Adam sits in his car for a full three minutes in the parking lot of Nyx. Couples stream in through the foyer, glittering dresses sweeping the floor and ties tied with care. Adam isn't wearing a tie, because he doesn't wear ties, but he did opt for a jacket. Nyx is supposed to be a classy place—shining chandeliers and dark lighting that carefully distract from the price of the food.

The cars in the parking lot are mocking Adam's. They laugh from their convertible roofs and whisper to the other cars that his doesn't belong. In the south end, the Mazda is a decent car. In the east end, the Mazda is dirt on the tires of the luxury cars.

Adam locks his car as he shuts the door, but he knows that's useless, because Nyx is one of the most secure places in the city. Everyone who goes in is marked down, and everyone that goes out is marked down.

There's a black sign on the front wall of the restaurant, and it reads, 'We reserve the right to refuse entry to any persons of our choosing.' Adam wouldn't be surprised if there were a sign that said, If you're a cop, and your name is Adam, you're not allowed in.

She would know he's here. Adam discovered months ago that Nyx has security cameras at every entrance with facial recognition, and Eris has a copy of the officer list, matching each picture to each person that comes through. That's why all the officers on the buyer team are transfers from the city over.

She'll know he's here, but Adam doubts she'll care. Eris leaks nonchalance, and her biggest and most untouchable trait is how little she pretends to care about who pokes around where. When Adam got a warrant to search the kitchen of Nyx, Eris opened the door and said he was welcome to come look anytime he wanted. She let him into the restaurant, the kitchen, the pit—everything. The penthouse, though, she wasn't so open with. If Adam could get a warrant for that, he's sure he'll find something.

Adam waits in line patiently at the front door. The bouncers walk up and down the line, checking for IDs. When a tall man nods expectantly at Adam, he gives him a look.

"You can't tell if I'm twenty-one?" Adam inquires, looking over the tall man.

"Everyone gets checked. It's the law."

Adam can't help but grin. It is the law, and of course Eris wouldn't be so stupid to get caught for something so little. As the tall man looks over Adam's license, he touches his earpiece. He walks away, muttering something to whoever is listening on the other line.

The bouncers are nonchalant, but they're all speaking to one another and those inside through the earpieces. Adam can only imagine what they're saying—Hey, boss, your cop is here.

Adam glances over his shoulder for Sarah. She promised she'd be on time, but he knows she won't be. She never is. That's good for him, though. It means he can order a drink and get it down before she arrives.

After a few minutes, Adam is let into the building to see the hostess. He tells her that he called this morning with a reservation, and she leads him into the restaurant.

Nyx may be some twisted version of classy, but the average age is still vastly below Adam's. The restaurant has new pop music playing, dark, glittery décor and an aura that's similar to a club.

Adam is surprised as the hostess leads him to a booth table near the bar. He glances at her, then says, "Is it possible to get more of a dinner seating?"

The hostess glances up at him, places two menus on the table and smiles. "Sorry, sir. This is all we have tonight."

Adam can see tables over by the windows, but he doesn't push it. He has no doubt the tables near the bar are for the patrons they want to keep an eye on.

"Anything to get you started?" the hostess asks. She doesn't bring out a notebook or a pen; she just stares kindly at Adam. Apparently, every waiter at Nyx has the memory of an elephant.

Adam is about to order a drink, but on second thought, he figures it might be risky if Sarah happens to arrive in the next few minutes. He shakes his head, and the server disappears.

He flips through the menu as his watch passes by seven-fifteen. Typical, typical Sarah. He sends her three texts in annoyance, but they don't deliver. Her phone is always dead, but Adam knows she has two chargers in her car, because he bought them for her.

Someone passes by Adam's table and slides a drink onto the surface. Adam looks up to say he didn't order it, but the server is slipping away before he can speak.

He looks down at the drink. Gin and tonic, on the rocks.

Adam glances behind him, then over to the bar. No one is looking his way. He spins the glass, wondering if he should drink it.

After ten more minutes, he finally caves. Six more undelivered texts to Sarah, ten more minutes of waiting. His watch is creeping closer to eight now.

Adam sighs and finishes the drink. Mere seconds later, it's replaced. When Adam tries to speak to the server, she's already racing away.

