Chapter 16 #2
French barrels out of the smoke dressed like security, badge flashing, pistol tucked along her forearm. “On your feet, gorgeous. Date night’s over.”
Raven appears on the other side like a shadow that has learned posture. “Two shooters west, one on the mezz. Bones has the nest pinned. We go now.”
“Go,” Carter orders, trying to stand and failing by an inch.
I hook my arm around his waist. He’s heavy and stubborn and mine to move. “Lean,” I tell him.
We thread the panic, heads down, following French’s wedge. Sloane kills the side lights, so the ballroom becomes a rumor of itself. Somewhere behind us, a guard shouts for lockdown. Somewhere above, Bones lays down a rhythm that buys us yards.
How did he come back so fast? When we set him in the alley, he was bleeding out, and I could have sworn he was going to die. Who got to him? How is he able to fight when he should be dead?
The service corridor yawns open, pulling me from my head. We disappear into steel and steam.
“Left,” Divine directs. “Laundry bay, then alley. Iris has the van at the east loading dock.”
We run. Carter stumbles, breath ragged. I feel the tremor hit his frame and push harder.
“Almost there,” I say.
“Not my first lie tonight,” he mumbles, and I could kiss him for that, which is unhelpful on multiple levels.
A door slams open ahead, and a shooter fills it, eyes flat. Raven doesn’t break stride. Two shots, center mass, the man folds like he was waiting for permission. French boots the doorstop, clears the path with a grin that belongs on a wanted poster.
We burst into the night. The cold hits my face like absolution and does nothing to clean the blood on my hands.
Iris fishtails the van to a stop so hard that the rear bumps the curb. “Romance later!” she yells. “Bodies now!”
French and Raven haul the back doors open. We shove Carter inside, and I climb after him, never letting go. The doors slam shut. Sloane dives into the passenger seat, hair damp with sweat, eyes bright with feral joy.
Iris guns it.
Through the rear window, for one split second, I see Bones on the mezzanine railing, black against gold, firing one last controlled burst before he steps back into shadow and the night swallows him.
Then we’re gone, and the gala shrinks behind us. The music is still playing for people who refuse to hear it. Carter’s head lolls against the van wall. His skin is too pale. I press harder. He hisses.
“Breathe,” I tell him.
“You first,” he says, because he’s an idiot or a saint.
French leans over the seat, hands steady, voice not. “Next time you two go dancing, I’m selling tickets.”
I laugh, a shocked, broken thing that feels like coming home to the wrong address. “Put it on my tab.”
Divine: “Ten minutes to the clubhouse. Hold pressure. And Rebel?”
“What?”
“You did good.”
I look down at Carter’s blood on my silk and decide I’ll believe her later. Right now, I count the beats in his pulse and refuse to let any of them stop.
By the time we reach the clubhouse, the night is turning into day, but everything still smells like gunpowder and fear. The garage doors roll up, and the sound of engines dies in a heartbeat.
Inside, the lights burn a low amber, steady, waiting.
Allura meets us first, her sleeves shoved to her elbows, surgical gloves already snapping on. “Put him here.”
We drop Carter on the long table the girls built out of steel and oak. He grunts but doesn’t fight. French strips off his ruined tux jacket, Raven cuts the sleeve, and Divine kills the music because even background noise feels wrong.
Allura leans over him, voice calm as gospel. “Through-and-through, upper shoulder. Missed the artery. He’ll live if everyone stops hovering.”
I can’t move. My hands are slick with red. His blood, not mine. My throat closes around everything I should’ve said before tonight.
French’s hand lands on my shoulder. “He’s fine, sugar. You, though, you look like someone the night forgot to bury.”
“I told him not to get hit,” I say.
French snorts softly. “Yeah, that always works.”
Across the room, Sloane and Iris dump gear, muttering about gun calibers and exit routes. Calypso throws open a window, and smoke and fog push in. Raven leans against the wall, cleaning her pistol with the kind of focus that’s really prayer in disguise.
Allura threads a needle, fast and sure. Carter doesn’t flinch. “Keep talking,” she tells me. “Distract him. Distract yourself.”
So I do.
“You ruined another suit,” I say.
“Wasn’t mine.” His voice is gravelly.
