“Good,” he said. “Now close that book, put it back in the bag, and don’t open it again unless we’re all in the same room or the world’s on fire.”
I ran my hand over the pages once, feeling the weight of the names and numbers there without reading them. Then I shut it and slipped it back into the pack, zipping it up. The sound seemed too loud.
Liberty watched my hands. “Welcome to the deep end, Devil,” she said. “You ready to learn how to swim with us and fight like a girl, or are you still thinkingyou can ride this out?”
I met her eyes.
“Alone was never an option,” I said. “Not anymore.”
She smiled. Sharp. Pleased.
“Good,” she said. “Because like it or not, our roads just merged. And whoever’s out there hunting that shit is about to learn what happens when you push two clubs into the same corner.”
The phone on the desk went quiet. Blackjack had hung up.
The room stayed loud anyway. Not with sound. With possibility. With risk.
With the ticking of a clock we couldn’t see but all felt.
I looked at the bag. At 8-Ball. At Liberty. At Valkyrie by the door, arms folded, eyes on me.
If that hour ran out and the call never came, everything I thought I knew about my life was going to shift.
One thing was going to stay the same though.
Whoever had set this in motion, whoever had written that book and put it in that bike and sent killers after my brother, had just made themselves the worst kind of enemies.
We were coming.
All of us. Devil’s Aces and Shore Vipers. Two different kinds of venom swirling toward the same wound.
They wanted power.
They were aboutto catch fire.
Ten
Blackjack
The casino looked different when you came in through the back.
No lights, no noise, no drunk tourists sleepwalking between the tables. Just polished stone, quiet air, and men in suits who all looked like they’d shot someone before breakfast.
I walked point. Mirage, Spade, Ace, and Snake Eyes fanned behind me in a loose wedge. My cut sat heavy across my shoulders. Every step forward felt like walking deeper into someone else’s house with your hands already open.
We passed two cameras in the first twenty feet. I knew there were more I couldn’t see.
“Friendly,” Mirage muttered under his breath. “Real warm welcome.”
“They let us in the door,” I said. “Thatiswarmth.”
He snorted, but shut up.
The hallway to the private elevator was short and clean. No carpet, no clutter. Just that echo off marble and glass. Two men flanked the security point at theend, hands resting near their holsters, but they weren’t the problem.
The problem was the man leaning against the wall between them.
Black dress shirt, top buttons open over a flash of inked chest. Slicked-back black hair, cigar clamped between white teeth. Gold cross with a blood-red stone hanging dead center, the same cross stitched subtly into the breast of his blazer. Tattoos up his neck and along the jaw. A smile that never touched his eyes.