Checking his phone again, Adam concludes that she's not coming. It's Sarah fashion—promise to show up on time, then not show up at all. Her flippant nature is impossible to change, and that's that.

Adam swirls the ice in his glass, then takes another sip. He wonders if he'll have to pay for these.

In a sweeping motion, someone sits down across from him. It's a graceful movement, and Adam places her in less than a second. Eris is impossible to miss with her subtle flamboyancy.

She lounges sideways in the booth, her forearm resting on the table and her legs crossed. She taps the table once, quartz eyes on Adam.

"Get stood up?" she asks.

Adam holds her stare. "No."

She lifts her hand and makes a little gesture with it. "Your incessant little phone-checking says different."

Adam looks behind him. "Where did you come from?"

"Who stood you up?" she asks, tapping the table with a long nail. "First date? No. Girlfriend?" She leans forward slightly. "Hold on, no, she's more than that. Fiancé? Wait." She holds up her hand to silence anything he's about to say. "I've got it. Ex-fiancé?"

Adam tilts his head. He's seen Eris do this kind of thing before—figure out what a cop's name is or where he's headed next by guessing a bunch of things and reading their faces—but she's never done it to him before. He finds it utterly unnerving.

"So you do like younger women," she says.

Adam searches her eyes. "Excuse me?"

She points to him. "The average age of this restaurant is twenty-three, and you're what?" She looks out at the room, eyes skipping. "Sixty-one? Sixty-two?" She glances back at him.

"Thirty," Adam replies.

She waves her hand. "Semantics, Adam. The point is, you're out of place, and you would never come to my restaurant on your own account." She lifts a slender finger. "Which means your—what did we agree on? Ex-fiancé?—suggested the place, implying that she's closer to the target age of this restaurant, hence implying that she's significantly younger than you."

Adam taps the edge of his glass, watching the table across from them get served.

"What is she? Twenty-one?" Eris guesses. "Twenty-two? Twenty-three?" She tilts her head, the corners of her mouth lifting slightly. "Twenty-three, Adam? Come on. What do they call a male cougar?" She snaps her fingers. "A predator?"

Adam shakes his head. He's seen Eris do this, too—play with a cop until he's laughing along. He doesn't want to play this game.

"So she's your ex-fiancé," Eris continues, "which means you're single—and you like younger women—so in conclusion, I have a very good chance."

"I prefer those without criminal records," Adam says, finishing his drink.

Eris' expression is a ghost of a smile. She knows that Sarah Howard, both Adam's ex-fiancé and the mother of his four-year-old daughter, has ten demerits on her license and went to court for driving reckless—not in the way Eris does, but because Sarah's an idiot. But that's beside the point.

"I don't actually have a record," Eris says. "Some fines, sure, but everybody gets fines."

"Fines for threatening judges?" Adam queries.

"It's a common thing," she says. "Point is, I don't have a record."

"You've been on trial six times," Adam says.

Her mouth curls into a smile, showing every single one of her pearly teeth. She glances up at a passing waiter and points to Adam's drink. "And I've been proven innocent six times, Adam. I'm squeaky clean."

"Yeah? Let me up into the penthouse, then."

"Don't you think you should buy me dinner first?" she asks. The drink is slid in front of Adam as she continues, "I mean, I'm not saying no, but I'm just saying maybe we should take it a bit slower—"

Adam takes his phone off the table and goes to stand, ignoring the drink. "Thank you for the drinks," he says, brushing out his jacket. "I'll see you in court."

She stands after him, oddly fluid as she leans on the half wall in front of him. "Okay, Adam, I give," she says. "I'll let you down into the pit. We'll save the penthouse for the second date."

Adam turns, slowly. The pit—where the gambling happened, where the games were played—was not only invite-only, but it was also where Adam suspected the laundering to happen.

She raises an eyebrow. She's a tall woman, especially with the heels, and Adam feels slightly intimidated by it.

"Now I've got you," she muses. She tilts her chin to the stairs, which has two men standing on either side. "Come down. I'll ask them to play music from the sixties if it makes you feel more at home."

