The south-end beach Roman liked for his ugly business wasn’t on any tourist map. It was a stretch where the dunes swallowed sound and the streetlights forgot to reach.
We turned off the road and into an aged and long-forgotten lot. Cracks in the pavement had been hard-packed with sand over the years. Tires crunched. The SUV rolled to a stop first, headlights flooding the dunes and surf in stark white.
Then, one by one, those lights died.
Engines cut.
For a moment, there was nothing but the sound of cooling metal and waves.
Then the moon took over.
It was high and bright, fat with light, painting the sand silver and turning the water into a moving strip of black glass. The wind off the ocean tugged at my cut and slid cold fingers down the back of my neck.
If the boardwalk had been a stage, this place was its confession booth.
We parked in a loose horseshoe formation behind the SUV. Vipers mixed with Devils, leather on leather. Helmets came off. Hair shook loose. Cigarettes sparked to life like fireflies.
Roman was already there, standing a few yards away near the lip of the dunes. He appeared to be out here all alone. A dark vehicle with its lights off sat down a path not far away. I couldn’t tell if anyone else was inside. A driver, a bodyguard, one of his sons.
He’d changed since the last time I saw him up close. Not his face—still all hard lines and tired eyes and that particular brand of old-world arrogance that came from surviving long enough to become the problem instead of the solution. But his clothes.
No jacket. Just a white shirt, sleeves rolled to mid-forearm, somewhere between dress and work. Slacks soft enough to move in. Shoes that had walked over enough men that a little more blood wouldn’t show.
He looked like he’d stepped out of a different kind of movie than the one we’d just crawled through.
Blackjack walked up first. 8-Ball shadowed him. I fell in with them without really thinking about it. Valkyrie did the same on my other side.
Lady Liberty and two of her women moved in from the opposite arc. Her hair was still half-wild from the ride, Viper cut flaring at the bottom like a flag.
Roman turned as we approached.
For a second, he didn’t say anything. Justtook us in. The cuts. The scuffs. The drying blood on some of our clothes that didn’t belong to us.
Then he nodded.
“My wife and daughter are home,” he said. No thank-you yet. Just that piece of information, placed down between us like a chip on a table. “They’re in the penthouse. Shaken, but alive.”
A muscle in his jaw twitched.
“Thank you for that,” he added.
Blackjack dipped his chin once. “We did what we said we’d do,” he said. “You asked us to look. We looked. We found them. We brought them back.”
“And my traitor,” Roman said.
Blackjack’s mouth tightened. “He’s here too,” he said. “Like you asked.”
The older man exhaled. “My men will handle the rest of the mess,” he went on. “Cops. Cameras. Curious neighbors. As far as the city is concerned, what happened at the site tonight was nothing. An attempted theft. A few hotheaded security contractors firing weapons when they should have held their temper. I’m not pressing charges. I’ll handle it myself. That’s what I told them.”
He smiled then. It didn’t reach his eyes.
“They’re so used to letting me deal with my own problems, that they barely even pretend to argue.”
A strong wind came off the ocean and passed over us. Roman glanced back at the crashing waves before looking back at Blackjack.
“I’m indebted,” he said simply. “Again. I still owe you for Dante at the Velvet.”
Blackjack shook his head and jerked his chin toward me and Valkyrie.
