Blood on the Canvas

Chapter 9: Last Call

The bar was loud in the specific, comforting way Bianca had missed without realizing it — bad pop music, sticky floors, the low hum of a hundred conversations blending into something that felt almost like safety.

Aaron showed up twenty minutes after the girls, looking deeply unenthusiastic about spending his Saturday night as an unofficial bodyguard, though he softened the moment Elizabeth pulled him into a hug.

"You didn't have to come," Elizabeth said.

"Yeah, I did." He glanced at Bianca over her shoulder, something steady and reassuring in the look. "Someone's gotta make sure you two don't end up singing karaoke on a table again."

"That was one time," Bianca said.

"It was memorable."

They found a booth near the back, and for the first two hours, something close to normal took over — drinks arriving faster than any of them intended, Elizabeth attempting and failing spectacularly at a karaoke ballad, Aaron heckling her from the booth with the specific cruelty only siblings could get away with, Bianca laughing harder than she had in weeks, the heaviness of the past several days finally, blessedly loosening its grip.

"To surviving this week," Elizabeth said, raising her glass somewhere around eleven, her words only slightly slurred.

"To surviving this week," Bianca echoed, clinking glasses, and for one full, unguarded moment, she let herself believe the worst of it really was behind them.

Somewhere around midnight-minus-one, Aaron pulled out his phone to show them both a video of his dance students butchering a routine he'd spent weeks choreographing, and the three of them laughed until Elizabeth had to set her drink down to keep from spilling it, and Bianca thought, watching the two of them bicker affectionately about whose fault the chaos in the video actually was, that this was exactly the kind of ordinary, unremarkable joy she'd been starving for all week without fully admitting it to herself.

---

Across the city, at the staging point behind the old rail depot, Fernando stood among six other men he barely recognized, none of them making eye contact, all of them waiting on instructions from a boss who hadn't shown his face yet.

"Where's the money coming through?" someone muttered.

"Above your pay grade," another voice answered, sharp, ending the conversation.

Fernando kept his hood up, his hands shoved in his pockets to hide how badly they'd started shaking, running Marcus's instructions on a loop in his mind — watch, remember, don't draw attention. The earpiece sat silent against his skin, Marcus presumably listening on the other end, waiting for anything useful.

A car pulled up at the edge of the depot, headlights cutting briefly across the gathered men before dying. A man stepped out — older, heavyset, moving with the unhurried confidence of someone who'd never once doubted his own authority.

"Tonight's simple," the man said, addressing the group without introduction. "Zion's territory got tested twice this month by Marchetti's crew. We're sending a message tonight, loud enough nobody tests it again. You all know your positions. Anyone hesitates, anyone gets cold feet halfway through — that's a conversation you don't want to have with me after."

Fernando's stomach dropped. This wasn't a quiet exchange, a simple handoff, the "in and out" job he'd been promised on the phone days ago. This was retaliation. Public. Loud. The kind of operation that didn't stay contained to whoever it was aimed at.

He pressed two fingers briefly against his ear, the signal he and Marcus had agreed on for this is bad, I need out now — and got nothing back. Silence.

"Marcus," he whispered, barely audible, panic creeping into his voice for the first time all night. "Marcus, this isn't what you said it was. Are you there?"

Still nothing.

Around him, the other men were already moving into position, checking weapons, murmuring locations to each other in low, clipped voices — Cobalt Street, the intersection near the bar district, timing coordinated down to the minute.

Fernando stood frozen for one long, terrible second, torn between Marcus's own warning — if anything feels wrong, you get out, don't wait for my signal — and the very real, immediate danger of trying to walk away from six armed men mid-briefing, in full view of a boss who'd already made it clear what happened to people who hesitated.

He made his choice.

He stayed.

---

Back at the bar, Elizabeth checked her phone and grimaced. "It's almost midnight. Dad's gonna have a heart attack if we're not moving soon."

"Yeah, yeah," Bianca said, already gathering her jacket, pleasantly warm from one too many drinks. "Long route, text him the second we're walking, the whole production."

"You say that like it's annoying."

"It's a little annoying."

"It's sweet," Elizabeth said, smiling, sliding out of the booth. "Come on. Aaron, you good to walk with us?"

"Been ready for an hour," Aaron said, already standing, stretching, glancing toward the door with the mild impatience of someone whose actual job tonight had been mostly finished the second nobody bothered them all evening.

The three of them stepped out into the cool night air a few minutes later, laughing about something already half-forgotten, Elizabeth's arm looped easily through Bianca's the way it had been a thousand nights before this one, Aaron trailing a step behind with his hands in his pockets, scanning the street out of habit more than real worry now.

Four blocks stood between them and home. The long route, just like they'd promised.

Elizabeth pulled out her phone to text her father as they walked, thumbs moving fast, already laughing at something Aaron had said, the three of them cutting an easy, unhurried path through streets that felt, for now, entirely ordinary.

They were half a block from turning onto the last stretch home when Aaron went quiet mid-sentence, his head tilting slightly, eyes narrowing toward the direction they were headed.

"You hear that?" he said.

Bianca stopped walking. Somewhere ahead of them, faint but unmistakable, voices were rising — too many voices, too fast, the particular pitch of a crowd reacting to something none of them could yet see.

"Probably just a bar letting out," Elizabeth said, though she'd slowed down too, her earlier ease draining out of her voice.

Aaron didn't answer right away. He was still staring down the street, jaw tight, one hand instinctively moving to guide both girls half a step behind him.

"Let's just take the next street over," he said quietly. "Just to be safe."

He'd barely finished the sentence when the first gunshot cracked through the night air, close enough that all three of them flinched at once.