Neither needed to.
Derek noticed them too.
His shoulders changed.
The swagger remained, but now it required effort.
Maya slowly crawled out from beneath the table.
Embarrassment burned across her face as she stood.
Her silver server’s vest was wrinkled.
One knee of her black trousers was dusty.
A strand of hair had fallen across her cheek.
Derek looked at her and smiled.
There it was.
That private smile.
The one that meant he believed the room belonged to him again.
“Come here,” he said.
Maya did not move.
“Maya.”
He held out his hand.
“You’ve made enough of a scene.”
The owner’s gaze dropped to Derek’s hand.
Then to Maya.
“She decides where she stands.”
Derek’s hand remained extended for another second before he lowered it.
“You have no idea who I am.”
A faint change touched the owner’s expression.
It was not amusement exactly.
It was something colder.
“In my building,” he said, “that sentence usually works the other way around.”
Derek glanced toward the security men again.
Maya had worked at The Obsidian for three weeks, but she knew almost nothing about the man beside her.
Staff never gossiped about him openly.
They referred to him only as the boss or the owner.
Guests who recognized him tended to become quieter, not louder.
Rumors followed him through the club like smoke.
Some said half the city’s night business moved because he allowed it.
Some said men who threatened his property never returned to make the same mistake twice.
Maya had dismissed most of those stories as the mythology wealthy men built around themselves.
Standing beside him now, she understood why the stories existed.
He did not need to perform power.
Everyone else performed fear around him.
Derek reached into his coat.
Both security men moved.
Fast.
Derek froze and withdrew his hand slowly, holding a phone between two fingers.
“It’s a phone.”
The owner gave no reaction.
Derek unlocked it and turned the screen toward Maya.
“You really want to do this?”
Her stomach tightened.
She knew what he kept on that phone.
Messages.
Photographs.
Fragments of her old life.
Things he had once threatened to send to her employer, her acquaintances, anyone who might help her.
He had collected ordinary moments and turned them into weapons by attaching his own explanations.
Maya looked away.
Derek saw the movement and smiled wider.
