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The city was a furnace that day, heat pressing down like punishment, even in the shadows. I drove out past Parramatta Road, where warehouses sat low and square, their roofs corrugated and scarred from years of weather and crime. Vale had sent me to “remind” a supplier who’d been late with payments – a show of force, a loyalty test dressed as busywork.

I already knew what it was. Another of Vale’s traps. Another way to measure how tightly he thought he held my leash.

But when I pulled into the lot, I saw it wasn’t Vale’s men waiting.

Three black SUVs lined the chain-link fence. Men stood easy but disciplined, their shirts tucked, their movements deliberate. No jitter, no wasted gestures. Not Vale’s coke-hollowed scavengers. Soldiers.

And at the centre of them, like the mast of a ship, was Sami Oshana.

He wasn’t tall in the way movie villains are tall. He was thick, built like a dockside crane, shoulders squared, arms hanging heavy with veins carved deep. His black hair was cropped close, flecked with grey, and his eyes – Christ, his eyes – they carried something older than the city around us. Dark, still, like wells you didn’t want to fall into.

On his chest, half-hidden under his open collar, the ink of a cross. On his forearm, the Archangel Michael, sword drawn, wings spread. Not the kind of tattoos you get to impress women at the beach. Marks of faith and war.

When I stepped out of the car, he didn’t move. Just watched me with that calm weight. One of his men muttered in Assyrian Aramaic, and Sami answered back without looking away. The words rolled like stone over stone.

I lit a smoke, took my time.

“You’re not Vale’s men,” I said finally.

He smiled. Slow. Like a man who’d already measured me and found the answer. “No….We’re not.” His voice was low, controlled. “Vale’s men don’t stand straight anymore. They bend.”

I exhaled, the smoke cutting the space between us. “So who are you?”

He stepped closer, his men holding position like chess pieces already placed. “I’m Sami Oshana. My people have been here longer than Vale’s coke habit. We build, we bleed, we bury our dead with prayer. And we don’t answer to parasites.”

The menace was there, plain and hard. But it wasn’t bark. It was creed.

“You’ve been in my lanes,” I said. Not a question.

He nodded once. No denial. “Vale’s time is ending. He’s weak. And weakness invites wolves.” His eyes narrowed slightly. “You’re not weak, Boone. I’ve watched you. You carry yourself like a man. Not like a hyena sniffing for scraps.”

I said nothing. Just let the silence settle. Men like Sami filled silence with truth if you gave them the space.

He went on. “I don’t touch women, or children. Not for money, not for leverage. My men don’t sniff powder. Don’t drink when we work. We fight, we bleed, but we keep our code. Without it, we’re no better than Vale.”

There it was – his compass. Crooked maybe, but still pointing to something steadier than Vale’s twitching paranoia.

He stepped closer again, close enough that I could smell him. Not perfume. Not powder. Soap. Sweat. Tobacco. Real.

“I like you, Boone,” he said, voice dropping softer now. “You’re dangerous, but not filthy. You’ve got blood on your hands, but you know who it belongs to. That makes you different.” His eyes locked on mine. “But hear me: if you stand with Vale against me, I’ll put you in the ground. I’ll bury you with respect, but I’ll bury you all the same.”

The men around him stayed stone still. The sun hammered down, the smoke from my cigarette curling between us like scripture written in air.

I flicked the butt away, met his stare cold. “I don’t stand with Vale,” I said. “I stand where I choose.”

For a moment, neither of us moved. Just the hum of the city, the distant growl of trucks on the highway, the weight of two men measuring the other’s marrow.

Then Sami smiled again, small, sharp. “Good.” He turned back to his men, speaking in his tongue, and they broke formation, moving with the precision of soldiers dismissing parade.

Before he climbed into his SUV, he looked back once more. “Vale’s not your brother, Boone. Don’t let him drag you down with him.”

And then he was gone. Engines roaring, tyres kicking gravel, leaving me in the heat with the taste of smoke and the name Sami Oshana branded into my thoughts.

