Nothing but the Ink

Stavros Petrakis pays his family a flat fee every quarter to leave him alone. No seat at the table, no crest on his body, no claim on his name. It's a life that fits in a ledger, and he prefers it that way. Then a rival crew shoots up his casino's money room and Stavros needs two things fast: a body the Petrakis family can't claim, and a door with no cameras on the block. Elyse Dharan has both. She patches him twice in one night and then asks for the one thing he's never given anyone — the whole story, out loud, once, on the record. Four sessions with the needle. Nine hours under the ink. Every session he says more than he meant to, and every session she works a little closer to the ribs where the family crest still is. When the family finds out he's been paying them off with cash instead of loyalty, they send his cousin to burn the shop. They burn the wrong wall. What's left standing is a man who has nothing but the ink — and a woman holding the license to the building he's about to walk away from.