The warehouse district stretches out around us—gray buildings melding into gray sky, chain-link fences rusted at the edges, everything anonymous and industrial.Jagger takes a corner too fast and my body leans with his, instinct overriding anger.The Ducati screams through the turn and straightens out, and I feel the tension in his shoulders through his jacket.
We pull up to a building that looks exactly like every other building on this street.No signs.No markers.Just cameras mounted on every corner, black eyes watching everything.
Jagger kills the engine, and the sudden silence feels too loud.I'm off the bike before he can turn around, before he can offer help I don't want.
Security nods us through without a word.Inside, the warehouse opens up—high ceilings, fluorescent lights harsh enough to make my eyes water, pallets stacked three deep along the walls.Men move between them with the kind of efficiency that comes from doing the same thing a hundred times: loading, counting, sorting.
Paco emerges from a side office, a knowing smirk on his face."Boss wants fifty sets."
I don't bother responding, just push past him into the small room he's pointing at and drop my bag on the floor.
The space is barely bigger than a closet—desk, lamp, stacks of blank forms already waiting.A frosted glass window looks out onto the main floor.I can see shapes moving through it, hear voices muffled and indistinct.
Jagger leans against the doorframe, watching.His eyes shift between me and Paco like he's calculating something.
Paco drops a folder on the desk.Papers slide out—insurance forms, chain-of-custody documents, all the bureaucratic scaffolding that makes poison look legitimate.
"Insurance paperwork for the clinics," he says."Chain of custody for the shipments.Expanding distribution, so we need everything airtight."
"Fifty sets," I repeat.
"Sí.You good?"
I don't answer, just open the folder and start sorting.
Jagger pushes off the doorframe."I'll check back in a few," he says, not to me, to Paco.
The next few hours are a blur of controlled forgery—pulling clinic IDs from past paperwork, copying signatures from Paco’s reference sheets, matching timestamps to shipment logs, and aligning every form so the numbers flow the way a legitimate audit would expect.About two hundred documents by the time I’m done.All the while, I whisper the same quiet prayer: that none of these faked signatures or reconstructed custody trails ever circle back as blood on real people.
Just before midday, I realize Jagger hasn’t come to check on me.With apprehension building as towhy, I push back from my desk, and go looking.
The warehouse floor spreads out before me—rows of industrial shelving loaded with unmarked boxes, workers weaving between them like they've memorized every path.At the far end, someone's set up a folding table with takeout containers and paper plates.
Voices drift over from near the pallets where Jagger and Paco are standing with two other guys I don't recognize.I move closer without meaning to, drawn by the sound of conversation, the need to be around people even if they're the wrong people.
"—move I've seen in years," one of them is saying."Attacking la güerita in front of everyone?"
Paco laughs, sharp and mean."That's what you get when you let them think they matter."
My stomach twists, but I keep walking, moving along the edge of the shelving like I'm just stretching my legs.
"She was just a warm body," the other guy says."That's all any of them are to Jagger.He knew it.She didn't."
"Estúpida enough to swing on someone with witnesses everywhere," Paco continues."Rosa saw it.Mercedes saw it.Now el jefe knows, and you know how he feels about people showing disrespect to his lieutenants."
I know it was a role, but hearing them talk about Lucia like she was just a piece of equipment Jagger used and tossed aside makes my skin crawl.It’s a reminder that in this world, the only thing keeping me from being next is the man standing at the center of it.
Jagger's voice cuts through, low and hard."I'll handle it."
The laughter stops.
"¿Estás seguro?"Paco asks.
"She put hands on my woman.My problem."No room for argument in his tone.No room for anything but certainty.
Ice floods my veins.
Jagger looks up.Sees me standing twenty feet away, half-hidden behind a pallet.
