Chapter 329: You’re Forgiven

Lucas stood beside Rechelle while she ordered, and after a while it started to feel like he had been standing there too long.

His attention kept drifting to the drinking competition a few tables over. The men were loud, packed tight around a line of glasses, shouting over one another every time someone finished. At first it looked like ordinary chaos. Then Lucas watched closer.

The man winning was cheating.

Every time he raised a fresh beer, a little of it never made it to his mouth. He tipped it just enough for the liquid to spill down the side of the glass and hit the floor, then slammed the empty-looking cup down like he had drained it clean. The others were messy too, but their spills were accidents ~ beer running down chests, foam on shirts, rushed hands. His was deliberate. Controlled. A quiet theft of volume while the crowd roared over the performance.

Lucas was still watching that when he finally turned back to their table.

And stopped.

The waiter had already started setting things down, and the surface in front of Rechelle was disappearing under bottles. Beer after beer after beer. By the time the last one landed, there was almost no open space left. The table looked less like an order and more like a delivery mistake.

Lucas stared at it.

Then at her.

"Wait," he said. "Is this for us... or are you planning to hand these out?"

Rechelle only laughed.

Not a polite laugh either. The kind that said she had heard the question and found it unnecessary. She pulled the nearest bottle closer, tipped it back, and started drinking like the night had a quota and she was already behind.

Lucas sat there with his own beer, still trying to catch up to the picture in front of him.

He took a normal sip.

By the time that first bottle had only dropped a little in his hand, Rechelle was already reaching for another. Then another. She did not pace herself. She did not pause for conversation. She drank with the steady commitment of someone settling a private score with the evening.

Lucas watched her finish one, set it aside, and open the next without ceremony.

"...Ten?" he muttered under his breath as the count climbed.

She was on her tenth before his first was even gone.

He just stared.

The lively noise of the bar kept moving around them ~ music, shouting from the competition, glasses hitting tables ~ but at their corner the only real spectacle was Rechelle dismantling a full spread of beer like it was water.

Lucas leaned back slightly, still holding his bottle.

Had she brought him here to show him the city’s nightlife?

Or had she brought him here because she needed a place to drink like this, and he happened to be the man in the passenger seat?

He had not decided which version was funnier yet.

Lucas was still watching the room when another group came in.

Four of them.

Muscular, quiet, and wrong for the place in a way he could not immediately name. They did not come in laughing. They did not look around for friends or empty stools. They entered together, scanned once, and took up space near the side like men who had already decided what mattered in the room.

Something about them sat oddly with him.

He stared a second longer, then let it go and looked back at Rechelle.

She was still working through the beers with the same stubborn rhythm, not loose enough to be fully gone, but clearly forcing the night down her throat one bottle at a time. Whatever she was chasing, it was not subtle.

Then his phone lit up.

Lena.

Lucas glanced at the screen and ignored it.

The call died into voicemail.

She called again.

And again.

And again.

The club was too loud for a real conversation anyway. Even if he answered, he would catch one word out of five and spend the rest of the call guessing. Still, after the fourth attempt, the repetition started to feel less like a mistake and more like something that would not stop until he dealt with it.

He leaned toward Rechelle.

"I’ll be right back."

She was already drifting, eyes a little slow, mouth soft around the rim of another bottle.

"Emmm..."

That was all she gave him.

Lucas looked at her for a second, smiled in pure pain, and stood up from the table.

He cut through the noise toward the toilets, where the music dulled enough to make a phone call possible. As soon as the door shut behind him and the bass dropped to a throb instead of an assault, he called Lena back.

She answered fast.

And immediately started apologizing.

"I’m sorry for calling repeatedly. I know I shouldn’t have kept~after the first one I should’ve waited, and then the second, I really didn’t mean~"

"Lena."

"~I just thought maybe you didn’t see it, or maybe the signal, and I didn’t want to bother you but~"

"Lena."

"~I know it looks excessive, I swear I wasn’t trying to~"

Lucas shut his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose.

He had left Rechelle half-drunk at a table covered in beer, with four strange men freshly planted on the floor, and the person on the phone was stuck in an apology loop like that was the emergency.

He exhaled once, slow and controlled.

"Okay," he said. "You’re forgiven."

Silence finally opened on the other end.

"What’s the update?" he asked, careful not to sound as raw as he felt.

Lena switched tracks at once.

She had gotten into the office that evening. Durnik’s door lock was being changed, and the man doing the work had been the soft target. According to her, all it took was a woman with the right shape and the right smile. Boobs, ass, a little patience ~ the guy folded so fast she barely had to try. That was how she got inside.

And while she was there, she got her hands on investor names and contact numbers.

Lucas’s attention sharpened.

"Send them to me now."

He did not wait for another lap of explanation.

"Immediately."

Then he ended the call before she could start apologizing for the method, the timing, or the sound of her own breathing.

He stood there for half a second in the quieter light of the toilet hallway, phone still in hand, already waiting for the message.

Outside, the music was still pounding.

At the table, Rechelle was still drinking.

And somewhere on the main floor, four men who did not look like they came to have fun were still in the building.