Adam glances over at the stairs. She wouldn't invite him down there if there was anything to see, but maybe he can get the layout for the buy. That, and she'll be suspicious if he doesn't take the chance to have a look.

Finally, Adam nods to the stairs. She backs up one step, then encourages him to follow by the curl of her fingers. It's a seductive gesture, and Eris has that style down a thousand times over. It feels wrong, as if simply following her is something forbidden.

As soon as Adam takes the step forward, her mouth tilts into an amused smile. She leads him to the stairs, then points at the man to their left.

"That's Andy," Eris says. "He's your guy."

Eris continues down the stairs, leaving Adam to glance at Andy, who is, in fact, someone he planted here. He sighs as he follows her down the stairs.

The classy aura of the restaurant doesn't cease, but the music gets louder and the crowd turns rowdy. The pit lies underground, beneath the restaurant, so no windows or doors exist as far as he can see. Adam's been down here once during the warrant search, but never at night, when the place was active.

Eris heads for the bar, leaving Adam to trail. She taps the counter once, and a lean man with dark hair answers her call.

"Gin on the rocks for Adam, Niky," she says.

The man glances at Adam. "We bring cops down here now?" he asks.

"Only the pretty ones. Off you go," she replies.

Adam looks over at the poker tables as the man gets the drink. "Is it that obvious?" he asks.

Eris turns to look at him. "That you're a cop? No. But I might have a picture of you in the staff room with a few hearts drawn on it."

Adam refuses to look her in the eye. The bartender returns with the gin. Eris has taken out the tonic, now, and Adam knows she's putting liquor in him on purpose. For what reason, he has no clue.

The bartender slides the drink to Adam, then leans against the counter again and speaks to Eris, "You're reckless as fuck, woman."

Eris doesn't answer as she maneuvers around Adam's chair and behind the bar. She's looking at Nikolas, but not quite in a way Adam can place.

Adam inspects his drink. "Do all your employees speak to their boss like that?" he asks.

"She not my boss," the bartender replies. "She's my girlfriend."

Eris turns to take the gin off the shelf, then spins back around upon hearing the bartender. "Still your boss," she says. She takes a shaker from the shelf and pours in the gin.

Adam takes a sip. "Does your cop-hating boyfriend know you flirt with cops as a pastime?" He couldn't imagine Eris with a boyfriend, but if she had to have one, the bartender made sense. Like Eris, he had those typical Mediterranean features, but he also looked like the kind of man that would be in the drug business.

The bartender rolls his eyes, looking to Eris, who takes a glass of olives from the minifridge behind her. "He does, actually," she replies. "You're my free pass."

"Your what?" Adam asks.

"Free pass," she repeats, picking up the shaker. "You know, in a relationship, you get a free pass—some celebrity you're allowed to hook up with if you get the chance. You're my free pass."

Adam glances at the bartender, who eyes Eris as she pours the contents of the martini into a glass. "You know she sells cocaine?" he tells Adam. "I'll go on record."

"I do know she sells cocaine," Adam replies. "But simply telling me that is useless. If you tell me where she keeps the cocaine, that'll help."

The bartender lets out a sigh, then pushes off the counter. "I don't actually know where she keeps the cocaine," he says, "because I'm not the manager." He stalks away to deal with another bar patron.

Eris stabs an olive with a toothpick and drops it in the martini. Adam looks down at the glass. "You have a license to serve that?" he asks.

"Yes," she replies, leaning over the counter and taking a sip of the martini. "You want to see it?" Her expression is tempting; it tells him to lean back, to relax, to spill out every sinful secret that wakes him in the night.

He watches her put the glass down, eyes glittering in the overhead light. The contours of her face are slightly harsh, but her skin is blushed just enough to remain feminine. When Adam first met her, he and his friends had agreed that although she was the prettiest drug lord they'd ever come across, the media conception that she'd walked out of a magazine was hardly accurate. But the closer they got to her antics, the more alluring she became. It was a lesson Adam hoped to teach to Daphne one day: The more confident and surer a person, the more others would gravitate towards them.

Eris places a napkin next to her glass. "Why meet with an ex?" she asks.

Adam takes another sip of his drink. "Why sell drugs?"

"I don't sell drugs, Adam. But you do make dinner plans with your exes."

