Chapter 8
Spade
“Someone’s in deep shit,” Marley, one of the prospects, said. “Selene’s got all the officers in church.”
“Everyone except me,” I said. “Which means, of course, it’s about me.” I took a deep breath and prepared for the worse. “Any ideas?”
Marley lit another cigarette. The vape craze had never become part of the club. “There was a detective snooping around yesterday, asking questions about you.”
Yeah, I was trying to avoid the conversation as much as I could. The only people who could understand people like me were people like me. “Thanks, Marley.”
They were convened under a single bulb in the back room, the air fogged with old cigarettes and sharp with the bite of disinfectant.
The Royal Harlots didn’t do boardrooms, but this was the closest thing: a circle of battered leather chairs, the table pushed out of the way to clear space for a confrontation.
Selene sat at the apex, flanked by Joker and Aces, with Glitz and Nines on the right and Tempest on the left, arms crossed and eyes flat as rifle scopes.
The walls vibrated with the faint whine of slot machines from the main floor, but the real noise was the hum of the club van idling in the lot outside, waiting to see if anyone needed a ride to the ER or the desert.
“This doesn’t look good,” I said, trying to break the chill in the room. Fuck yeah, it was about me.
“Have a seat,” Selene said.
I didn’t sit. I kept my jacket on, my hands free. There were four exits from the room. I watched all of them without turning my head.
Selene didn’t bother with a greeting. She cut straight through, her voice all wire and weight.
“You want to tell us why a Las Vegas detective walked into our house asking for you by name?”
I nodded. “I saw him.”
She let it hang there. Tempest was up before the echo faded, boots planted and jaw locked, veins straining against her neck. “You brought a cop to our door.” Every syllable landed like a punch to the sternum. “You fucking the club over?”
Joker, perched with feline ease, tapped her fingers against the arm of his chair and said, “Charming. Really. Nothing says ‘low profile’ like a detective with a shitty notepad.” She spat ‘notepad’ like it was a disease.
Aces didn’t rise or even shift her posture. She just looked at me the way you look at a slow leak under your truck, voice steady as a torque wrench. “You compromised the club. You wanna tell us what the fuck you’ve been doing?”
Glitz didn’t raise her volume, but she stretched every word until it could cut glass. “This is a liability we can’t absorb. You understand that. We all know when one shows up that eventually the entire force will be at our door.”
Nines opened a little black notebook, licked a finger, and flipped to a fresh page without looking up. “For the record, this is the first time law enforcement has made direct contact at this location.” She tapped the page with the pen. “That’s a precedent.”
I listened. I let them unload, let the rhythm find its own violence. My heart didn’t accelerate, but I felt the blood pressure in my wrists, a slow hydraulic hiss just under the skin.
“Boss,” I said, filling the quiet room with one powerful word. Yeah, I was terrified. The club was the one thing I had in life that kept me whole.
Selene let the others play their parts before she spoke again. “The van is still running, in case you’re wondering.” She leveled her gaze at me, the barest smile at one corner of her mouth. “You can leave now. Or you can explain.”
“We all prefer that you explain,” Aces said.
I flexed my hand. The scab on my knuckle popped open, and I tasted iron in my mouth.
“Talk,” Selene said. It was not a request.
I fixed my eyes on her. Not the rest. I didn’t owe them anything more than what they already had.
“I’ve killed twenty-four men.”
Nobody moved.
Tempest’s jaw went slack and then snapped shut again.
Joker’s hands stilled and folded, neat and deliberate, in her lap.
Aces set her palms flat on her knees, the kind of move you make right before a fight starts.
Glitz just blinked, once, as if she’d lost a contact lens and was trying to focus.
Nines wrote it down, the ink sounded loud as a scream.
I said, “Every one of them was a predator. Rapists. Traffickers. Men the system let walk.” I let the words come out flat, no inflection, because dressing it up wouldn’t change the fact.
Glitz found her voice first. “You used this club as your cover.”
I met her eyes. “Yes.”
Nines scribbled, never looking up. Tempest said, “You put every one of us in a cell with you.” The accusation was almost tender. I could have laughed if I didn’t already know how right she was.
Joker’s smile was gone. Her voice was stripped of humor. “And you didn’t think we deserved to know.”
I didn’t answer. Sometimes silence is the only honest thing.
Selene hadn’t moved, not even to blink. She drummed a finger once against the armrest. The room calibrated to her, even the air getting thinner.
She stood—slowly—and the rest of the inner circle followed, some up, some tense, but all eyes on her.
She crossed to where I stood. She was shorter than me, but she made it irrelevant.
There was a gravity around her that bent everyone in.
“I suspected something was up with you, Spade. Even before that detective showed up.” Her poker face would make any pit boss shudder. “We’ve talked.” She nodded at the others. “It didn’t take long for us to put the pieces together.”
“Now what?” I asked. “You want me to give up the cut? Go nomad?”
Joker chuckled, her lips parting in a devilish smile. “It’s not going to be that easy, Spade.” She looked at the other women. “It wouldn’t be for any of us.”
Selene nodded. She said, “The next one. I’m with you.”
It wasn’t a question.
I looked at her and saw the dare. I didn’t flinch.
Around us, nobody spoke. The others circled in, hungry for blood or for answers, I couldn’t say. The hum of the slot machines seemed to fade, and the only sound was the tight, wet draw of breath from every set of lungs in that room.
Selene waited. I waited.
The rest would come later—punishments, bargains, someone exiled or maybe dead. But right then, it was just us. A queen and her executioner. The line between was a hair’s breadth and already red with what I’d done.
I said, “Okay.”
She nodded. “Okay.”
It wasn’t forgiveness, but it was enough to keep the air in my lungs another day.
Tempest slumped back into her seat, arms limp. Joker watched me with something new in her eyes—respect, or maybe just calculation. Glitz chewed her cheek, thinking about the money, the optics, the insurance premiums. Nines underlined something three times and closed the book.
Selene turned and walked away, the room breaking orbit as she moved. She didn’t need to look back to know I’d follow.
I heard the van kill its engine outside. Nobody was leaving. Not yet. Nobody was dying. Not yet.
The circle closed again, tighter this time, but it didn’t feel like a cage. It felt like a family, waiting to see what kind of daughter I’d turn out to be.
“What’s it feel like?” Nines asked when the others were gone. “To take justice into your own hands.”
She was fucking with me. It was a real question. So, I gave her a real answer. “There’s an unequaled power in it,” I said. “Something I’ve never been able to find anywhere else.”
“I’m sure they got what they deserved,” she said. “And don’t let everyone get to you. Deep down, we’ve all wanted to rid Vegas of the scum.”
She joined the others out in the casino. I stood there, and for a brief moment, I thought maybe others could understand.