Her expression shifts instantly.
“Not allowed?” she repeats slowly.
Shit.
I rake a hand through my hair, breathing hard, trying to put my hands somewhere safe.
“That’s not what I meant.”
“It sounded like it.”
I grip the door handle but don’t open it yet.
“Rico’s still breathing,” I say quietly, telling her my terms. “Until he’s not, you stay where I can see you. That’s not me owning you. That’s me making sure nobody gets close enough to put hands on you again.”
She crosses her arms.
“I don’t need your permission to exist.”
“No,” I agree. “But you need my protection.”
She studies me like she’s trying to decide whether those words come from control or concern.
Maybe it’s both.
Outside someone starts chanting my name, drunk and loyal.
“Diablo. Diablo. Diablo.”
The Saints Outlaws don’t wait long for their president.
I open the door.
Music slams into the room like a wave. Heat, sweat, liquor, chrome reflecting from motorcycles parked inside like trophies. The humid Miami night presses through open doors and broken windows. Somebody’s cologne fights with gasoline and loses. Neon flickers. A prospect hustles past with a tray of shots, eyes down, moving fast.
When I descend the stairs and step out, the room shifts. It always does. The club reads the air. They read my face. They read Darling at my side.
Carmen’s eyes find us immediately from the balcony above.
She smiles.
Not sweet.
Strategic.
And then she makes it worse.
She lifts her hand, slow, deliberate, so the diamond on her finger catches the colored lights and throws them back into the room like a signal flare. A reminder. A claim.
My claim.
Darling’s gaze snaps to it.
Carmen’s voice drifts down, smooth as silk and sharp as glass. “Prez,” she calls, like she owns the right to summon me. “We need a word.”
The room goes quiet in pockets. Not silent, never silent, but attentive. That MC attention. That respect that turns bodies into statues.
Darling steps forward beside me instead of behind me.
