Chapter 17
Spade
How was I going to explain fucking the same detective who wanted me put behind bars? Or did he? What the fuck had happened less than two hours ago?
I needed a drink in the worst way. Double whatever my usual was.
The clubhouse smelled like citrus, a scent that tried its damndest to kill the smell of cigarettes and booze.
I walked in wearing the same jacket I’d worn before fucking Shaw—Sergeant at Arms patch catching the jaundiced light—and let the door close soft behind me.
The slot machines in the main room were dark, but the inner circle glowed hard under the fluorescent strip over the long table. I took a mental roll call:
Selene at the head, chair back so straight it looked welded to her spine.
Joker in the shadow on her right, arms folded like a padlock, one boot hooked over the rung.
Aces standing, broad shoulders squared, both hands planted flat on the battered table.
Glitz cross-legged and perfect, ringed fingers steepled in front of her, eyes already dissecting me for weakness.
Nines with her notebook, pen ready but not yet in motion.
Tempest in motion, stalking a tight loop by the cinder block wall, boots squeaking on lemon-slicked concrete.
Nobody told me to sit, so I didn’t. I stood at parade rest and waited for someone to break the ice.
Selene didn’t speak first. She kept her gaze on my hands, like maybe this was the night I’d bring the weapon inside. When she blinked, Joker spoke up, voice dry as chalk.
“You look like shit,” she said.
“Yeah,” I said. “Long night.”
Aces’ jaw flexed. “Yours, or ours?”
I let the question sit for a beat, then said, “Detective Shaw made contact.”
That stopped even Tempest’s orbit. She leaned in, knuckles gone white on the curve of her arms.
“Where?” asked Selene, voice barely above a whisper.
“Alley behind Starlight. Two blocks east of the last drop. He watched me finish. Had the drop on me with a nine-millimeter.”
Glitz raised both eyebrows, smile going glassy. “So why are you standing here instead of bleeding out in evidence?”
I shrugged. “He wanted to talk.”
Joker’s laugh was a single exhale, no humor in it. “Fuck me. Cops are getting sentimental.”
Nines clicked her pen. “Was he alone?”
“Yeah. No backup.”
“Armed?”
“He’s a detective. Of course.”
Selene’s fingers drummed a syncopated rhythm on the table. “What did he want?”
I told them. The part where he put it all together and then offered a deal—he buries the case, I stop putting holes in Las Vegas’ worst.
For a moment, nothing. A single, perfect bubble of silence.
Tempest was first to break it, voice raw. “So we put him in the ground.”
Joker cut in, “He’s a cop. You kill a cop, you get a hundred more. And a thousand cameras. We’re not ready for that heat.”
Aces didn’t look at me. “A detective who’s got your face, your pattern, your count—that’s not a liability we can manage. That’s a countdown.”
Glitz’s smile flickered off. She set both hands on the table, the rings catching every photon from the overhead bulb.
“Every dollar this club moves, every license we hold, every arrangement we have—it’s all one bad week from unraveling.
If this cop wants to burn us, he can and he will. There’s no clean fix here.”
Nines tapped the pen twice, eyes not leaving the pad. “If he’s documented any of this, the file survives him. We need to know what exists in writing before we do anything physical.”
Nobody spoke. Selene watched me from the head of the table, letting the tide of opinion roll until she was ready to stem it. When she spoke, it was so quiet I thought maybe I’d hallucinated it.
“Tell me you didn’t make a deal with him,” she said.
I met her stare. I didn’t blink. “I did.”
Every woman at the table leaned, pivoted, tensed. Even the ones who’d seemed calm before. The silence wasn’t silence; it was a threat. The overhead light caught the ridges of the Royal Harlots patch on my jacket and made it gleam like a target.
Joker’s jaw worked, her teeth grinding so loud I heard it over the AC. “You let a cop get leverage.”
Aces straightened up from the table. Her voice was grave-cold. “That’s not how we do things.”
Glitz didn’t say a word, but her eyes were open wider than I’d ever seen. She looked at me and saw the ghost of the club’s future.
Nines wrote something, then set the pen down and folded her hands over the page. She didn’t look up.
Tempest turned from the wall and faced me, arms at her sides. “You should have called it in,” she said. “To us.”
She was right.
Selene stood. The room’s sound died all the way. She came around the table, boots soft on the bare floor, and stopped two feet from me. Up close, her cheekbone had a vein that pulsed when she was about to go loud. It was moving now.
“You sat across from a detective who could bury you,” she said, “and instead of calling it in, you made a deal.”
Her voice was the blade at my jaw.
“You chose him.”
I said nothing.
Selene’s face didn’t change, but her fists opened, then closed, then opened again. She looked me up and down, as if trying to find a place to hit that would make it all stop hurting. Then she said, “Was he worth it?”
I let my breath out slow. “He had me dead to rights. He could have ended it, but didn’t. That means something.”
Tempest sighed. “It means he wants something. Nobody walks away for free.”
Joker’s voice went flat, razor-edged. “Congratulations, Spade. You got played.”
I turned and met Joker’s eyes. “He could have ended it. He didn’t. He never mentioned the club, not once.”
Aces was shaking her head. “Not yet.”
Glitz’s smile was back, but it was all gums and no teeth. “Spade. Honey. I like you. That’s why I’m telling you—whatever you think you felt out there, it is not worth what it costs the rest of us.”
Nines said, “The exposure is asymmetrical. One man’s conscience is not a guarantee. It’s a variable.”
For a second, it felt like the table would flip, and they’d tear me apart on the floor. But nobody moved.
Selene’s words landed last, and they landed hard.
“Here’s what happens,” she said. “You bring us everything he has on you—every report, every file, every note he’s ever made—or we do it the old way and bury him, you, or both. Those are the options.”
I braced both hands on the back of a chair, knuckles white. I felt the seams of my life tearing in half-inch increments.
“There’s a third option,” I said.
Selene’s mouth quirked. “I’m listening.”
I reached up, unclipped the Sergeant at Arms patch from my jacket, and set it on the table. The Royal Harlots’ colors followed—heavy leather, club crest, my whole adult life stitched on the back, and now face-up on the wood. The overhead bulb made the thread shimmer.
Nobody breathed. Even the slot machines seemed to freeze.
“I’m not asking you to trust him,” I said. “I’m not asking you to like it. But I won’t risk this club. I’m out.”
I took my plain jacket from the chair and slid it over my tattooed arms. I watched the way Selene’s face went from flint to fracture, then to nothing at all.
I walked for the door.
Selene’s voice followed, stripped of all the silk and sugar.
“If you walk out that door, we can’t protect you.”
I stopped, hand on the cold metal of the frame. “I know,” I said.
Then I stepped into the night, and the clubhouse closed behind me like the end of a story.