The warehouse smelled of ozone and old blood. Max was thrown onto a wooden chair in the center of the room. His hands weren't tied, but with Silas standing behind him and the man in the camel coat—whose name, Max learned, was Kaelen—leaning against a crate of stolen electronics, he wasn't going anywhere.
"You know who we are?" Kaelen asked. He was lighting a cigarette, the flame illuminating high cheekbones and dead eyes.
Max swallowed the lump of fear in his throat. "You're the Iron Dogs."
Kaelen smiled. It wasn't a nice smile. "We are. And you tried to steal the boss's car. My car. Do you know who runs this city, boy?"
"The Vittorio Family," Max whispered. Everyone knew. The Vittorio Syndicate was the government, the police, and the church all rolled into one. They owned the skyscrapers uptown. The Iron Dogs? They were bottom feeders. Scavengers fighting for scraps in the Rust Belt.
Kaelen's face hardened. The mention of the Vittorios clearly struck a nerve. "The Vittorios are fat and lazy. They sit in their glass towers while we bleed for the streets. But we have a problem, kid. We're short-staffed. The Vittorios... they poached three of my drivers last week. Put them in the ground."
Max's hands trembled. "I didn't know. I just wanted the cash."
"I don't care what you wanted," Kaelen snapped. "I care about what you owe me. You touched my car. In my world, that's a death sentence. But Silas here says you moved fast. Silent. You have the look of a rat about you. Orphan?"
Max nodded.
"No family to miss you. No one to call the cops," Silas added from the shadows.
Kaelen took a drag of his cigarette and exhaled a plume of blue smoke. "Here is the deal, Max. You owe me your life. I can take it now—Silas enjoys that part—or you can give it to me in installments. We need a driver who isn't on the Vittorio payroll. Someone invisible. Someone desperate."
"I don't drive getaway cars," Max stammered.
"You do now," Kaelen said, dropping the cigarette and crushing it under his polished boot. "You work for the Iron Dogs until the debt is paid. And the debt is paid when I say it is."
"And if I say no?"
Silas stepped forward, the knife glinting. "Then you become a cautionary tale."
Max looked at the knife, then at the cold eyes of Kaelen. He thought about his jar of money, his dream of the coast. It seemed a million miles away now.
"I drive," Max said.