A group of pretty boys stared wide-eyed from a pile of pillows where two girls were getting it on. Will was right: Both of them were better looking than any naked girl he’d seen outside a magazine. The Star sat at a low table with a well-dressed black guy, a case open between them, the Star holding a playing card an inch from his nose, and his panic exhale sent white powder billowing out like a summer cloud rolling across the plains.

“Go!” Will said, behind him.

Go, Bobby said to himself. Move your feet. He felt a trickle roll down his side. His hands trembled.

“Goddamn amateur,” Will said, and pushed past, his gun out and up, yelling at the second black guy, a gangster-looking dude who froze with his hand almost to the butt of his pistol.

The scene was surreal, guns waving in this swank space, the beats turning everything into a music video. There were more people than Bobby had pictured, five or six friends of the Star, plus the girls, the bodyguard, and the drug dealers, a lot to manage. Jack was right, they needed four. Hot shame flushed through his bowels. Go in.

Then he saw one of the pretty boys starting forward, champagne bottle in hand. He was heading toward Jack, who had his back turned, his attention on the bodyguard. Bobby’s legs unlocked. He burst in the door and whipped his gun across the kid’s face, putting all his fear and rage into the move, the impact jarring and strangely intimate, something cracking beneath the metal, a sudden warmth against his glove as the boy went down, Bobby half wanting to follow him swinging, break every bone in his face for threatening his big brother.

Instead he stepped back and raised the Smith, swung it in an arc to cover the rest of the entourage. “Don’t you fucking move.” It felt good, the fear turning to power. I am a bad man.

Jack glanced over his shoulder, nodded. “All right.” He stepped forward, his gun raised. “All right. Hands on your heads. Do it now.”