Chapter 3

Ren smiled weakly. His hands were pressing against his stomach, trying to hold himself together, but the blood was slipping through his fingers.

"I did it," Ren whispered, his teeth chattering from the cold and the shock. "Si... I did it. You're safe."

Silas skid to a halt. He looked at Ren. Then he looked at Brick’s massive, lifeless corpse.

A grin broke across Silas’s face. A genuine, blinding, beautiful grin.

"You killed him!" Silas shouted, throwing his hands in the air. "Holy hell, Ren! Did you see that? The steam! That was genius!"

Silas walked over to the body. He kicked Brick’s boot. "That’s what happens! That’s what happens when you mess with the Sterling Pack!"

Ren waited. He waited for Silas to kneel. He waited for the hands that he loved to touch him, to check the wound, to try and stop the bleeding.

"Silas," Ren wheezed. "It’s bad."

Silas was patting down Brick’s pockets. "The debt is cleared, Ren. We kept the Spark. My dad is never going to know. We walked away clean."

He pulled a wad of cash and a set of car keys from the dead man’s jacket.

"Bonus," Silas laughed. "Severance pay."

He turned back to Ren. For a second, his eyes landed on the blood pooling around Ren’s legs. A flicker of something crossed his face. Discomfort? Annoyance?

It wasn't fear. It wasn't love.

"Come on, buddy," Silas said, stepping back toward the door. "Get up. We have to go before his crew realizes he’s dead."

"I can't," Ren said softly. The cold was moving up his chest now. "Si, I can't walk."

Silas looked at the door. He looked at the keys in his hand. He looked at the blood.

He did the math. Ren could see him doing the math. Carrying a bleeding, dying boy through a casino full of hostile rogues would slow him down. It would draw attention. It might get him caught.

Silas took a step backward.

"Okay," Silas said. "Okay, stay here. I'll go get the car. I'll bring it around back."

"Silas?" Ren reached out a bloody hand.

"Just hang tight," Silas said, his voice rising in pitch, a frantic, lying cheerfulness. "Don't go anywhere. I'll be right back. Two minutes."

Silas turned and ran.

He didn't look back.

Ren watched him go. He watched the golden hair disappear through the heavy steel doors.

He listened. He heard Silas’s footsteps running down the hallway. They were fast. Light. The footsteps of a man who had just won a second chance at life.

They didn't stop. They didn't turn toward the loading dock. They kept going, fading into the distance, toward the main exit.

Ren lowered his hand.

He leaned his head back against the freezer wall. The hum of the compressors was loud, drowning out the music from the club upstairs.

"He's not coming back," Ren whispered to the dead man on the floor.

Brick didn't answer.

Ren closed his eyes. He thought about the way Silas laughed. He thought about the way the sun hit Silas’s hair. He thought about how stupid, how incredibly stupid, it was to love a fire that only knew how to burn.

The cold finally reached his heart. And in the silence of the Kill Floor, Ren stopped waiting.