T.S.Noir

  The Sensory Bar was alive with a quiet menace, a refuge for those who lived in the shadows.

  Neon lights flickered outside, casting eerie reflections on the polished concrete floors and low, curved ceilings.

  Conversations hummed softly, punctuated by the clink of gsses and the shuffle of underworld dealings.

  I slipped into the booth across from him, the past swirling between us like smoke from a slow-burning fire. His eyes were cold, metallic, as if he’d already taken the measure of my life and found it expendable.

  Mr. Wick, the ghost I had come to confront. I id out the pn—bold, risky, desperate—and waited for his answer, knowing that in this world, words were as lethal as bullets.

  “Mr. Bckwood, it’s good to meet you. please sit-down” said Mr. Wick without standing up, surely, he already did his homework in researching me

  “Mr. Wick, thank you for meeting with me” as I sit down, I signal the waiter to bring us our drinks

  “So, Bckwood, I believe you have some work for me?” ask Wick without hesitation. “Yes, but maybe, we should drink first. what is your poison?” I asked him, “Vodka, always vodka” Mr. Wick answered with a big grin on his face.

  I nodded as the waiter moved ghostlike through the dim light. My pulse thrummed beneath the surface of composure, and I wondered if he could sense it. Sense how much his presence ignited the whispers of my past and stirred desires for vengeance that had never quieted.

  “Then vodka it is,” I said, a thin smile stretching across my lips.

  Wick leaned back, confidence oozing from his every pore. “You’re a big man in Bckbourne. How do you say... hard to kill?”

  “Something like that,” I replied, forcing the calm into my voice. “But even men like me need professionals for certain tasks.”

  “And what task would require Mr. Wick?” He pronounced his own name like a brand, etched with violence and certainty.

  An old fear twisted in the pit of my stomach but I pushed it down, repcing it with resolve. “A kidnapping,”

  “Interesting.” His fingers drummed on the table with casual menace. “A woman?”

  “Yes,” I breathed out, steadying myself against the memory of Li's face.

  Wick chuckled, a dry sound that held no mirth. “You seem like a man who has many enemies.”

  I smirked, raising my gss as the waiter pced it before me. “And I suspect none are mutual with yours.”

  “Yet here we are,” Wick replied, downing his vodka in one swift motion. He leaned back, studying me. “The kidnapping sounds...ambitious.”

  “You’ll be well compensated,” I assured him, letting the weight of the offer linger.

  “I always am,” he said, unfazed. His calm demeanor was unsettling, as if the world could burn around him and he would merely warm his hands by the fire.

  “Yes,” I continued, leaning into the space between us like a serpent whispering secrets. “But some assignments pay more than others. Some are worth your attention.”

  Wick's eyes narrowed slightly, a shadow of interest crossing his impcable face. In those eyes, I saw echoes of Li’s bloodied betrayal, Sabrina’s treachery, and the decade-old ghosts that haunted us both.

  “And who is it? Who do you want so badly?” His voice was taunting yet curiously devoid of expectation. “It’s a woman, yes?”

  “Yes,” I breathed out, steadying myself against the memory of Li's face.

  “The one you share drinks with,” he said slyly, showing just how deep his knowledge ran.

  I ughed, a calcuted bark of amusement that echoed off the walls. “You do your homework well Mr. Wick. The name of the woman is Sabrina Greensky, do you know her?”

  He paused, and for the briefest moment, I sensed a fracture in his armor. Ah, there it was. Recognition. Memory. All the ghosts coming home to roost.

  “We’ve crossed paths,” Wick said nguidly, swirling the vodka in his gss as though it held the past and future both. “She’s not easy prey.”

  “That’s why I’m coming to you,” I replied, leaning back into the booth with measured ease.

  Wick's eyes glinted with something between amusement and disdain. “Then Mr. Bckwood, you know what this means, yes? It will cost more than any other assignment.”

  “Money is not an issue,” I assured him. My tone was sharp, severing doubt from certainty.

  He regarded me for a long moment, the silence hanging thick between us. “I’ll need time to prepare,” he finally said, and there was a lurking suggestion in his voice that my gamble was about to spiral wildly out of control.

  “I expect nothing less.” I stood abruptly; the chair scraped against concrete like a whisper of warning. Commitment hung between us darker than any promise. It was done.

  “Mr. Wick” I nodded curtly, and left him at his table, already lost in thought or perhaps plotting my destruction at the same moment he plotted Sabrina’s capture.

  The city swallowed me whole as I left the Sensory Bar behind.

  I drove in silence, the Maserati's engine a low, steady growl beneath me — not rushing, not fleeing, just existing in the moment between decisions and consequences.

  Rain misted against the windshield, blurring the neon into veins of sickly colour.Bckbourne looked almost beautiful like this — from a distance.

  A dying thing still pretending it was alive.

  I didn’t head for the centre of town.

  Didn't turn toward any bar or office or faceless tower.

  My hands moved the wheel without thinking, guiding me up into the hills.

  Toward the manor.

  The road curled like a dark ribbon through the forested cliffs, wet leaves fshing silver under the passing headlights.

  The world felt smaller here.

  Tighter.Like it was pressing in, whispering that I had already made my choice.

  And it was right.

  There was no going back now.

  The gates groaned open on their rusted hinges, and the great house rose before me — a monolith of stone and shadow, its windows dim, its face unreadable.

  Home.

  Or what passed for it.

  I killed the engine, letting the silence rush in like a tidal wave.

  The door smmed shut behind me, a sharp crack against the night.

  My shoes whispered against the gravel path as I crossed to the manor's front steps, the rain slicking my coat, my hair, making everything colder than it already felt inside.

  The doors opened with the weight of a memory.

  The manor smelled of old wood, cold marble, and the faint, lingering trace of cigars and scotch — relics of men long dead who had once called themselves kings of this cursed city.

  I was no king.

  I shrugged off my coat, letting it fall onto the carved chair by the entryway, and walked deeper into the house.

  Every step echoed against the stone.

  I moved through the empty halls, past paintings of ancestors whose eyes followed you no matter where you stood, down into the great room where the fire — dutifully set by unseen hands — flickered low in the hearth.

  I poured myself a drink without looking, the whiskey biting at the edges of my self-control as I sank into the leather chair before the fire.

  The gss was cold in my hand.

  The fire, useless against the chill that sat in my bones.

  I stared into the fmes and saw her face — not Sabrina’s, but Li’s.

  Soft. Laughing.

  Before everything fell apart.

  Before blood stained my hands and guilt rewrote the shape of my soul.

  I had told myself it was justice.

  I had told myself it was survival.

  But now...

  Now it was something darker.

  I wasn’t saving anything anymore.

  I was burning it down.

  I swirled the whiskey in my gss and listened to the storm outside rise against the manor’s stones — a wild, howling thing, almost begging me to come back.

  But there was no coming back.

  Not from this.

  Not from the moment I handed Sabrina’s name to Mr. Wick like an executioner's decree.Not from the dragon I had set loose into the night.

  I had made my choice. And whatever came of it — blood, ruin, betrayal — I would meet it the only way I knew how.

  Head-on.Alone.

  The fire cracked sharply in the hearth.

  I tipped back the gss and let the whiskey burn its way down, welcoming the pain.

  Welcoming the end of whatever scraps of mercy still clung to my soul.

  ??

  T.S.Noir