Adam looks over to the slot machines. It would be so easy to launder money in this place without anyone ever knowing. It's probably happening all around him.

"You want to get back together?" she guesses.

Adam shakes his head and speaks before she can continue her guessing game, "Let's talk about you. You dropped from a law degree at Tarvard mere weeks before you were set to graduate. Why?"

She shrugs and takes a sip of her martini. "I hate exams."

"You wasted hundreds of thousands of dollars on the most expensive four year degree in the country only to never actually receive the degree because you hate exams?"

"First of all, I didn't spend a cent; I had a full ride. Second of all, did I waste it? I retain the knowledge regardless of whether or not my name is printed on an overpriced piece of paper."

"But there's no proof," Adam insists. "You're licensed to practice because you aced the bar, but there's no actual proof that you went to school—" He cuts himself off.

She grins. "The art of the unforeseen."

She's right. Adam spent nearly a year playing court games with what he thought was Eris' extremely booked-and-busy defense attorney but was really just Eris wasting his time. The first time he went to court with her, he'd been tossed around like a rag doll because he'd been prepared to deal with a civilian, not a Tarvard graduate. The art of the unforeseen.

"What other degrees do you half-have?" Adam asks.

She tilts her head. Criminal justice, psychology and biological chemistry. She shrugs. "Just law." She nods behind him and leads them over to a lounge-like area. She sits on the couch with that same flourish as she did before, placing the martini on the table. Adam sits a fair distance away from her.

"You were set to graduate with a grade point average of four-point-five," Adam tells her. "We pulled your academic score on the LSAT, for which you were in the first percentile. You also got a similar score on the MCAT, which apparently you just took for fun."

She rests an arm over the back of the couch, turning to listen to him. There's a slit up the side of her dress, flashing the golden skin of her leg—sun-kissed as if she's spent years on a beach.

She looks at him, then looks down at her leg.

Adam clears his throat. "The IQ test we had you take during your psych evaluation put you at one hundred and eighty. A certifiable savant. Twelve percent higher than what they've estimated Einstein at."

"Really?"

Adam leans forward slightly. "Ninety-six percent of drug dealers admit to falling out with the law for the money. But you—you could've done numerous legal things to earn the same paycheck. Surgery, corporate defence attorney, big pharma CEO—hell, you could've been a NASA engineer if you wanted."

"None of which gets me sitting here with you," she concludes, reaching forward to sip from the martini. As if on purpose, the slit reveals her leg again. That part of her looks was never once debated by Adam nor his friends.

Somewhere along the way, his gin has been replaced.

He leans forward a little bit more. "If you'd been any of those things, you'd have a far better chance with me."

"Really?" She shrugs. "Call me a defence attorney, then. For an entertainment company."

"Give me something. You move from Greece the moment you're old enough to own property, abandoning your family and leaving them not one cent of the billions of profit you make, despite the fact that they're practically living in poverty."

"Oh, now they told you to say that."

"Tell me something," Adam insists. "Anything."

She smiles, teeth and all, looking out at the room. She's wearing a turtleneck dress, but it's tight, showing every curve in her body. It's her signature style—subtly slutty and somehow classy. Everything is graceful about her, from the length of her fingers to the line of her jaw.

"I'll tell you something," she says, glancing back at him. "I had a dream a few nights ago where you looked at me just like you are now."

Adam searches her eyes. Maybe he is being slightly obvious. Maybe his head is whirling a little from the gin.

"I'm not allowed to look?" Adam asks, finishing the gin. It's the first time he's replied to her comments with anything remotely resembling interest.

"On the contrary, Adam. I hope you do more than look."

"Why move from Greece?"

"It's too hot there," she replies.

"It's hot here, too," he says back.

"Only where we're sitting."

Adam sighs, taking the next gin from the server. "One hundred and eighty. The things you could do with that kind of intelligence." He shakes his head slightly.

"Hypothetically," Eris says, "you could start a drug business, make billions of dollars and own a handful of sports cars."

Adam rolls his eyes. It's always hypothetically, if I were to be in the business, but it's never a straight confession.

"The stash has to be in the penthouse," Adam insists. "We'll get a warrant for it, and you'll be done. Make a plea before you spend your life in jail, Eris."

