Leverage

Warehouse Docks, Los Angeles, 2025

POV: Naga

Laurent watched the rage in me settle and smiled like you smile when a dog understands stay without a hand signal. “Good,” he said softly. “Stay.”

Haru finally spoke, not to provoke, but maybe because curiosity remains itself even when you’re wearing a stranger’s blood on your lip. “You said the ‘Original Sin’ must remain intact, whatever that is,” he said, looking at Laurent as if he were a chalkboard you could do math on, “why risk it here? Why not tranq him and chain him like a package?”

Laurent’s pleasure at the question was not feigned. “Because I want him frightened and civilized. It makes the sale go smoother.”

“Sale,” Aki echoed, half a scoff, half a grin that said she wanted to break three of his teeth the pretty way. “You’re as tacky as your rings.”

Laurent’s smirk twitched. “You’ll look worse with a hole in your head.”

“Prove it,” she said.

“Aki,” Makoto said, without looking, as if to signal for her to tone it down. Laurent was an unpredictable force. 

Laurent sighed, pleased and bored at once. “We’ve done introductions,” he said. “We’ve done thesis statements. Any last comfort words before you go?”

Makoto glanced at me. It wasn’t a request. It wasn’t a command. It was two men acknowledging that there was always a version of night where you live by not being what you want to be.

“Does it matter?” I asked, hearing my own deflection again, hating it and using it anyway. “You’ve decided.”

“Ah,” Laurent said. “Does it matter, he asks.” He flicked his cigarette away. It traced orange across the dark and died. “It matters that the woman with the gun to her head will not die if you behave.”

He took a step closer to Shelby, and the man holding her adjusted the barrel until it kissed her scarlet hair.

Shelby’s eyes found mine for a sliver and said do and don’t at the same time.

I made my shadows lie flat. It felt like drowning them.

“Better,” Laurent said.

The lamps along the lane hiccuped and blinked for a few seconds, as they had been failing every four minutes since they were installed. Four seconds is longer than pride thinks and shorter than desperation needs.

Laurent looked satisfied. “Walk,” he told his men, a soft command with teeth. Two tightened their grips on Aki and Haru. The one at Shelby didn’t move his gun but shifted his body so he could ride her steps without losing the angle. “I know a quiet place for conversations.”

Makoto measured the corridor. “We’re not going to your second location,” he said.

“You are,” Laurent said, voice velvet and verdict. “Because you either go there and die, or stay here and die quicker.” He let his eyes drift across us, counting the wrongs like rosary beads. “You mistake talking for bravery. You’ll come because you want to keep each other alive, and because you’re not ready to gamble on what happens if you don’t.”

He didn’t ask again. He turned. He expected the world to follow because it had learned to.

No one moved.

Aki’s chin lifted a fraction. “Makoto?”

“Hold,” he said, and the word wore authority and fear all at once.

Laurent looked over his shoulder, genuinely curious. “Ah, you still think I’m playing,” he scoffed. “Let’s see how serious I am.”

He nodded, and the man holding Shelby pressed the barrel hard into skin. Not a tap. A promise. She hissed.

My shadows reared up so fast I didn’t feel the decision, only the leash jerking. They rose in a black wave and sharpened along the edge closest to the gun like a cliff producing knives.

“Don’t,” Makoto said, and it was command.

“Don’t,” Laurent echoed, gentler than both, like he was soothing a horse. “You’ll ruin your own evening.”

He considered us, calculated something, and smiled, changing the game as if boredom were the only cardinal sin left. “A compromise,” he announced. “I do love civic-minded solutions. Devil, you come with me now. If you do...” He glanced at Aki, then at Haru, and then the gun at Shelby’s head. “I’ll let the rest of you walk. Thirty minutes head start. If you run fast enough, you might even make it back to your Mr. Specter.”

“No,” Shelby said. It had no volume but moved like a blade. “We’re not letting you take him.”

Laurent watched the rope stretch, interested. “Last chance,” he said. “If you don’t pick, I do.”

For a beat, I thought Makoto would take it. His eyes flicked over the crates, the angles, the exits that weren’t exits anymore. He didn’t move.

“Not a chance,” he said flatly. “We walk, you shoot us in the back.”

Laurent’s smirk twitched, pleased.

Aki snorted, blood on her teeth. “I’m not playing mouse in your little maze.”

The barrel at her ribs shoved harder, but she only smiled wider in contempt.

“We’re not leaving him.” Shelby’s chin tilted toward me, jaw locked.

Laurent’s laugh startled two of his own men before his gaze pierced through me.

“What do you say, Devil?”

The word shouldn’t have fit his mouth, but it did. It sounded like he thought it was a job title, not a name. Maybe that’s what it had been all along and I’d been the only one trying to turn it into something more.

Shelby shook her head once, tiny. The movement put hair against the barrel. “Don’t go,” she whispered to me.

I looked at her. I looked at Makoto. I looked at Laurent, who looked right back.

Inside me, something old and furious wanted to make a new weather. It wanted to show men who pour smoke into the sky how quickly the ground can rise to meet them. It wanted to open a door in the dark and let the dark come through.

But emotions were a leash.

Maybe the trick was learning how to hold the other end.

“I’ll go,” I said. My voice felt foreign in my throat. “But you let them go first.”

Laurent’s smirk widened, eyes glinting like a man watching a gamble he’d already won. “You must think I’m stupid. Once my leverage is gone, what keeps you from shredding me into ribbons?”

The shadows at my feet writhed, black serpents begging to strike. I forced them still, every muscle screaming at the restraint.

“Because if I find out anything happens to them,” I said, each word slow, measured, “then you lose your leverage anyway. And I’ll hunt you down until there’s nothing left of you but ash.”

The silence that followed pressed on all of us, heavy as a blade.

Then Laurent laughed. Low, pleased, like I’d played my part exactly as he’d scripted it. “Very well. They walk.”

His men lowered their guns from Shelby, Aki, and Haru as two new gunmen stepped in on either side of me, barrels jammed hard against my throat. Their message was clear, one twitch and I’d choke on hot lead before my shadows could unfurl. Laurent’s insurance.

He gestured toward the car. “Let’s go for a ride.”

I walked. Slow, deliberate. The shadows coiled at my boots like chained beasts. Every step felt heavier, but my vow burned clear. Once I knew they were safe, I’d kill him. I’d tear Laurent apart and salt the earth where his body falls.

Behind me, Shelby’s voice cracked open. “No! Naga, don’t you dare!” She lunged, but Makoto caught her, restraining her arms with iron grip.

“Let me go!” she screamed, thrashing against him, her voice raw. “We can fight, we can—”

“We can’t,” Makoto snapped, his voice flat, but his jaw trembled as he dragged her back. “He made his decision.”

Aki’s bloody smirk faltered for the first time, lips pressed tight as her fists clenched helplessly. Haru stayed silent, but his wide eyes glistened, fixed on me like he was trying to memorize the lines of my face.

I didn’t let myself look back for long. Just enough.

“I’ll find Vinnie,” I said.

Laurent chuckled, stepping closer, smoke curling from his lips. “Promises. How quaint.”

The gunmen shoved me forward, cold steel grinding harder into my throat with each step. The black car loomed. I ducked inside, shadows curling around me like a coffin.

The last thing I saw before the door slammed shut was Shelby’s face, streaked with fury and grief, her mouth still shaping my name.