He went quiet, studying us both. Then, like a switch flipped, he smiled again and stood, smoothing his tie. “Well, gentlemen. This has been delightful. But as I said, I have a busy day. You know the way out.”
Nitro nodded, already halfway to the door. I lingered a beat longer, letting Giammati see just how little I cared for his rules.
“Oh, and Robert?” I said, halfway out. “Tell your shooter to use a real gun next time. Makes less mess for the janitor.”
He glared, but didn’t rise to the bait.
“Damron,” Giammati replied. He held up a sheet of paper. “I’m working with a senator from Kentucky and one from Louisiana. We’re going to put an end to biker trash.”
“We’ll see,” I said.
We left through the lobby, the receptionist still hiding behind her desk. Nitro walked beside me, hands loose, head up. Outside, the sun was too bright, the lot too quiet.
“You believe he’s got another hit lined up?” Nitro asked, swinging a leg over his bike.
“He’s got five. And if we’re lucky, we’ll get to all of them before he does.” I settled onto the seat, letting the cold metal bleed up into my bones. “Dig into his campaign finances. Deep. I want every name, every favor, every fucking bribe he’s taken.”
Nitro nodded. “I’ll have it by morning.”
We fired up the engines, the sound rolling off the buildings like a storm front. I glanced back at the mirror box, half expecting to see Giammati at the window, but he was already gone, plotting his next move.
The city looked clean on the surface, but I knew better. The rot ran deep, all the way down to the foundations. And if it came to blood, I’d drown the whole fucking town before I let anyone touch Carly again. We roared away from the glass box, the road stretching out ahead, empty and mean. Just the way I liked it.
Chapter ten
Carly
The Bloody Scythes clubhouse looked different at night, which is to say it looked exactly the fucking same: a bad idea wrapped in cinderblocks, lit by one working neon and the perpetual blue glow of a flatscreen blaring SportsCenter reruns. I didn’t belong there. I’d spent three years cultivating the kind of life where walking into a place like this would be cause for an ethics investigation or at least an urgent text from my PR handler. But you can’t undo history, not when it’s tattooed into your skin and still bleeding under a hospital bandage. Beneath the suits and political lingo, I knew this for sure—I was still a biker old lady. part of me was okay with that, a part i would keep hidden for now.
I didn’t knock. I banged the heel of my hand on the battered green door and shoved it open so hard it bounced off the wall, dent deepening by half a millimeter. A half-dozen heads turned at once, eyes flat and cold and ready to fuck me up or fuck me, depending on how many drinks they’d had. I made it three steps into the stench of cigarettes and sweat before my kneesthreatened to mutiny. I locked them, stood tall, and let the room get a good look at the senator out of uniform.
My blouse—Dior, in case anyone cared—was untucked, two buttons missing, and there was a dry line of blood running down my forearm where the bandage had slipped. The slacks were ruined, one leg torn at the hem, dirt ground into the fabric. I’d lost an earring and my left heel somewhere between the car and the parking lot. My purse strap had snapped, so I clutched the whole thing in my fist like a brick. It matched the way I held my phone in the other hand, screen lit up with the last threat I’d gotten before the cell towers dropped out. If any of them recognized the shape of my life at that moment, none of them said a word.
At the table by the back wall, Damron St. James sat flanked by Nitro and three other patch-holders. It looked like a war council: maps and burner phones and a bottle of whiskey open in the center, glasses only halfway filled because real men drank from the neck. Nitro’s sleeve was rolled up, a bandage peeking out from underneath, and he had his fist planted in the center of the table like he meant to crush the wood. Damron was all silent, eyes hooded and unreadable, fingers steepled on the tabletop as he listened to someone finish a story about a man who’d lost two fingers to a pipe bomb. When I entered, the story died, the room shifting to a new kind of alert.
Nobody said my name. They didn’t have to.
I took a shaky breath and forced my way forward, the echo of my one working heel punctuating the silence. The eyes that watched me were hungry, bored, or just curious to see if the senator would cry. I didn’t give them the satisfaction, but my hands wouldn’t stop shaking. I aimed the phone at Damron and waited until he looked up. He didn’t blink. I slid the phone across the table. He caught it, thumbed the screen, and scrolled without changing expression.
“Jesus Christ,” Nitro muttered, peering over his boss’s shoulder.
The other men leaned in, one after another, letting the light of the screen illuminate their faces. The text messages were worse than garden-variety death threats. There were photos, taken through a telephoto lens—one of me leaving the hospital that morning, another of my townhouse with the lights on at 2 am, another of my campaign manager at his daughter’s birthday party, three hours before he’d gone on TV to spin my latest disaster. Under each photo, a message: “Tick tock,” or “See you soon, bitch,” or just a string of gun emojis. I tried to pretend it was nothing, but I could feel my teeth start to chatter.
Damron slid the phone back. His face was a locked vault, but his eyes were moving, calculating. “You call your feds?” he asked, like he already knew the answer.
I nodded, then forced words out past the panic. “They lost him. He was at my house. He knows my routes, my people. I couldn’t go anywhere else.”
I heard someone snort behind me—maybe Slick, or Augustine, or Seneca or maybe one of the others—but I kept my focus on Damron.
He didn’t move. “Who else knows you’re here?”
“No one.” I lied by omission; the campaign manager was probably still pissing himself in the backseat of the Uber I’d ditched three blocks away.
He looked at Nitro, jerked his chin. “Clear the room.”
Nitro didn’t hesitate. He shot to his feet, downed what was left in his glass, and barked a single word: “Out.” It was all it took. The other men grumbled, shuffled, but obeyed. The pool table crowd, the woman behind the bar, even the prospects cleaning ashtrays—they all filed out, eyeing me like a new addition to the menu. Damron waited until the last body was gone, then stood and came around the table, boots heavy on the tile.
I’d forgotten how big he was. Or maybe I’d just minimized it in my memory, the way you minimize the size of a fire after you barely escape the burn. He looked like he hadn’t slept in a week, and there were new lines around his eyes, but the presence was the same: total, absolute, built for violence. He stopped a foot from me. Close enough to smell the gun oil and the sour tang of adrenaline leaking from my pores. “You’re bleeding,” he said, and reached for my arm.