She leans forward. "Say my name again, Adam."

Adam doesn't bother to lean back. Her gaze is unsettling most of the time, but the gin has loosened that feeling tonight. "What's your deal with me?" he asks.

"I like your eyes," she replies.

"You've got your pick of men. You have one already. There's more to your thing for me than a free pass."

"Take me home and I'll tell you."

Adam laughs. Her quick wit is so on-the-ball that it becomes comedic. "Eris," he says through a smile. "Just give a straight answer."

She sets her glass on the table. It's the same one she's been holding for the entire time in the lounge. The world has faded around them, leaving just the two of them in a little haze.

She turns to him once more. A song from the sixties is playing, and Adam finds the coincidence nearly as funny as her flirting.

"It's not just your eyes," she says, whispering it to him like she's telling him some coveted secret. "It's your voice, too. The way you look in uniform." She leans closer, steely eyes shining. Her hand is on Adam's leg, but he can't remember when she put it there. "That smile," she adds, tilting her head slightly.

Adam lifts his chin. Her hair shimmers in the lighting, the ends curling in a little. Adam remembers Sarah trying to get that little flip in her hair once but couldn't get it on her own. She spent two hundred dollars at a salon to get it done and it only lasted a few hours.

Eris' arm is still over the back of the couch, close to Adam's head, and now she uses her finger to curl a strand of his hair. It's giving him shivers, giving him little shots of adrenaline. "I've explained my interest, Adam," she's saying. "What's yours?"

"I don't—"

"You spend hours researching me. You've memorized my IQ score, the numbers I got on my entrance exams, where I went to school, what my family's doing at this moment—what's with the interest, Adam?" The colour of her iris blurs into her pupil.

"That's my job," he replies.

"Is that the only reason you do it?" she asks. Her voice careens him, focuses him on the conversation despite this hazy feeling. "Because it's your job? Did you lose your fiancé because you didn't pay enough attention to her, or did you lose your fiancé because you paid a little bit too much attention to me?"

Adam blinks. Sarah had ended things for a few reasons, but Adam's obsession with work was one of the main ones. He isn't sure how she's figured that out.

"You're my job," Adam says, which doesn't make much sense, but he has a feeling she'll get it.

"So you do it because you want to make the world safer? Get these apparent drugs off the street? Or do you do it because you're drawn to my life—because you're interested in the reasons I do what I do and obsessed with how I do it?"

"Maybe it's a little of both," Adam replies.

"Yeah?" She's leaning a little closer. "Be more specific."

Adam searches the flawless skin of her face. He wonders how much of that is makeup—if she's really that flawless when she wakes up in the morning.

"I'm interested in why you went the way you did," he admits. "Why you take risks you don't have to. You're slightly..." Adam watches her head tilt as she waits for his conclusion. "Fascinating," he finishes.

"You think so?" she says to him. Her voice has dipped to something like a whisper, the tone slightly husky. "And what else?"

"You're nicer to look at than the other criminals."

She smiles, so wide, so enticing. Her tongue runs along the bottom of her teeth, slow. Adam can't take his eyes off her. She's bathed in a glittering aura, as stunning as ever. He's leaning closer, mindlessly cataloguing that another song from the sixties is playing.

She curls her fingers around the back of his neck, meeting him halfway. Her lips taste like the martini she was drinking, and they feel as addictive as the hundreds of illegal things happening in this building. Her fingers are smooth and warm on the back of his neck, pulling him closer.

Across the room, over by the bar, Nikolas rolls his eyes as he cleans a glass. And across from him, near the slot machine closest to Eris, Peter glances past the game he isn't playing and watches them carefully. The cop has his hand on her leg, just like Peter had the night before. Eris' fingers glide over his shoulder, down his shirt, into the pocket of his jacket.

Peter smirks at the slot machine as he pushes back his chair and gets to his feet. He walks towards their couch as Eris puts both arms around the cop's neck, drawing him closer. As Peter passes by the back of the couch, he takes the keys from her waiting fingers and pockets them. He makes his way over to the back, down into the staging area. He presses the key to Adam's apartment into foam so it can be copied later. But for now, there's more to do.