[Jake's POV]
The silence in the back room of the Golden Koi was absolute, broken only by the soft, rhythmic hum of the air conditioning unit and the faint crackle of the dark cigarette burning between Madam Bai's elegant fingers.
I stayed on my knees, one hand clutching my stomach where the guard had punched me, playing the role of the terrified, out-of-his-depth older brother. Beside me, Ethan groaned, pushing himself up onto his elbows. A thin trickle of blood ran down his chin from where his face had been slammed into the mahjong table.
Madam Bai didn't speak immediately. She simply watched us. Her dark, calculating eyes moved over Ethan's disheveled hoodie, then shifted to my cheap trench coat. She was dissecting us, weighing our value against the trouble we had just caused on her floor. In the Macau underworld, people like us were usually dragged out to an alley and beaten until our bones splintered. The fact that we were in her office meant she saw an angle.
