Chapter 4
Shady
I ride with blood drying under my cut and Lady’s voice caught in my helmet.
Oye, gringo. Took you long enough.
Smart mouth. Bloody mouth. My mouth, if I had earned the right to think it.
I haven’t.
That truth sits under my ribs meaner than the bullet graze in my side. Cherry’s voice follows it, crying in the middle of Vice Ink while Lady bleeds on a screen.
You sat there while I lost your baby.
Yeah. I did.
And I did what men like me do when grief gets too honest. I shoved it in a dark corner, fed it guilt when it rattled, and acted like silence made me decent. Now that silence has hands. It has white roses. It has Lady chained in a flower warehouse while men use my old sins as bait.
Besides, I still have no idea if her baby was mine. Cherry’s a club whore with a body count higher than she was when I fucked her. Being with her was easy because there was never possibility I’d fall in love. Not like with Lady.
Diablo rides ahead of me, black cut snapping against his back, shoulders set like the city itself pissed him off and he plans to collect.
Vice is on my left. Magic and Six are behind us.
Dune and Tubbs split off two blocks back to take the rear service road.
Key Rat’s voice crackles in my ear, sharp and jittery through comms.
“Traffic cam on Northwest service lane shows one refrigerated truck parked crooked at the east dock. No plates on the van. Two bodies outside smoking like they don’t know they’re about to meet Jesus with bad breath.”
“Jesus is busy,” Magic says. “Send them to Cosmo.”
“Cosmo’s praying,” Six mutters.
“Cosmo prays before he sins,” Vice says.
I flex my fingers around the throttle. “Y’all done with church announcements, or can we rescue my woman before these assholes start charging us by the minute?”
Diablo glances back once.
Even through the helmet, I feel the warning.
My woman.
He heard it.
He also heard Darling before we left. Bring her back as Lady. Not as your pride.
That one landed. I’m still bleeding from it.
“She’s alive,” Diablo says over comms. “That means we move smart.”
“She’ll stay alive if we move fast,” I answer.
“She’ll stay alive if you remember you’re road captain.”
I hate him a little because he is right.
I know roads. Exits. Bad turns. The places men run when they think panic makes them invisible. I know Miami’s ugly backside, the service alleys behind pretty clubs, the warehouses that move flowers by day and bodies by night. I know the difference between a rescue and a trap.
This is both.
Lady gave us the road.
Two left. Three right. Planes scream. Trains cry. Flowers.
My girl made a map with blood in her mouth and a rose in her lap.
Now I have to be good enough to follow it.
Reyes Floral Imports squats behind a chain-link fence under the dirty belly of the flight path.
The sign out front has elegant gold lettering, like brides come here to pick centerpieces instead of rival clubs dragging women inside for messages.
Blue-green paint peels from the concrete walls.
White box trucks line one side. A refrigerated trailer hums at the east dock.
Beyond it, a rail spur cuts through weeds and gravel, empty tracks shining under the hard sun.
Alpha’s voice comes through next. Calm. Too calm. “Thermal drone shows six heat signatures inside main floor, two elevated, one in office corridor, one possible hostage center-left near cold room wall. Can’t confirm Toro. There is a service tunnel behind cold storage leading to the rail-side gate.”
“There’s his rabbit hole,” I say.
“Already sending Dune and Tubbs to pinch it,” Vice says.
“Not enough,” I answer. “Toro invited me alone. Means the slippery fucker’s got a second out.”
Diablo slows before the last turn, and we peel into an abandoned lot behind a shuttered tile company. Bikes go quiet one by one. The sudden silence makes the warehouse hum louder.
Everyone moves.
No speeches. No chest beating. No macho bullshit. Just guns checked, blades palmed, eyes flat. The Saints Outlaws don’t look like heroes in the daylight. We look like what comes after men make bad choices and run out of prayers.
Diablo points two fingers toward the front. Magic and Six melt that way with him. Vice taps my shoulder and nods toward the east dock.
“You with me,” he says.
“Lucky you.”
“Keep talking, Shady. If you pass out from blood loss, I’ll tell Lady your last words were stupid.”
“If I pass out, tell her I looked sexy doing it.”
Vice’s mouth almost moves. “Good you’re still with us.”
No.
Not really.
I’m somewhere else, standing in the garage again, watching Cherry step out with sorry on her lips and Lady’s eyes going wide with betrayal.
I’m at Vice Ink, hearing Cherry tell a room full of brothers about blood on a bathroom floor and a baby that never breathed.
I’m in Lady’s tower, my hand on her throat, my mouth at her ear, taking things I wanted before I had told her enough truth to deserve them.
“Shady.”
Vice’s voice cuts clean.
I blink.
He studies me for half a second. “Head in the room.”
