Page 13 of Subduing the Shark

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A little before three that afternoon, the elevator opened and the ocean scent rolled in. A few minutes later, Jack came out of the locker room in the shorts and went straight for the cleaning supplies without being told. He checked the table nearest the bar first, the one that got the most traffic, and worked outward in concentric circles. He moved efficiently, no wasted motion, each table cleaned to the same standard as the last.

Harold watched him from his post near the hallway. The fear scent rose and fell with the crowd. Jack delivered drinks to a table of rowdy wolves without flinching when one of them slapped the tray. He noticed that Amani's bar towel had fallen and picked it up and placed it on the edge of the bar without a word, close enough for Amani to reach but not close enough to violate the distance rule. Amani glanced at the towel, then at Jack's retreating back, and Harold caught the flicker of surprise on the lion's face.

He watched Jack work for hours and saw exactly what Lady Leo had described. Service. Attention. A person built for devotion who'd been taught that devotion meant taking a beating and lying still for whatever came after.

At midnight, Jack changed and left. Harold stood at his post and watched the elevator doors close and breathed in the fading ocean scent.

He thought about what Lady Leo had said. That no one in Jack's life had ever paid attention to him without wanting something in return.

Harold wanted something. He was honest enough with himself to admit that. He wanted the shark with the gray eyes who went still when he was pinned and who cleaned tables like his life depended on it and who hadn't once, in ten days of punishment, asked for anything for himself.

But wanting and taking were different things, and Harold had spent his whole life learning the difference.

Chapter Eight

Jack got to KK four hours before his normal shift. Lady Leo had told him the day before that he was on the full-time schedule, paid, and to come in early to start on inventory. That was the first of it. Real work, real wages, the first money that would be his instead of the shiver's. He already knew what he'd do with it. Open an account in his own name, the first one he'd ever have that the shiver couldn't touch. Doing that would be a betrayal. It made him uneasy to go against the other sharks yet again, but part of him knew he had to do it, despite the punishment they'd give him if they ever found out. Thankfully none of them ever really cared where he was as long as he showed up at night.

The club was empty except for staff. Empty, the club was a different place. Amani moved through it looser than Jack had ever seen him, the wariness not gone but eased. He still wore the hoodie but the zipper was down, and he'd pushed the sleeves up past his wrists. Jack noticed that every time and tried not to stare. The wrists had been the worst part of the van. Rope around Amani's wrists, tight enough that he couldn't shift, and Jack had been the one to check the knots because the others said he tied the tightest.

He was wiping down the private room doors when Amani came around the corner. Alone. No Nero, which struck Jack as strange, because in every shift he'd worked he'd never once seen Amani on the floor without him close. Amani walked through the empty club touching things, checking the rooms, reclaiming his territory one square foot at a time. Jack did what he alwaysdid when Amani came near. He pressed himself back against the wall to make room and waited for him to pass.

This time, Amani stopped.

"You don't have to flatten yourself against the wall every time I walk by," Amani said. "I'm not going to bite you."

"I'm keeping my distance."

"It's just us right now." Amani leaned against the opposite wall, arms crossed, studying Jack the way he studied a new bottle of liquor he was deciding whether to stock. "You've been here two weeks. You haven't caused a single problem. You work harder than half my regular staff and you've never once complained about anything I've asked you to do."

Jack wasn't sure if this was a compliment or a setup. "Okay."

"Why did you turn them in?"

The question was quiet and direct and it landed in Jack's stomach like a stone. He'd been asked this before. Lady Leo had asked him. Harold had circled around it. But Amani asking carried a different weight because Amani was the person in the center of the thing Jack had done, and his answer mattered in a way it didn't when anyone else asked.

"Because it was wrong," Jack said. "What we did to you was wrong and I knew it while we were doing it."

"Then why did you do it?"

Jack put the cleaning cloth down. He owed Amani the conversation and he wasn't going to have it with a rag in his hand. "The shiver wanted to get back at your mother for banning us from the club. They decided taking you would send a message. I went along with it because that's what you do in a shiver. You don't argue. You don't refuse. You do what the group decides."

"And selling me to the crane?" Amani's voice was controlled but his fingers were working the hem of his hoodie, pulling and twisting the fabric. "That was the group's decision too?"

"Yes."

"Did you know what he was like? Before you brought me to him?"

Jack closed his eyes. This was the part he'd never said out loud to anyone. "Yes. I knew."

The silence that followed was long enough that Jack opened his eyes. Amani was staring at him, the controlled expression fracturing at the edges. "How? How did you know?"

"The crane had dealings with the shiver before you. He paid for access to us. To the lower-ranked sharks." Jack kept his voice flat because if he let any of what he was feeling into it he wouldn't be able to finish. "He liked to watch. He'd choose who would fight, and then he'd tell the winner what to do to the loser while he watched. It wasn't the fighting that was different from what we normally did. It was having someone outside the shiver directing it. Having someone who wasn't a shark telling another shark what to do to me."

Amani's hand had stopped moving on the hoodie. He was very still. "He did that to you."

"More than once."