I stepped out to meet him.
He grabbed me by the back of the neck and pulled our foreheads together, hard enough to sting. It was half headbutt, half hug.
“Thought I was going to have to put your picture on the wall,” he said. “Would have been an ugly way to start a morning.”
“You ain’t that lucky,” I said. My throat went tight anyway. I squeezed his shoulder once, then let go.
Turnpike hovered just behind him. “Good to see you still breathing, brother,” he said.
“You too,” I said.
“Here,” 8-Ball said as he pulled something from his cut and slapped it into my hand. A phone. New. Same model. Already powered on.
“Prez had Mirage set it up last night,” he said. “Numbers are in there. Club, work, the usual degenerates. You owe him a beer for having Spade sit still for half an hour while he re-entered all the contacts.”
“Fair,” I snorted.
Liberty let us have our moment, then cut in with all the subtlety of a sharpened axe. “Good, everyone’s still full of feelings,” she said. “Now let’s get tobusiness. Inside. My office.”
Her gaze moved over us, ticking names in the air. “Me. Rosé. Valkyrie. Eight-Ball. Turnpike. Jersey Boy. Blackjack on a wire. Everyone else, back to your posts.”
There were no arguments.
***
Liberty’s office suited her.
It had a big metal desk that looked like it had been stolen from a shipyard, scarred and heavy. One wall was covered in photographs. Girls with black eyes and bandaged arms, smiling with fresh cuts on their shoulders. Bikes lined up. Bars reclaimed. A younger Liberty with shorter hair and blood on her knuckles.
The other wall was maps. Territory. Routes. Pins. Notes in tight handwriting. It was the same kind of skeleton we had in Blackjack’s office, but with different arteries.
She dropped into the chair behind the desk. Rosé leaned against the filing cabinet to her right. Valkyrie took up space near the door. 8-Ball and Turnpike took the two chairs opposite the desk like they’d been summoned to the principal’s office. I stood off to the side, close enough that if I placed the bag down, I could react before anyone else acted stupid.
8-Ball set his phone on the desk and hit speaker.It rang once.
“Alice,” Liberty said before he could even finish saying hello. “Your VP and your boys are in my room. Time for you to stop dancing around and tell me what you dragged into my clubhouse.”
Blackjack’s voice came through, tinnier over the phone but still heavy. “Good morning to you too,” he said. “Eight, you breathing?”
“For now,” 8-Ball said. “Jersey too. He looks like shit, as usual.”
“Then the day’s starting off better than it could’ve,” Blackjack said. “Liberty, you got the place locked down?”
“It’s my house,” she said. “It’s always locked down. Question is, are we locking something in or keeping something out? So, that depends on what you’re about to say next.”
“You saw the bag,” Blackjack said. “Obviously the bike wasn’t carrying dope or guns. We wouldn’t be treating this so carefully. It’s something else. Are you sure you want this to be made your business more than it already is?”
“My enforcer saw your boy walk into that hospital empty and walk out with a pack like his spine depended on it,” Liberty said. “She saw a suit with a gun follow him with intent. Watched that same suit try to take him out and traded bullets with him in the hallway because of this bag. That makes it my business.”
“Fair enough,” Blackjack said. “That’s why we’re having this conversation instead of you finding outthrough body bags.”
Liberty tapped her fingers once on the metal. “Before we go deeper,” she said, “I want it clear. If I put my girls between this mess and your club, you don’t get to freeze me out later. No half-truths. No ‘that’s family business’ bullshit. You want my coils around this, you give me full access to whatever you know. Both now and if it gets worse. That’s the deal.”
There was a pause on the other end. “You always did drive a hard bargain,” Blackjack said. “What are you asking for exactly?”
“I want a hand on the wheel,” she said. “If this bag ends up getting leveraged, traded, burned, or dropped in somebody’s lap, my club gets a say. I want your word you don’t make a move involving this thing without me or my VP present, one way or another. No side deals. No secret shipments. And if this turns into a war that bleeds into our streets, your boys stand shoulder to shoulder with my girls. No hesitation.”
8-Ball met my eyes. We didn’t need words. This was exactly what we had hoped for and exactly what scared the shit out of us too.
