Chapter 6
Shady
Lady walks out of Vice Ink with Darling’s hand locked around hers, and every bad thing in me wants to follow.
Not walk.
Not ask.
Follow.
Drag.
Claim.
Put her in my room, lock the door, and stand between her and the whole ugly city until Miami chokes on its own smoke before it touches her again.
That’s the problem.
The thing inside me that wants to protect her sounds a hell of a lot like the thing she is running from.
You saved me from them. Now I need to save myself from you.
Those words stay in the room after she leaves. They hang in the stained-glass light and the smoke and the blood smell. Like Vice Ink has always been a church for men learning too late what their hands have ruined.
The back door shuts.
Disco screams from the bar. “?Pendejo! ?Dale!”
“Yeah,” I mutter, staring at the door. “No shit, bird.”
Diablo orders, “Cage the damn bird and take him wherever Darling is headed.”
My boots move.
One step.
That is all I get before Diablo’s hand lands in the center of my chest.
Hard.
I look down at it.
Then at him.
“Move.”
“No.”
The word is quiet.
That makes it worse.
I could shove him. I could try. I could put my shoulder into the president of my club while my blood is still drying on Reyes Floral’s floor and Lady’s voice is still cracking in my ears. I could prove every damn thing she just accused me of.
Diablo knows it.
So do I.
My jaw locks. “She’s hurt.”
“She has Darling.”
“She needs me.”
His eyes go black. “She just told you she doesn’t.”
That lands like a fist.
I hate him for saying it.
I hate him more because he is right.
“Get your hand off me, Prez.”
“Make me.”
The room goes still around us.
Magic stops by the hall, one hand still wrapped around Cherry’s upper arm.
Vice is outside, tailing Lady and Darling at a distance because Diablo gave the order and Lady agreed to that much.
Six is gone with him. Alpha stays at the altar table with Amour Reyes’s photo on one screen and Reyes Floral records on another.
Key Rat freezes mid-pace with a phone held to his ear.
Even Disco shuts up for once, which means the bird has better survival instincts than half the prospects.
Diablo steps closer.
He ain’t bigger than me by much. He doesn’t need to be.
He carries the title of president like it’s nothing.
I saw him come up out of Rafael Solano’s blood and sit in a chair men wanted to kill him for.
I watched him almost destroy himself trying to make nice with a debt and keep his woman a secret.
Darling nearly broke him open before he learned.
Now he is looking at me like he sees every mistake before I make it.
“You chase her now,” Diablo says, “you lose her.”
“I already lost her.”
“No. You wounded her. You scared her. You made her question every damn touch you put on her body because you left another woman’s blood in the dark and thought silence was mercy.” His voice lowers. “But lost? Not yet.”
My hand curls.
“Careful,” I say.
“Or what?”
The old church breathes around us.
I smile without humor. “You always this wise when it’s not your woman walking away?”
His eyes flash.
“If Darling walked out of here bleeding and pissed at me,” he says, “every brother in this room would have to chain me to the fucking altar.”
“Then why am I the only one getting a sermon?”
“Because I learned the hard way.” His gaze cuts toward the door where Darling left. “Saving a woman ain’t the same as earning her. Bleeding for her ain’t the same as listening to her. Killing for her is easy. Letting her choose the distance between you? That is the part that feels like dying.”
I say nothing.
Because my throat is full of broken glass.
Diablo’s hand finally drops from my chest.
“Let it feel like dying,” he says. “Then don’t die from it.”
Magic snorts from the hall. “That was almost poetic, Prez.”
Diablo doesn’t look away from me. “Shut up.”
“Back to normal. Good.”
I drag a hand over my jaw and feel dried blood crack across my knuckles. My side throbs. My head is a war zone. My dick, because my body is a sick bastard, still remembers Lady standing there furious and bruised, mouth split, eyes on fire, telling me to bring better answers next time.
Bring better answers next time, gringo.
There will be a next time.
There has to be.
But not if I turn her fear into a chase.
I look toward the hall where Magic holds Cherry.
Cherry is watching me with red eyes and a ruined face. Not ruined from fists. From consequences. She looks smaller without the anger holding her upright. Still pretty. Still dangerous. Still a woman I failed before she became a weapon used against the woman I want.
I point at her. “Put her in church.”
Magic lifts a brow. “You sure?”
“No,” I say. “That seems to be my fucking brand today.”
Diablo turns toward Magic. “Vice back yet?”
Key Rat lowers one phone. “Six has eyes on Darling’s car. Vice is circling back. Says Lady is staring out the window like she’s planning a murder and Darling is talking with her hands, so everybody’s alive.”
“Tell Six to stay on them,” Diablo says. “Distance only.”
Key Rat nods and starts talking into the phone again.
I look at him. “And if Lady spots him?”
Key Rat smirks. “Then Six dies bravely.”
