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decision not to bring the red sand directly to the club was looking a lot less paranoid. He resisted the urge to say “I told you so” as he climbed the platform and took a spot beside Sanak next to the booth, close enough so his translator could pick up the conversation between Aria and her rivals.
    Nobody paid any real attention to him; he was known to Aria and her associates, and the turians were focused only on her. There were private rooms on the VIP level, but Aria preferred to conduct most of her business in the booth, where others could see … especially when she was asserting her dominance over a potential challenger to her throne.
    “I’m not denying what happened,” Aria answered calmly in reply to part of the conversation Grayson had just missed.
    The turians waited for her to continue, but she was content to let her words hang in the air as she took a sip from the tall glass elegantly cradled in her left hand.
    Eventually overcome by the pressing silence, one of the turians—probably the leader—took up the dialogue.
    “We’re not looking to start a war—”
    “Good,” Aria cut him off. “Because you’d lose.”
    Momentarily thrown by the interruption, the turian was forced to start again.
    “We’re not looking to start a war. We came to parley in good faith. We want to come to an agreement.”
    “We already had an agreement,” Aria reminded him. “Two percent off the top. Then you started moving product without giving me my cut.”
    “That was a mistake,” one of the other turians admitted. “We came to apologize. You’ll get your cut from now on.”
    “No apology necessary,” Aria said, flashing a dangerous smile. “But you violated the terms of the contract. Now we need to renegotiate.”
    The turians exchanged a few quick glances, and Grayson could see them weighing their next words carefully. The Talons were an up-and-coming gang on Omega, but they weren’t on par with the Blue Suns or Bloodpack yet. And they had no illusions about where they stood in the grand scheme. If Aria truly wanted to, she could wipe them out.
    “A reasonable request, given what happened,” the first turian conceded. “We’ll increase your cut to three percent.”
    “Five,” Aria stated, her voice making it clear the number wasn’t open for negotiation.
    “Nobody pays five percent!” the third turian objected, taking an angry step forward as his hand dropped to the pistol clipped to his hip.
    In a flash the krogan was beside him, his mammoth eight-foot frame looming over the smaller man. Slowly, the turian’s hand fell away from his weapon. Everybody else remained frozen until Aria gave a slight nod. The turian took a careful step back. A second later the krogan grunted, then did the same.
    “You crossed me,” Aria said coolly. “There are consequences.”
    “Five percent,” the leader agreed.
    He hesitated before continuing, choosing his words carefully to avoid further provocation.
    “There is still the matter of the attack itself. Several of our people were killed. A large sum of product was stolen.”
    “Consider it the cost of doing business,” Aria said, calmly taking another sip of her drink.
    The turians collectively bristled. Grayson knew they weren’t stupid enough to attack Aria here in the club; in addition to the highly visible bodyguards and biotics surrounding her, there were dozens of less obvious security personnel scattered around the VIP level. They’d be dead before they even got a shot off.
    He did expect them to turn and storm out, however. Their friends had been gunned down, and the value of the sand was far more than what they had cheated Aria out of. She was adding insult to injury, making a point about who was in charge. She had backed them into a corner, and there was a chance they’d retaliate out of sheer desperation. The Talons couldn’t win a war against Aria, but they could make it hurt before she broke them.
    But Aria had a knack for knowing exactly