Grayson didn't sleep.
He laid there, spine stiff on the too-soft mattress, the ceiling overhead lost to shadows that stretched longer than the night should have allowed. Every breath felt shallow, incomplete. The room was too quiet. The city beyond the thin apartment walls, too loud. But neither sound nor silence drowned out the memory of what he'd seen in Kane's office. Not the blood. Not the body slumping like dead weight into the carpet. Not even the silenced cough of the gun. What haunted him was the ease. The lack of hesitation. The cold poise in Kane's eyes when he pulled the trigger. Like it was just business. Like it hadn't cost him a thing.
Grayson stared at the ceiling until his eyes burned. Eventually, he moved. Pulled on yesterday's clothes in the dark and padded barefoot into the kitchen. The stove clock blinked: 5:12 AM.
He didn't turn on the lights. Just poured stale coffee from the pot left out the night before, microwaved it until it scalded his palm through the mug, and drank it standing in the stillness. The bitterness helped. A little.
The laptop sat on the kitchen table like it had been waiting. He told himself it was just something to do to pass the time. Something harmless. But when he opened the lid and the cursor blinked at him like a dare, his fingers didn't hesitate.
Kane Blackwell.
The results loaded quickly. Too quickly. The first hits were clean. Too clean. Curated. Polished.
"Visionary entrepreneur and philanthropist," read one feature from Briarwick Business Quarterly, accompanied by a shot of Kane in a tailored black suit, one hand in his pocket, the other adjusting a cufflink. Expression unreadable. Pale eyes sharp even through the gloss of print.
Charity galas. Urban redevelopment projects. "Significant contributions to Briarwick's economy."
All picture-perfect. Not a single hair out of place. But Grayson kept scrolling. The gleam started to wear off.
A fight in a down-town club Kane used to own. Charges dropped. A grainy photo of him leaving a courthouse, no comment given. Alleged ties to organised crime — "alleged" repeated like a shield. And further down, past the SEO-optimised clippings and buried forum posts:
"Kane owns half this city. The other half owes him something."
One message board thread spun into hushed stories. A body found in the river. A judge's sudden resignation. Men who vanished after failing to pay what they owed. One post included an old, blurry photo. Kane outside a shuttered strip of shops. Connor stood to his left, unmistakable. To his right: a man with tattoos spiralling up his neck, disappearing beneath his jawline.
Grayson's stomach tightened. He'd seen those tattoos before. He closed the laptop. Hard. His coffee had gone cold again.
******************
By the time Grayson arrived for his shift, Tessa was wiping down the station, her ponytail high and sharp.
"You look like shit," she said as he slid into place.
"Thanks."
"You planning to serve drinks or haunt the place?"
Grayson said nothing. She smirked, already used to his silences, and turned to restock the garnish trays.
The early crowd came with their usual theatre — heels too high, suits too tight, voices too loud. He slipped into the rhythm of the bar, moving on muscle memory alone, like his hands had separated from the rest of him.
But he knew the moment Kane arrived. He didn't need to see him. He felt the shift. The subtle realignment of attention. The way the energy in the club curved around a singular presence. He caught flashes of him in the mirror behind the bar, walking slow, surveying. Unbothered. Inevitable.
It wasn't until later, when the crowd had thickened and the music softened into its midnight thrum, that trouble slithered in. A dancer — tall, bronze-skinned, flawless — passed a booth where a man in a cheap suit slouched like he owned the place. His hand snapped out, catching her wrist. She smiled like it was nothing, but her body said otherwise.
Grayson was moving before he thought about it. He came around the bar and stopped at the booth, his voice calm. "Problem here?"
The man leaned back in his seat, eyes glassy with liquor and ego. "Yeah. my glass is empty."
Grayson's gaze flicked to the dancer. "You good?"
She nodded once, small, and Grayson's attention went back to the man. "Let her go."
The grip loosened reluctantly. The man leaned back in his seat, muttering something under his breath that Grayson didn't catch-or maybe didn't want to.
Grayson walked back to the bar, the music swallowing the moment whole. But when he glanced toward the far side of the club, Kane was watching.
He picked up a waiting ticket, reached for the shaker, and got back into the rhythm. Still, the sensation lingered — that faint prickling between his shoulder blades. He didn't need to look to know where it came from. Kane was still there, somewhere across the floor, eyes on him like he was waiting to see if Grayson would stumble.
It wasn't until the last hour, when the crowd had thinned and the music eased down into something slower, that Connor appeared. He didn't approach like a customer, didn't lean on the counter like a friend. He just stepped into the space at the end of the bar, laid a thick envelope on the polished wood, and pushed it toward Grayson with two fingers.
It had weight to it — real weight.
"What's this?" Grayson asked, eyeing it like it might bite.
Connor didn't blink. "That should cover six months of rent."
Grayson froze halfway through wiping down his station. "What the hell are you talking about? How—"
Connor's mouth twitched, not quite a smile. "There isn't anything Kane doesn't know about you."
The words landed heavy, more a statement of fact than a threat, but they carried the weight of both.
Grayson glanced across the floor instinctively, searching for Kane, but the man was nowhere in sight. Just the glint of light on polished floors, and the slow movements of staff closing out tabs. When he looked back, the envelope was still sitting there, and Connor was gone.