I sat there a long minute, engine off, sweat soaking my collar. The name tasted like iron, like blood I hadn’t yet spilled. Sami Oshana wasn’t Vale. He wasn’t chaos. He was order. Faith and family dressed in muscle and menace.

The soldier in me weighed him. Calm, precise, disciplined. Men like that didn’t make empty threats. He could marshal bodies, run lanes, carve order out of chaos. I didn’t fear him – I’d stared down worse in darker places – but I respected him. And respect from a soldier was worth more than fear.

The killer in me bristled at his words, the warning wrapped in respect. Another man threatening to put me in the ground. I wanted to tear him apart for it, show him I didn’t kneel, not to Vale, not to him. The machine in me pictured his throat open, the sound it would make, the way the earth would drink him. But the machine also knew restraint. Patience. That every blade has its time to cut.

The father in me heard something else. Sami spoke of family, of faith, of burying his dead with prayer. I thought of Lewis – the boy in that photo, the man he’d become, the distance between us. My one failing. Sami’s compass pointed home, even if his hands were bloody. Mine pointed everywhere but.

And Jo. Christ. Jo. She was Assyrian too. I felt it flare in me the second he said his name. The same fire, the same defiance. The way she’d bend her words to cut me, then melt around me like she’d never wanted anyone else. Why it mattered, I didn’t know. Maybe it was just the bloodline echo, the sound of a heritage older than both of us. Maybe it was guilt. Maybe it was God laughing. But it mattered.

I lit another smoke, let it burn slow, let the compartments talk. Soldier said respect him. Killer said cut him. Father said maybe this is the man who can end Vale, keep me clear, leave Lewis out of the blast. And the sinner… the sinner just sat back, smiling, because Jo was in the room again, whether I wanted her or not.

Sami Oshana was no parasite. He was order, forged in faith and family. And that made him dangerous. Dangerous enough to kill Vale. Dangerous enough to save me. Dangerous enough to damn me too.

By the time I drove back toward the Velvet Hour, the sun was sliding down, bleeding orange into smog. Vale’s world always looked uglier in that half-light – like the city itself was ashamed to show its face.

I found him upstairs in the mezzanine again, coke laid out in neat little rails, his pupils already the size of coins. He was pacing when I walked in, powder sweat dripping, shirt untucked, the hyenas watching from the shadows.

“You saw him, didn’t you?” Vale barked before I’d even sat. His laugh was manic, the kind that rattles around in a skull too long. “The Assyrian. Sami fucking Oshana. Thinks he can walk in here, take my lanes, take my crown? Fuck him. Fuck his God.”

He jabbed a finger at me, powder spilling off his knuckle. “What did he say to you?”

I lit a smoke, calm. “That you’re weak.”

The room went still. Even the hyenas shifted in their seats, eyes flicking between us.

Vale’s grin cracked. He twitched, sniffed, tried to laugh but it came out like a choke. “He doesn’t know me. He doesn’t know what I’ll do. I’ll burn his family alive if I have to. I’ll string him up in his own church. You hear me? No one replaces Vale. No one.”

But his hands were shaking. His voice broke on the word “family.” The powder was doing the talking, but the fear was doing the shaking. Sami Oshana had crawled under his skin, and the paranoia was eating him alive.

I blew smoke across the table, let it cut through his rant. “Then prove it. Or he’ll take everything.”

Vale’s eyes darted, glassy and wild. He leaned close, breath hot with powder and whisky. “You’re with me, Boone. You’re my brother. Brothers in arms. Brothers in appetite. Say it.”

I met his stare, flat, cold. “I stand where I choose.”

He froze. Just for a heartbeat. Then he laughed again, too loud, too sharp, slapping my back like we were boys in a pub.

“But you’re standing here, brother, with me.” He said with a tone halfway between rest and unrest. But I’d seen the crack. His eyes confirmed it. Fear.

And once fear takes root, men like Vale are already finished.

