Liberty’s lip curled. This time, the smile reached her eyes. The sharp part of them, anyway.
“Good,” she said. “I’ve been waiting to hurt someone who deserves it.”
I felt something settle in my chest at that. Not peace. We weren’t built for that. It was something closer to alignment.
They’d picked their board. They’d picked their pieces. They’d thought they were the only ones allowed to play.
Now there were two clubs on the sameside of the table.
And for the first time since this started, we weren’t just reacting to someone else’s move.
We were making our own.
War it is, I thought.
And God helpwhoever thought we’d lie down for it.
Thirteen
Jersey Boy
War made everything louder.
Not the music. Not the bikes. Those stayed the same. It was the quiet that changed. The way people breathed. The way a pool ball cracking against another sounded like gunfire for half a second too long.
Liberty called Church ten minutes after she had hung up with Blackjack.
I’d been halfway to the bar for coffee when Valkyrie caught my arm and jerked her chin toward the hallway. No words. Didn’t need them. Every girl who wasn’t on the gate or watching the perimeter filtered toward the meeting room with that particular kind of focused drag in their steps. Like they were being pulled by duty more than feet. And everyone but the bunnies had a duty to perform here.
The Shore Vipers’ Church wasn’t that much different from our own.
Table in the middle. Seats around it. Stickers and etch marks gouged into the wood. Patches up on thewall—colors retired, memorials to dead sisters, slogans about venom and family and never riding alone.
Liberty took the head chair. Rosé to her right. Valkyrie on her left. Cobra—Road Captain—sat beside Rosé, boots planted wide, arms folded. Indigo sat in the chair closest to the door. Medusa, California, Arizona, Diamondback, India, Anaconda and a handful of others filled in where they could. Every member prospect or titled was present. I took up a spot against the back wall, close enough to be counted, but still far enough to remember I wasn’t voting stock here.
The room smelled like coffee, leather, and last night’s smoke.
Liberty let the murmur die on its own. When it finally went quiet, she gaveled in and spoke.
“Most of you heard parts,” she said. “Some of you were there. We’re going to make sure everyone’s hearing the same song before we open the floor.”
She glanced at me once, then looked at her girls.
“The Vincino family out of Philadelphia used Roman Giorlando’s docks to push a package,” she said. “They used the Devil’s Aces as their errand boys. They didn’t tell Roman, obviously. They stuffed that bike with a ledger—a war manual full of names, routes, money flow. Their shit, and everyone else’s. Bolivar Cartel. The Russian Syndicate. The Steel Serpents. Hell, some of our streets even got mentioned. They sent mercenaries after the bike. They tried to kill Miami, aDevil’s Ace, on our turf to try and clean it up. That dragged us in.”
Nods around the table. Teeth flashed. Hands tightened.
“Earlier today,” she continued, “we went to a junkyard to make sure what was left of that bike was dead. The owner was already strangled when we got there. Phone cord around his neck. The Steel Serpents were lying in wait between the stacks.” Her gaze slid to Diamondback. “They wanted whatever they thought was still in that frame and to see who showed up for it.”
Diamondback flexed the bandaged arm she stitched herself earlier. “They were pissed,” she said. “Sloppy pissed. Talked too much.”
“They did,” Liberty agreed. “One of them nearly took Valkyrie’s head off. But Jersey Boy fixed that for us.”
Heads turned my way. I didn’t move.
“After we made them run and crushed the bike, we stripped one of their dead for his cut and his toys,” Liberty went on. “We found a burner in his pocket. One number saved. No name.”
She reached into her cut, pulled the phone out, and held it up between two fingers.
