Mercenaries, 8-Ball had said once about a different crew. Men who put their souls on contract. Steel Serpents, I think he said they were called. He encountered them years ago but never gave a description. Wouldn’t tell me the story either.
If these boys were mercs, someone with money had to of hired them. And the only people who cared about this bike enough to send a squad after it were the ones who’d shipped it in. Which meant Philly. The Vincinos or whoever they’d made deals with.
And the Giorlandos had us in the middle of it all.
My heart rate ticked up again. My hands found restless work. I paced. The hum inside my chest came back.
I could have sat on the ratty red couch in the corner and stared at the wall until Blackjack called someone else and that someone else brought me a replacement charger. I could have popped a beer from the mini fridge and put my feet up like a good boy.
Instead, I walked circles around the bike.
Up close the thing looked even less right. None of the usual brand markings. No logos, just black. Not a custom death-dealer job like some rich asshole would order from a boutique shop either. The welds were too uniform. The paint had no depth. Like it had been dipped, not sprayed. Roadkill would take one close look at this thing and cuss in three languages.
I ran my fingers along the tank. Smooth. Seamless. The paint felt cooler than the air around it. The boltson the triple tree were fresh. Too fresh. No rust halo. No dirt. Tires had tread like they’d never seen asphalt before tonight.
“What are you hiding, huh?” I murmured.
The bike still didn’t answer, but something in my spine twitched.
I paced again. Past the front wheel. Around the back. My boots scuffed the concrete. I thought about Roman Giorlando, sitting somewhere in a black suit with a glass of red wine in his hand, not even knowing some Philly bastard had just put his name on a problem in the shape of a motorcycle. Unless he was in on it too, but from the acknowledgement of an anonymous donor by Salvatore, that usually meant “I don’t want my father to know who’s actually moving this.”
Roman. The Boss. Tattooed knuckles and quiet voice. I’d seen him smile twice. Both times someone else had bled.
Under him, Valentino, all sharp grin and crimson shirt. Dante, silk robes and diamonds, keys to every club on the boardwalk. Salvatore, chain-smoking prince of the docks, king of the pier the bike had come off tonight. Old money and new muscle, all rolled into one family.
Devil’s Aces are part of that machine. Had been for years. We bounced for their casinos, guarded their dockyards, rode escort on their cash runs. We got our percentage and protection. They got men who didn’t hesitate to get their hands dirty.
And then there was Vladimir. The Russian. Soft suits andhard eyes. Roman’s consigliere. “On paper, the family is nothing but wine, businesses, and real estate,” he’d told us once, lips barely moving. “Anything else is a rumor.” His office kept those rumors from turning into charges. If the Feds sniffed around, Vlad made sure they smelled grapes from Donatella—Roman’s wife—family vineyard overseas.
That was the world. That was the arrangement.
So why the hell had we just been almost ambushed over a single bike we’d been told to treat like furniture?
My boot caught the edge of a shallow oil pan as I turned. Metal scraped. I cursed, kicked it aside and kept walking. The movement wasn’t graceful. My hip clipped the corner of the workbench. Pain flared up my leg. I swore again and took it out on a stack of old rags with another kick. I didn’t notice the wrench inside them.
They flew and hit the side of the bike. They padded the wrench from damaging the bike, but the force of it caused something to happen.
There was a sound. Tiny. Sickening. A click, sharp and wrong, like a tooth breaking.
I froze.
The bike shifted on its stand a fraction of an inch and something inside the frame knocked dully.
I stared at it. Every hair on my arms stood up.
“Don’t,” I whispered. To myself, not the machine. Blackjack’s text echoed in my head.Stay put. Don’t move. Make sure nobody’s tracking you.
I took one step closer anyway.
There it was. Near the base of the tank on the right side, a hairline break in the paint I hadn’t seen before. A seam. You wouldn’t notice it unless you hit it just right. The wrench must have dislodged whatever was bracing it from the inside.
“Roadkill is going to murder me,” I said.
I set my fingers along the seam and pushed. Nothing. I tugged. The surface didn’t budge.
My pulse hammered. Curiosity and dread wrestled it out in my chest. The smart thing to do was back off. Wait for backup. Let Blackjack decide. Let the Giorlandos own their own secrets or whoever this bike—this secret—belonged to. Let it be anyone else’s problem but ours.
Yet here I was about to make it more of my own.