The dawn light bled through the terrace blinds in streaks of grey, not gold. Weak, like the city had already stolen the strength from it before it reached me. My chest still held the weight of Jo’s dream — the heat of her body, the musk of her skin, the fire in her eyes. The ghost of her scent hung in me, creamy and sweet, clinging to the back of my throat like smoke.

I sat at the table with the Michter’s glass half-empty, the cigar stubbed out, and the photo of Lewis staring at me from a decade ago. His grin frozen in time. That boy was gone, grown into a man I barely knew, and Jo was gone too, except she wasn’t. She was stitched into me, into marrow and muscle, every moan of hers still rattling around like scripture no priest would own.

I dragged my hand down my face, shutting compartments. Soldier mode. Machine mode. Dream was dream. But the knot in my throat told me otherwise.

The phone cut the silence. Vale’s voice rattled through, jittery and too loud, the cocaine already in his throat.

“Boone. My brother. Velvet Hour. Now. Daylight doesn’t scare us, eh? Daylight’s when the jackals are easiest to see.”

His laugh was cracked porcelain, brittle and sharp. I let him run on, listened to the powder talk — jackals circling, men moving in on his teeth, whispers of betrayal. He named no names but spat venom between lines, chewing paranoia like gristle.

“I need you here,” he said finally, dropping to a whisper like we were wiretapped. “Only you. Nobody else. They’ll see us together. They’ll know who’s king.”

I said nothing for a moment, then let the silence bite before answering. “On my way.”

I hung up. Drained the glass. Grabbed the jacket with the Glock tucked inside. Soldier counted exits, father glanced once more at Lewis’ photo, sinner still ached from Jo’s phantom. Then I stepped into the city’s throat.

Velvet Hour in daylight was a corpse with makeup melting. The neon dead, the blue lights switched off, the smell of bleach trying and failing to cover the musk of nights before. The carpet was damp, sticky even in the morning. Tables were stripped bare, chairs stacked against walls. The glamour was gone, leaving stains and shadows that didn’t lie.

Vale was in the mezzanine booth, shirt open, gold chain tangled in his chest hair, a glass of whisky sweating though it wasn’t yet noon. Powder still caked the inside of his nose, his eyes too wide, his laugh too high. Around him sat the hyenas — hangers-on, men with hollow eyes, girls too thin for their lingerie. They watched him with grins stretched too tight, waiting for the lion to limp so they could feed.

He threw his arms open when he saw me, powder dust puffing from his cuff. “My brother Boone!” His voice echoed too loud in the empty club. “The only man left with a spine. Come, sit. Drink.”

I slid into the booth beside him. Leather still slick with the perfume of last night’s thighs. I lit a smoke, let the curl of it cut his manic chatter. He leaned close, his hand heavy on my shoulder, his eyes darting like flies.

“They’re circling, Boone,” he whispered. “Jackals. Hyenas. You see them, don’t you? Even in here.” He jerked his chin toward the hangers-on. “They smell weakness. They think Vale is finished. They forget who I am.”

I said nothing. Just took a slow drag, exhaled into the space between us. He watched the smoke curl and tremble like it held an answer. Then he laughed, too sudden, too sharp.

“You’re the only brother I trust,” he said, his voice cracking at the edges. “The only one who’s not waiting to eat me.”

The irony sat heavy in my chest. I drank anyway. Let him see me drink. His paranoia wasn’t wrong — but his loyalty was paper-thin.

It came later, between his rants about loyalty and betrayal, when he finally spat the name.

“Assyrian prick. Sami Oshana.” He rolled it in his mouth like it was poison. “Think he can muscle into my lanes, my ships, my teeth. Clean suits, clean crews, like he’s running a church instead of a crew. Discipline, order, all that bullshit. He doesn’t know this city like I do. He doesn’t bleed it like I do. But he thinks he can take it. Thinks he can take me.”

He laughed again, but his hands shook when he lifted the glass.

I pretended disinterest, staring down at the smoke twisting in my own. But inside I locked the name down. Sami Oshana.