“My head’s in the damn room.”
“Then quit looking like you’re digging your own grave.”
“Already dug it,” I say. “Just trying not to throw her in with me.”
He doesn’t answer.
We move.
The first guard at the dock never sees me.
He has a cigarette between his fingers and a white denim cut hanging open over a black shirt.
Mutherfuker patch. Ugly as sin. He turns at the scuff of my boot, and I drive the butt of my gun into his throat before he can make sound.
Vice catches his body, lowers him, and I strip the radio from his belt.
The second guard comes around the truck with his hand already going for his waistband.
Vice shoots him once, suppressed and clean.
The man folds beside buckets of white roses.
Pretty place to die, if you like irony.
I press the stolen radio to my ear. Static. Then a man laughing.
Boca.
I know that little prick’s voice from Lady’s video.
“Boss says ten more minutes, then we move her,” Boca says. “Pretty DJ don’t look so out of league now.”
Another voice answers, muffled. “Toro coming back?”
“Toro does what Toro does.”
There. Confirmation. He is here or close enough to matter.
Then Boca laughs again, lower this time. “Carmen’s people said make sure the DJ knows about Cherry. About her baby. But who is she to call the shots? Bitch shit.”
The world narrows.
Vice’s hand clamps on my shoulder.
Hard.
Because he hears it too.
Because Lady might hear it.
The last thing we need is Lady to put up a fight about being rescued.
Boca keeps talking. “Carmen said the timing has to be right. Imagine getting rescued and finding out the biker bleeding for you already buried a kid with another bitch. Miami romance, bro.”
My vision goes white around the edges.
Vice gets in front of me before I can move. “Road captain.”
I want to shove him through the truck.
I want Boca’s teeth in my hand.
I want to go backward in time and choose a cleaner life, which is hilarious because I wouldn’t know what the fuck to do with one.
“Move,” I say.
Vice’s eyes don’t blink. “Think.”
“I am thinking.”
“No. You’re hearing Cherry’s ghost and letting Boca drive.”
He’s right.
Again.
I hate everybody today.
I pull in one breath through my nose. Flowers, diesel, cold air leaking from the dock. Lady is inside. Alive. Waiting. Not for my rage. For my brain.
I nod once.
Vice steps aside.
We enter through the dock.
Cold slaps me first. Not normal air-conditioning. Storage cold. Flower cold. Funeral cold. It slides under my cut and bites the sweat on my skin. Rows of plastic buckets line the wall, white roses bobbing in chemical water like the room is growing apologies for the dead.
Gunfire breaks from the front.
Diablo’s team hits loud.
Every head inside turns that way.
Vice and I move through the back shadows between stacked crates and metal shelving.
A Mutherfuker runs past with a shotgun, eyes on the front entrance.
I hook an arm around his throat from behind, drag him into the shelving, and slam his head into the metal upright.
Once. Twice. His knees give. I take the shotgun and toss it to Vice.
“Thought you liked knives,” he says.
“I’m growing as a person.”
“Proud of you.”
A bullet punches through a crate near my shoulder, exploding wet green stems across my face.
“Fuck personal growth,” I mutter.
We push deeper.
The warehouse opens into a wider cold room lit by buzzing strips overhead. White roses everywhere. Crates. Buckets. Plastic wrap. Blood on concrete. Men in ugly white cuts firing toward the front. Magic’s laugh echoes from somewhere near the office stairs, dark and delighted.
Then I see her.
Center-left, exactly where Alpha said.
Lady is chained to a metal chair near the cold room wall, wrists cuffed behind her through the chair back, ankles strapped to the legs. Her hair is wild. Her cheek is swollen. Her lip is split. A white rose is tucked beneath one cuff like a sick little corsage.
My whole body forgets the plan.
Her head lifts.
Those dark eyes find me through smoke, flowers, and gunfire.
For half a second, everything stops.
Lady’s alive.
And still mean. Thank Christ.
Then her mouth moves.
I can’t hear it over the shots, but I know the shape.
Gringo.
Relief hits so hard it turns straight into rage.
Boca appears behind her with a gun in one hand and a phone in the other. He grabs her hair and yanks her head back.
I shoot him.
Not in the head. I want him alive long enough to regret learning my name.
The bullet takes him high in the shoulder and spins him away from her. He hits the floor screaming.
Lady doesn’t scream. But I can see her hold her breath.
“Get her!” Vice barks.
I run.
A Mutherfuker steps between me and her. I hit him with my shoulder, drive him into the wall, and put my knife under his ribs. He drops, and I’m already past him.
“Shady!” Diablo shouts from the front.
I hear the warning too late.
A man on the office stairs aims down at me.
Six drops him before I can lift my gun.