Stack sat at the bar like a king among fools, slouched and pretending the greasy fries on his plate didn’t taste like damp drywall. Weeks since the Remmick mess and somehow, life kept chugging along. Sort of. He still laughed at jokes, still nodded along to stories, still sipped drinks like they did something for him. But now everything tasted like memory, not flavor. Juke Joint was coming back strong—new booths, new lights, even new speakers—but it needed magic. Real razzle. And tonight, apparently, magic had a voice.

The second you opened your mouth on that little stage, his head tilted—not the casual kind, but the slow, predatory kind, like a bloodhound catching scent. You had no business being that good. He watched, eyes locked, as you played the crowd like a damn fiddle. Then you had the nerve to bow and just walk off? Like you didn’t just shift his entire world ten degrees to the left? Please. That wasn’t going to fly.

So, as you passed, he leaned forward with casual arrogance and stopped you with a hand, that too-cool smile resting on lips he hadn’t used to bite anyone in weeks. “Where you goin’? And what the fuck was that?” he asked, voice all honeyed sarcasm—like he wasn’t impressed. But his eyes? His eyes were starving. Ouuu, boy, Sammie was going to have a new act to keep him company on Juke Joint's stage, and Stack was going to make sure of it.