Whoever wrote this didn’t fully understand wherethis Russian fit, but they were trying hard.
My heart hammered against my ribs.
This wasn’t just a ledger. It was a fucking war manual.
Bolivar Cartel. Vincino business fronts. Bank accounts. Safe houses. Shipment schedules. Contacts listed with little symbols next to them. Some with crosses. Some with dollar signs. Some with skulls.
A page near the back made my stomach flip.
YAKUZA – exploratory talks, via syndicate intermediaries. Prospects in port control, customs bottlenecks. Potential to triangulate Russians, Bolivar, “friends in Atlantic City” against each other.
Someone had written underneath, in red ink.
“Control the docks, control the board.”
I closed the book with more force than I meant to. The slap of leather on leather sounded too loud in the quiet room.
This thing was not meant to exist. Not all in one place. Not in writing. And definitely not in the hands of a half-dead biker from Florida and his idiot best friend in a borrowed hospital room.
Someone was either dangerously arrogant or dangerously desperate.
I slid the book back into the backpack, careful to tuck it under the plastic-wrapped device so it was not the first thing anyone would see. I zipped the bag fully closed and slung itonto my shoulder. Its weight settled between my shoulder blades, too present to ignore.
That bag was not leaving my sight again unless someone cut it off my corpse.
I took one last look at Miami. His face had relaxed again, drifting wherever the drugs took him. He looked younger like that. And breakable.
“I don’t know who’s trying to burn who,” I said quietly. “But I’m not letting them use you as kindling. You hear me? We’ll figure this shit out.”
He didn’t answer, but the heart monitor kept beeping in that steady rhythm. For now, that was enough.
I stepped back from the bed and dug my phone out of my pocket with my free hand. Thumbs moving on instinct.
I hit send to Blackjack.
The three little dots barely had time to appear before my phone buzzed with an incoming call.
“Yeah,” I said, bringing it to my ear as I moved toward the door.
“What do you mean ‘what was in the bike’?” Blackjack’s voice came through, sharp and awake. “Past tense.”
“I’m in his roomnow,” I said. “He pulled whatever was in that thing before the crash. Stuffed it into a backpack. Prez, it’s bad. I’m talking Vincino black book. Cartel ties, Steel Serpent jobs, bank accounts, ports, even notes on a Russian and the Giorlando family. They have been mapping everybody. Someone is either trying to play both sides or blow both families sky high.”
There was a stretch of silence on the line. I could imagine him at his desk, jaw clenched, Mirage probably hovering with his own ideas of what that meant for the numbers.
“Are you sure?” he asked.
“I’m holding the fucker,” I said. “I’d bet my patch on it. It’s all here. Bolivar, Vincino, Russian mentions, Giorlando targets. Even Yakuza scribbles. Whoever wrote this wants a war they can steer from the shadows.”
I reached for the door handle and stepped out into the hallway. I began to walk around as Blackjack continued to speak, taking a quick mental checklist of the hall’s contents. A nurse’s cart at the far end, a trash bin, a wall-mounted sanitizer dispenser.
“Don’t read another word,” Blackjack said. “Don’t take pictures. Don’t call anyone else. You bring that book home and we decide together who sees it, if anyone. Until then, it doesn’t exist. You understand me?”
“I do,” I replied as I spotted a man down the hall.
He stepped into view from the intersecting corridor, his pace unhurried. Dark suit. White shirt. No tie.Clean haircut. The kind of face you forgot even as you were looking at it. One hand brushed his jacket aside as he turned, and I saw the gun in his other, low at his thigh, angled so nobody would see it until it was too late.
He started walking toward me. Toward Miami’s room.