Vale painted him as a rival, but the edges of his voice betrayed respect. Fear even. The kind of fear a man like Vale wouldn’t admit, but couldn’t quite bury.

“He’s got discipline, Boone,” Vale hissed. “Like an army. His men don’t sniff, don’t drink, don’t fuck around. They move like they’ve rehearsed it. That’s not loyalty — that’s slavery. I’ll cut their throats before I bow to some Assyrian Christ-freak.”

But he said “Christ-freak” with more bitterness than bravado. And I saw it. Another crack in his mirror.

Driving away, the city rolling by in shades of grime and sun-bleached concrete, I weighed it all. Vale’s decline wasn’t subtle anymore. The paranoia wasn’t just powder — it was blood-deep. His empire stank of rot, hyenas already circling, jackals testing the fences. And in the smoke of it all, a new name: Sami Oshana.

I didn’t know him yet, but I knew the type. Clean crews. Disciplined. Men who moved like soldiers. Mean as cancer but with a creed. That made him dangerous in a way Vale could never understand.

The wheel thrummed under my hands, the Glock pressed into my ribs like a reminder. Vale thought I was his brother, but I knew better. Brothers don’t threaten your blood. Brothers don’t dangle your son’s photo like bait.

The compartments closed, one by one. Soldier marked exits. Father pictured Lewis’ face ten years younger, still smiling. Sinner remembered Jo’s moans like a hymn stuck in his throat. And the machine — the machine waited, calm and patient, for the trigger.

In the rear-view, my reflection stared back at me. Eyes flat, jaw set. Not dreaming anymore. Just steel.

The cracks in Vale’s mirror had widened. And through them, I could already see the blood.

The Mercedes hummed beneath me, city lights bleeding past the windscreen like a reel I couldn’t switch off. Poppy’s silence rode shotgun, even after she’d slipped away into Vale’s cage. Her perfume still lingered, realer than Prada, sharper than smoke. She’d shown me too much – the convoys, the crates, the bloodwork Vale stitched into Sydney’s veins. And in the Velvet Hour, she’d wanted me. Not Vale. Me.

The stripper’s body still clung to me in memory, folds, and lips and the sweat of her back under my palms. The heat, the lust, the filth – it all fed the devil inside, sharpened him, kept him hungry.

And that’s when Jo came back.

I thought I was forgetting her. Reverend John Stanley’s words at St George’s had felt like closure, like I’d finally shut the door. But in the blur of headlights and musk, in the echoes of moans and Poppy’s eyes, Jo broke through.

I never lusted harder than I did with her. Addicted to her bent mind, her sex eyes, that body so beautiful I could barely stay within the realms of reality when I touched her, when I breathed her in, when I melted into her. The nights of cascading moans, of sweet feminine scent and heat and cum – they rose now like ghosts, louder than the engine.

By the time I pulled into the terrace, I was already half under. I poured a Michter’s Rye, lit the cigar I’d been saving, and let the smoke and burn wrap me up. The glass sweated on the table, Lewis’ photo faced me, but my eyes didn’t hold. They slid away, into the haze where memory waited.

The terrace groaned in the winter air, a place already carrying echoes I didn’t care to unpack. Outside, the city moved with its usual hunger – trucks on Parramatta Road, laughter leaking from Darlinghurst bars – but in here the night folded in close. My lids sagged under the whisky’s weight.

Sleep came heavy.

*Enter Sandman*

Dragging him down with the Michter’s still burning his chest, cigar smoke wrapping him like a blanket. The room dissolved, and Jo stepped out of the haze.

She was always taller in his dreams. Legs unending, hips swaying like a pendulum, breasts heavy and natural, carried with the careless pride of a queen who never doubted their power. Her skin glowed soft honey under some invisible sun, and every curve pulled him closer, gravity in flesh.

She didn’t walk; she melted. Onto him, around him, into him. Her vagina glistened, lips swollen and wet, hanging open, the heat of her body steaming against his own. The perfume of her musk rose thick and sweet – creamy, intoxicating – a scent that clung to his tongue like sugar and salt. She kissed him and it wasn’t lips, it was fever; she moaned and it wasn’t sound, it was command.