“Good. Saves paperwork.”
“Paperwork’s Alpha’s kink,” Magic says.
Alpha doesn’t look up from his screens. “I heard that.”
“You were meant to.”
Diablo snaps his fingers once. “Enough. Church. Now.”
Cherry makes a sound, small and wet. “Shady.”
I don’t answer.
Not yet.
If I answer with rage, I make her the center.
If I answer with guilt, I make the same mistake twice.
If I answer with softness, it’s a lie.
So I say nothing and walk into church.
The officers’ table is waiting. Diablo takes the head. Vice comes in two minutes later, jaw hard, eyes on me first, then Cherry.
“Six has Lady and Darling in sight,” Vice says. “They’re heading toward Darling’s place, not Lady’s tower. Two blocks back, no contact.”
My chest tightens.
Darling’s place.
Fuck.
Lady ain’t alone. That matters. Lady ain’t with me. That matters more.
“Sit,” Diablo says.
I do.
Not because I want to.
Because if I keep standing, I might start breaking furniture.
Magic puts Cherry in the chair across from me. He doesn’t shove her. He doesn’t have to. Vice takes the wall to her left. Diablo sits at the head. Magic stays behind Cherry. Alpha enters last with a tablet tucked under one arm.
“Before we start,” Alpha says, “we pulled partial data from Eddie’s phone. Mutherfukers used a relay chain, but one number hit twice before the burner wipe. Not Toro’s. Not Boca’s.”
“Whose?” Diablo asks.
Alpha’s mouth barely moves. “Unknown contact saved as C.S.”
The room turns colder.
Carmen Solano.
Cherry starts crying again.
I laugh once. It sounds ugly even to me.
“Carmen.”
Cherry shakes her head. “I didn’t know it was Carmen.”
“Bullshit,” Magic says.
“I didn’t.” She looks at Diablo, desperate now, because presidents look like gods to people who need mercy. “I swear. A woman called once. She didn’t say her name. She knew things.”
“What things?” Vice asks.
Cherry’s eyes flick to me.
No.
Not again.
I lean forward, elbows on my knees. “Look at me.”
She does.
Barely.
“You wanted my attention so bad, Cherry. You got it. Now fucking talk.”
Her mouth trembles. “They knew about Rosa.”
The name hits harder than I expect.
Diablo’s gaze cuts to me.
I stare at Cherry.
We never named the baby out loud.
Not in church. Not around the club. Not to anyone who didn’t have blood on their hands that night. At the clinic, when the nurse asked if she wanted anything written on the paperwork, Cherry had whispered Rosa because she said it was the only pretty thing she could think of while everything hurt.
Rosa.
Rose.
My stomach turns.
Cherry covers her mouth.
Magic mutters, “Fuck.”
Alpha’s eyes sharpen. “That explains the flower choice against you personally.”
“No,” I say, voice flat. “White roses were Mutherfuker signature before this.”
“Yes,” Alpha says. “But using roses with Lady, with Cherry, with the baby name? That is layered messaging. Someone knew the club symbolism and your personal history.”
Cherry sobs. “They knew her name. They said if I didn’t help, my sister would get flowers at her kid’s school. White ones. They sent a picture of the playground. Then they sent one of my niece with a circle around her face.”
“Why not come to me?” I ask.
The question leaves my mouth rough.
Cherry looks at me like I slapped her.
“Would you have answered?”
Silence.
There it is.
The truth doesn’t care who it cuts.
“I called you,” she says. “I texted. You stopped answering unless it was club business or money. After the miscarriage, you said you’d always look out for me, and then you looked through me every time I walked into a room.”
I feel Diablo’s stare.
I don’t need it.
I know.
Cherry keeps going, voice cracking open wider. “Then Lady showed up all hips and attitude, and you looked at her like you could breathe again. Do you know what that felt like?”
“Yes,” I say.
She blinks.
I look at her and force myself not to look away from what I made.
“No. That’s a lie. I know what guilt felt like.
I know what losing the baby felt like. I know what being too much of a coward to tell you I wasn’t going to love you felt like.
I don’t know what it felt like to be you. I should’ve fucking asked.”
Cherry starts crying harder.
Magic shifts behind her, uncomfortable in a way I have never seen. He can watch a man bleed without blinking, but a woman crying over a lost baby has him looking at the floor like it might save him.
I keep my voice even because if I let it soften too much, this turns into the old pattern.
“But you gave them Lady’s code.”
Cherry nods once, broken.
“You texted me so she’d see it.”
Her face crumples.
“Say it,” I order.
“Yes.”
“You wanted her hurt.”
“No.” Her head jerks up. “Not taken. Not beaten. Not that.”
“But hurt.”
The silence answers.
I nod slowly. “That is what I thought.”
She leans forward. “Shady, please.”
“No.”
The word ain’t loud.
It ends something anyway.
Cherry freezes.