Page 52 of Spade

He hesitated, then cut straight through it. “Don’t quit the club.”

That wasn’t what I’d expected. The whole lead-up, the slow game of extraction and exchange, the implicit logic: I give up the Harlots, he gives up the case. This wasn’t that.

“You changed your mind?” I asked.

“No,” he said, voice roughened by engine drone, “but you think you’re walking away for my sake. I’m not a martyr, Spade. I’ve been watching you for months. You go cold on everything except that place. The club is the only thing I’ve seen you attach to that you haven’t figured out how to walk away from. I won’t be the reason you lose that.”

I pressed the phone harder to my ear. The hallway outside was silent, no neighbor drama to fill the space. “We had a deal, Shaw.”

“It was a bad deal. One you only agreed to because you thought it was the only way to keep me from—” He stopped himself. “I’m telling you I can live with it. All of it. You stay with the Harlots, I keep the rest buried.”

There was a truth to it. I could hear it in the way he kept going, kept clarifying instead of letting silence dominate. It was him at his most honest, which is to say: not his most convincing, but his most dangerous.

“You sound different,” I said.

“I’m not running an angle. I just… I want you to have something after this. Even if it’s just that.” Another sigh, this one weighted down. “You think you’re protecting me from making a bad call, but you’re the one burning down your only family to do it.”

“You said it yourself,” I said. “I’m good at walking away.”

“Not from them.”

He was right, but I didn’t let it land. Instead, I asked, “What if Selene doesn’t want me after this?”

“She will. That woman would burn the state down before she let anyone else have you.”

I flexed my fingers against the countertop, every nerve alive, cold and sharp and wanting. “You get sentimental on long drives?” I asked.

He let out the closest thing to a laugh I’d ever heard from him. “I get clarity.”

We let the line go dead for a handful of seconds. I didn’t fill it. He was still driving, probably hand on the wheel, phone cradled at his chin.

“Will you call me when it’s done?” he asked, voice softer.

“Yeah,” I said. “If I make it.”

“If you don’t, I’ll know.”

He hung up before I could say anything back.

I left my hand on the counter for another minute, the phone still hot from my grip. I stared at the tile. I didn’t feel relief. I didn’t feel much of anything, except the click of the next move slotting into place.

When I picked up the phone again, Selene answered on the first ring.

“What,” she said, not a question.

“I’m not quitting,” I said.

Dead air. Long enough to count. I thought about how she paced calls, how she calibrated silence as a weapon. This was not that. This was something rawer.

“You sure?” she said.

“Yeah.”

Another beat, then: “Good. Because we’re running.”

My pulse leaped. “When?”

“Now.” I heard the background noise—engines, boots, a woman’s voice raised in command. “Queens of Chaos are on the move tonight. We’re going to choke them at the North Vegas spot. Twenty minutes. You in?”