card for Rackley's Billiards on Tenth Street. Chloe's name wasn't on it. No name was. Just a six-digit number printed on the front and, on the back, a string of characters written in blue ballpoint ink. Smudged but legible.

Not a phone number. Too many digits, broken into groups of three with dashes between them. A code.

I'd seen formatting like this before. In the old life — the one that ended with my blood on a stairwell floor. Underground lenders used rotating contact codes, changed weekly, passed on physical cards to avoid digital trails. You called a burner number, read the code, and someone told you where to show up with the cash.

Chloe Ashford, with her gas-station perfume and her fake sympathy, was carrying a loan shark's calling card.

My thumb traced the ink. The numbers blurred slightly where sweat or rain had touched them. Recent. This week's code, maybe today's.

A hand clamped down on my wrist from behind.

The grip was iron. The fingers were thick, damp, and they smelled like copper — fresh, unmistakable. Blood.

I didn't scream. My body locked instead, every muscle pulling tight at once. The card crumpled under the pressure of my closing fist.

Hot breath hit the back of my neck. Close. Too close.

A voice I didn't recognize — low, wet, like gravel dragged through mud.

"That card doesn't belong to you."

The streetlamp flickered once, and the alley went dark.