What Comes Before

[Oriena]

Oriena raised a brow in consideration of that answer and all it implied, but said nothing. Perhaps the vodka failed to take the edge off, but she rather fancied chasing some oblivion right now, so she kept on drinking it. Rafael had a look like pity on his face, or worse yet, concern. It worked a perfect charm on Kallisti’s clients, but she was less enamoured of being the recipient herself.

“Are you in trouble, Oriena?” The hand not holding Nox’s rubbed at his own neck, over and over those thick scars. She gave him a dour look, but presently it shuttered itself up into a less affected smirk, one that challenged the necessity of that question and brushed it coyly off. She wasn’t here to bleed her heart. Carmen instilled some grandeur of family at the club, but Ori would burn the place to the ground if it suited her. Rafael was foolish to care, but maybe it was only debt. She’d saved his life, she supposed. After a fashion anyway, the night she called in a favour of Ilya and his girls. That particular kindness was still making her bleed its repayment.

She toyed with the neck of the vodka bottle. Truthfully she’d expected Nox to put up more of a resistance to spilling out his secrets, and she’d been prepared to cross lines to get what she wanted from him. It was worth remembering that Rafael apparently made him more palatable company.

“Making your own deals with devils, I take it,” she said. A tilt of her chin indicated the arm. “You definitely couldn’t afford tech like that the last time I saw you.” She didn’t ask what the fuck had happened to the arm he’d also had the last time she saw him, and he was quite right to assume she didn’t care. “So who am I looking for?”