“You’re bleeding on my table.”
“Borrowed table.”
“You nearly died.” I choke on the word died.
He cracks a smile. “Nearly doesn’t count, Wildcat.”
Something in my chest twists. “You’re impossible.”
“Funny. You said the same thing the first time we met.”
“Yeah, and you still haven’t proven me wrong.”
Allura ties the final knot, presses gauze, and nods. “He’s good. Keep him awake. No hero stunts for forty-eight hours.”
Divine’s already at her laptop, half the screens flickering with feeds from the gala fallout. “News outlets are calling it a terrorist scare. Nobody’s saying the word Vultures yet. Gentry’s missing. Our leak’s working.”
“Bones?” Raven asks.
Divine shakes her head. “Gone before the cops got there. Two bodies left behind, one sniper rifle. That’s all.”
Silence hits, thick as smoke.
I sink into a chair opposite Carter. My knees won’t stop bouncing. “I should’ve seen the laser sooner,” I whisper.
Carter’s good arm reaches out, fingers brushing my wrist. “Stop. You saved me.”
“I froze.”
“You moved,” he says. “And that’s the only reason I’m still breathing.”
French tosses me a clean rag. “You two gonna start a poetry slam or what? We’ve got blood on the floor and an empire to burn.”
“Let her have a minute,” Allura says quietly. “She lost one brother in the past and nearly another tonight.”
That shuts us all up.
Raven finally breaks it. “What’s the play?”
Divine’s eyes don’t leave her screens. “Calloway Holdings is the money spine. We hit them next with clean, quiet, surgical precision. But we rest first. The Harlots ride better when the engines are warm, not shaking apart.”
Calypso mutters, “Amen to that,” and starts pouring whiskey into mismatched glasses. She hands one to me. “To the ones still standing,” she says.
I clink the rim against hers. “And the ones who bought us the chance.”
The first swallow burns, the second steadies. Around us, the clubhouse exhales, the sound of women who’ve been through hell and plan to go back if they have to.
French flips on the jukebox, something slow and bluesy. Sloane starts humming along, off-key on purpose, until Raven throws a rag at her. Laughter sparks, thin but real.
Carter watches it all from the table, color creeping back into his face. “You run this place like a storm,” he says.
“Storms clean the air,” I answer.
“They also tear things down.”
“Sometimes that’s the point.”
He smiles, tired but sure. “Remind me never to get between you and your sisters.”
“You already did,” I say, meaning the bullet, the dance, the chaos. He understands anyway.
Allura shoos us toward the couches. “Let the man rest. Rebel, you need food or sleep.”
“I need both,” I admit, “but I’ll settle for sitting.”
The girls drift into smaller knots. Divine mumbling code, Raven sharpening knives, French teaching Iris a card trick she’s clearly rigging. Calypso is slow dancing with Farris, their baby girl nestled between them. Normal, for us.
I sit beside Carter. He smells like antiseptic and gunpowder. His head lolls toward me. “You okay?” he asks.
“No.”
“Honest. I like that.”
I huff a laugh that catches halfway to tears. “You’re not allowed to scare me like that again.”
“I’ll do my best.”
“That’s not comforting.”
“It’s the truth.” We fall quiet. The music hums, low and weary. Outside, thunder rolls somewhere out over the ocean.
He shifts, wincing. I reach out without thinking, fingers brushing his hair back from his forehead. “You should sleep.”
“So should you.”
“Can’t.”
“Then stay with me.” So I do. His breathing evens. The others fade into the background. Our found family, loud and loyal, the only kind that ever mattered.
For a long minute, I just watch the rise and fall of his chest, proof of life, proof of luck. The guilt still sits heavy, but it’s quieter now. Bones saved us. Carter bled for me. The Harlots still ride. That’s enough for tonight.
French calls from across the room, “Hey, Sugar, next time we hit a gala, maybe wear red. Hides the blood better.” The laughter that follows is sharp and sweet. I let it wash over me.
I look at Carter, then at the women who are my family, and whisper to the room,
“We’re not done.”
No one argues. Engines cool, wounds knit, hearts keep time with the rain on the roof. Tomorrow we ride again. Tonight, we breathe.