Grayson stared at the envelope until the edges blurred. He could feel the weight through the cardstock, the thickness of the cash inside.
Six months of rent.
It wasn't generosity. It was a leash. And the more he thought about it, the hotter his blood ran. He grabbed it hard enough to crease the paper and stalked toward Kane's office. The door was shut. He didn't knock.
Kane was behind his desk, his eyes lifting from a stack of papers to see Grayson crossing the room, dropping the envelope hard onto the desk. It slid over the smooth wood and stopped against Kane's hand.
"What the fuck is this supposed to mean?"
Kane didn't look at it. "It means your rent's handled for the next six months. It's overdue."
"I didn't ask you to handle my rent."
"That's not the point." Kane leaned back slightly, the movement slow, deliberate. "You've got one less thing to worry about. That means you can focus on what matters."
Grayson shook his head, scoffing. "What matters to you, you mean. You think you can buy me?"
Kane stood, the motion unhurried but carrying a weight that made the air in the room shift. "I don't need to buy you, Gray. I already own you."
Something in Grayson snapped. His fists clenched. "You don't own shit."
He stepped in, ready to plant his hands on the desk and shove, but Kane moved first.
A grip like steel caught his wrist, yanking Grayson forward towards Kane. His hip hit the edge of the desk before Kane twisted him and shoved him down chest-first onto the polished surface. The wood was cold under his cheek, the smell of Kane's cologne wrapping around him — sharp, clean, expensive.
"Get the fuck off—"
Something cool slid against his throat. He caught the flash of it in the desk's reflection, an envelope opener, long and silver, just sharp enough to break skin if Kane decided to push.
"You walk into my office," Kane murmured near his ear, his tone calm, almost quiet, "slam things on my desk, and think you get to set the terms?"
Grayson's pulse pounded against the cold steel. Kane's grip on his wrist eased just enough to let his blood flow, but not enough for him to move.
"I don't care if it's a knife, a pen, or my hand," Kane said, the flat of the opener dragging lightly along his jaw. "If it's at your throat, it means the same thing, you're not in control here."
Grayson swallowed, and Kane felt it.
"Six months of rent," Kane continued, his voice dipping lower, "means six months without worrying where you sleep. Six months where you work for me without distraction. Six months where you learn exactly what I expect from you."
"And what's that?" Grayson's voice came out rough, tighter than he meant it to.
Kane's eyes flicked down to his mouth before locking on his again in the reflection. "Everything."
The envelope opener left his throat, but Kane didn't step back right away. He let go of Grayson's wrist slowly, his fingers trailing over the skin in a way that made it impossible to tell if it was deliberate. The touch left a heat there that had nothing to do with anger.
Grayson hated the way his body reacted to it — the way his skin felt charged, the way his breath came faster, the way something low in his stomach tightened even as his head screamed to shove Kane away.
Kane finally stepped back, the space between them snapping back like a pulled thread cut loose. He picked up the envelope, smoothed it, and set it gently back on the desk.
"Take it," Kane said, eyes unreadable. "Or don't. But either way…"
His gaze pinned Grayson like a blade.
"…you'll be back."
Grayson straightened slowly, the phantom press of the opener still against his throat, and realised his hands were trembling, not just from rage.
Grayson's fingers hovered over the envelope, close enough to take it, to snatch it, to surrender. But he didn't. Instead, he pushed it back across the desk with two fingers, slow and deliberate. A refusal.
Kane watched the motion without blinking.
"I don't want your money." Grayson said quietly. "I'm not one of your fucking projects."
"You're not a project." Kane said, with the kind of certainty that didn't need volume to carry weight. "You're a challenge. And I don't walk away from those."
Grayson's mouth parted, disbelief on the edge of a laugh but nothing came out. The silence stretched.
He turned for the door. But Kane's voice came low behind him. Controlled. Clean.
"You're not rejecting the money, Grayson. You're rejecting the collar it comes with."
Grayson paused with his hand on the handle. "And what the fuck does that mean?"
"It means you're already kneeling, you just haven't looked down yet." Kane said simply.
Grayson swallowed hard. The doorknob turned under his palm, but he didn't move.
A breath.
Then the quiet shift of weight on hardwood. Grayson felt it, the presence behind him. Kane was close. Too close. The scent of leather and something darker curled around him, expensive and intoxicating.
Grayson's breath snagged. Kane didn't touch him. Didn't need to. His mouth hovered just behind Grayson's ear — close enough that the words stirred the fine hairs on his neck. "You can hate me all you want. Just don't lie to yourself about who you're really angry at."
Grayson's grip on the doorknob tightened until his knuckles went white.
Silence pressed in, thick and waiting.
"You'll come back. Not because I said so. But because part of you wants to see how far I'll take this."
A beat.
"And part of you wants me to."
Grayson closed his eyes for half a second, just long enough to feel the heat behind him, the threat in it, the pull. Then he opened the door and stepped out into the hallway without another word. He didn't look back.
Behind him, the envelope stayed on the desk, unopened. But Kane's eyes lingered on it, just for a beat. Then he smiled — cold and small — as if he already knew when Grayson would come back for it. And more importantly, why.