Page 2 of Gatsby's Starlet
I was halfway through pouring a draft whenChain barked something at the grill and someone near the door laughed too loud, the kind of sound that usually blended into the rest of it but caught sharp that night, making me glance up just long enough to track the movement without really meaning to.
High Voltage was already packed, heat sitting heavy in the room, music low and steady under it all, and I moved through it on autopilot, beer, cash, nod, repeat, like I’d done it a hundred nights before, like nothing in here ever changed even when everything outside of it did.
I moved through it without rushing.
I worked the bar the way I worked everything else, precise, efficient, aware of angles most men never noticed. One hand poured a draft while the other swiped across the tablet mounted beneath the counter, cycling through the security feeds. Exterior lot. Side alley. Back delivery door.
All clear.
No unfamiliar movements flagged by the system I’d built three years earlier and upgraded twice since.
Order mattered.
Systems mattered.
They kept chaos where it belonged.
After what happened with Lark, I’d finally convinced Chain the extra cameras behind the bar weren’t optional. The office sat empty half the time, and I wasn’t relying on luck again. Not with cult remnants still out there somewhere, rotting but not gone.
“Still babysittin’ those screens?”
Chain’s voice carried over the music as he stepped behind the bar, broad shoulders filling the narrow space like it had been built around him.
He ran High Voltage. Vice President of The Devil’s House for five years, and the title had settled into him the way leather settled into skin — natural. Worn-in. Unshakable. There was a contentment to him that hadn’t been there before, something forged in the months that followed everything we’d dragged Lark out of.
I didn’t look up. “I wasn’t babysitting. It’s called preventative maintenance.”
He snorted. “It’s called paranoia.”
“It’s called not getting blindsided.” I flicked him a glance. “There are more of those cult assholes out there. You want Lark safe, don’t you?”
That earned his full attention.
Chain leaned an elbow on the counter, scanning the room the way he always did, measuring tone and movement without seeming to. “Lot clean?”
“Clean,” I confirmed. “Unless you were worried about Tommy’s girl stealing napkins again.”
A low huff of laughter left him. “Let her. We have boxes.”
I slid a whiskey across to a regular without him asking for the order. He caught it and nodded once.
“You ever think,” I said, wiping down the bar with slow, deliberate strokes, “you’d be less stressed if you trusted the tech guy?”
“You pretend to live in a whole different fuckin’ generation,” Chain shot back. “How the hell are you so good at tech you claim to hate?”
“I spent a lot of time alone as a kid,” I told him. “You ate glue. I learned to code.”
His mouth twitched, but his gaze shifted past me toward the dining side of the bar.
Lark moved between tables with an ease that hadn’t been there when she first started. She carried a tray balanced steady against her palm, blonde hair pulled back, expression calm but alert. She’d learned the rhythm of this place, when to smile, when to step aside, when to ignore the noise. Working here you had to learn those rules to survive.
I followed Chain’s line of sight for a second, then went back to wiping the bar. I liked watching things come clean under my hands. Liked the way a surface could go from sticky and scattered to smooth in a single pass.
“You were thinkin’ again,” Chain muttered.
“Dangerous habit.”
“Usually is.”
