“Welcome to the party,” I said.
He huffed out a breath. “Thought I was already at it.”
“This?” I said, glancing at the men loading magazines with calm efficiency. “This is still foreplay.”
He half-smiled. “YouVipers have a fucked-up idea of flirting.”
“We learn from the best,” I said.
Out on the horizon, the casinos on the strip glittered like they didn’t know their foundations were about to shake.
They’d hit the Vipers. They’d hit the Devils. They were probably going to be knocking on the Giorlando’s door next.
For a second, standing in that yard, I understood something that made my chest go tight.
We weren’t just in it now.
Wewereit.
The line between their ambition and the world they wanted to burn.
And if they thought we were going to just step aside and let them redraw the map?
They didn’t know Liberty.
They didn’t know Blackjack.
They didn’t know me.
Not yet.
Looking at Blackjack now, the Devils circling their own, then at Jersey standing with his shoulders squared, I realized something.
Tesauro hadn’t just picked a fight with a family.
He picked a fight with two nests of people who didn’t know how to quit.
They thought they were breaking fingers.
All they’d really done was give us something solid to wrap our hands around.
Fifteen
Jersey Boy
War didn’t let you shower in peace.
I stood over the sink in my room, shirt off, wrists braced on chipped porcelain, watching pink water spiral down the drain. The blood wasn’t mine. It was the leftovers of that Cartel guy from the Vipers’ bar. The one I’d pinned to the counter and whose throat I opened with a broken bottle. His blood still clung under my nails and in the creases of my knuckles. I’d scrubbed twice already but it still felt like it was there.
My nose ached where we’d headbutted. My cheekbone throbbed. My ribs hummed when I breathed too deep. It was a familiar symphony.
The Devil’s clubhouse around me felt different after the gate show. Same walls. Same smell of oil and old smoke and cheap cleaner. Just… tighter. Like the whole building had pulled its shoulders up.
In the room behind me, Valkyrie sat on the edge of my bed, elbows on her knees, watching me through the doorway in the cracked mirror.
“You missed a spot,” she said.
“Where?” I asked.