He was inside her before he knew how. The dream skipped the in-between. One moment her thighs hung open, wetness shining; the next she was astride him, riding slow, rolling, her body swallowing him whole. Breasts bounced heavy with each thrust, droplets of sweat sliding down between them, the rhythm hypnotic, endless. She threw her head back, mouth open, tongue out, and her voice cracked the air – those cascading moans he’d chased like a drug, one after another, falling, tumbling, drowning him in their music. She came hard, her body convulsing around him, the flood of her ecstasy soaking him, claiming him.

His cock swelled inside her, stretching her wide, making her cling tighter with every pulse. The dream slowed, every inch of him thickening into her heat, the folds of her body gripping, yielding, then gripping again as if afraid to let go. He watched himself disappear into her cunt, slick and glistening, her walls molding to him, reshaping around the weight she’d once called hers alone.

Her musk rose stronger, sweet and creamy, drifting into his lungs until it coated him from the inside out. The smell was memory and fever, honey on fire. She moaned words he couldn’t quite hold – half confessions, half submission – lush syllables carried like smoke through the dream. They weren’t language so much as surrender, soft sounds that told him he was still the only man she could break open for.

In that suspended moment, he knew it again: no woman had ever taken him further, no body had ever lusted him harder. Jo was ruin and resurrection both, and even in dreams, she made the rest of the world counterfeit.

And then water. Steam.

Jo stood under the shower, hair plastered to her back, water sliding over curves Dusty thought the world had never deserved to see. Breasts round and weighty, nipples sharp with cold and heat at once. Her belly soft, thighs thick and smooth, hips broad – woman written in bold strokes, perfect because nothing was false. Between her legs, the altar: her mons glistening, lips parting, folds flushed and wet under the falling water. A bead of his cum resting at the opening. It was beauty unrefined, truth sharpened to unbearable perfection.

She bent forward, steam curling around her, and turned her head. Her eyes locked to his, wild, and intent. One hand cupped her breast, the other played lower, fingers working in rhythm, opening herself, showing him her honey pink lips. Divine. The moans spilled again, ragged and sharp, echoing against tile like thunder. She didn’t look away. She never blinked.

And then he saw it: flames flickering inside her pupils, fire dancing in the dark, as if lust itself had caught alight in her eyes.

I woke gasping, cock iron, chest damp. The Michter’s glass was still sweating on the table, cigar half-ash. Jo’s scent still clung to me like she’d never left.

Sitting in the silence, my cock still aching, chest slick with sweat. The glass on the table trembled faint in my hand before I drained it, the Michter’s searing like penance. The cigar was ash, spent and collapsed, the smell of it laced with something sweeter, something I couldn’t shake. Jo.

I hadn’t thought of her in months. Thought I’d buried her under whisky, scripture, and the hard work of forgetting. Reverend John Stanley had told me ghosts fade when you starve them. But Jo had never faded. She’d just waited. And when the devil was fed, when the Velvet Hour had stripped me raw, she came rushing back like she still owned the deed to my body. And maybe she did.

Her moans still rang in my ears – that symphony of ruin – and my blood still boiled like I’d been inside her an hour ago. I hated her for it. Loved her for it. Needed her in a way that made every other indulgence look like cheap counterfeit.

The dawn light crawled across the floorboards, weak and grey. I leaned back, hand dragging down my face, and whispered to the empty room. “You’re dead to me, Jo.”

But the pulse in my cock told me otherwise. The scent in my head told me otherwise. And deep down, where the marrow whispers, I knew she’d never be dead – not while dreams could still bleed her back into me.

The soldier in me measured the silence, marked the exits, kept count of the hours till Vale called again.

The father in me looked at Lewis’ photo, younger than the man he’d become, and wondered if my son would ever know this side of me.

And the sinner in me – he just smiled, still aching, still hungry, knowing Jo’s ghost wasn’t done with me yet.