The tie, though.
Red silk. Perfect Windsor knot.
Roman’s men wore those ties like uniforms.
“Contact,” I said. “One down. Roman’s.”
Everybody went still for that heartbeat you get when the hypothetical turns into reality.
We edged closer. Priest slid in behind me and crouched, fingers moving to the man’s neck.
“Cold,” he said. “Shot in the back, exited through his front. He bled out. He’s been likethis for a while.”
The wall ahead was stippled where a bullet had punched out through bone and paint. Little flecks of red dotted the gray.
“Let’s clear this floor,” I said, voice tighter now. “Snake Eyes and Spade, right. Me and Valkyrie left. Priest and Turnpike hold here. Nobody gets cute.”
We fanned out.
It didn’t take long to find the others.
Two more of Roman’s men lay farther down the hall in an intersection of framed-out walls. One face-down, gun still in hand. The other crumpled against a column, eyes open and glazed, mouth slightly open like he’d been about to say something and never finished.
Three bodies that weren’t wearing those red ties lay around them.
Two Steel Serpent vests. Gray leather with the coiled snake logo half-obscured under blood. The third had a Bolivar tattoo on his neck, dark ink crawling up from under his collar. He had a gold chain with a little cross that had flipped the wrong way.
The fight here had been fast and controlled. Rounds had punched clean lines through the drywall. Minimal spray. Whoever hit them had known exactly where to aim.
It felt like I was looking down a tunnel at ourselves. Different cuts, but the same dead eyes.
“Miami,” I said into the mic, throat dry. “We’ve got casualties. Roman’s men, two Serpents, one Cartel. Floor twelve, center hall.”
His voice crackled back in my ear. “I can’t see. Still blind on most of the inside. Everything is glitching like a bad DVD.”
“Keep trying,” Blackjack interjected.
We pressed on.
At the far end of the hall, near a door marked with taped-up paper that read SECURITY / OPS in sharpie, we found another one.
He wasn’t dead yet.
Steel Serpent cut, gray vest half-unbuttoned, stomach a slick mat of red where the shirt had been shot through. He propped himself up against the wall, one leg stretched out, the other bent awkwardly. His breathing was ragged, harsh pulls that bubbled wet in his throat. Gun lay a foot from his limp hand.
His eyes snapped to us when we rounded the corner. Fear flared, then something like ugly pride.
“Hands where I can see them,” I said, gun already leveled at his face.
He smirked, lips split and swollen. “What, you going to arrest me or something?” he rasped.
Valkyrie slid in low to his side, hand reaching toward the wound. “He’s got minutes,” she muttered. “Maybe.”
“Then we don’t have time to fuck around,” I said. I stepped closer, just outside the radius where a dying man could still pull off something stupid. “Where?” I asked him.
The Serpent’s gaze tracked to me. Tookin the cut. The DEVIL’S ACES rocker. The Enforcer patch.
“So, you’re the one,” he coughed. “The pitbull.”
