Chapter 20 #3
Joker said, “I give it twenty minutes before the city dispatches. You want pancakes?”
Aces said, “I could eat.”
We mounted up, the orange of the fire lighting the street like a sunrise that meant business. The gas caught a drum somewhere in the back, and the whole roof blew out, raining sparks across the empty parking lot.
The building was gone, but the message would last. I looked at Selene, waiting for her to say something about next steps, about contingency, about what the fuck we’d just witnessed. She didn’t. She just watched the flames and exhaled, slow and even, like she’d been holding it in all night.
Then I saw her.
Jenna was twenty feet down, leaning against a streetlight, arms crossed, half her face lit by the flames.
Queens of Chaos vest, no shirt underneath, wrists marked up with old scars she didn’t bother hiding.
She looked at the building, not at me. The glow caught her cheekbone, the line of her jaw, the corner of her mouth where she bit down on whatever she was about to say.
For a second, nobody moved. Even the rest of the Harlots held their position, like a pack clocking an unknown variable.
Selene watched her with the flat, forensic curiosity of a surgeon planning a cut.
Joker sized her up in two blinks and then pretended she’d already lost interest. Nines and Aces flanked out, no sudden movements, just a casual, deliberate angle on the perimeter.
Jenna didn’t react to any of it. She just stared at the blaze, eyes narrowed, smoke painting her irises black.
I walked over, slow. Boots loud on the asphalt. She didn’t move until I was close enough to grab her if I wanted. Maybe she wanted me to.
“I heard it was you,” she said. Her voice was like mine: rough, unimpressed, a little broken at the edges. “Didn’t believe it until I saw you burn the place down.”
“It’s what we do,” I said.
She kept her arms crossed, but her body turned half-toward me. Not a threat, not a welcome, just a read.
Jenna’s mouth twitched. “Now what? You put a bullet in my head?”
I waited, let the silence settle. The heat from the fire pressed against my back.
Behind us, Selene stepped forward, boots on the curb. She took her time with the approach, eyes flicking from the vest to the scars to the patch on Jenna’s breast. Then she spoke, voice so level it sounded rehearsed.
“We don’t kill family,” Selene said.
Jenna turned, just her head, looking Selene up and down. “You recruiting?”
Selene smiled, or did her version of it. “I’m always looking for upgrades.”
Joker called from behind us, “Can we get a patch right now, or do you need to fill out the onboarding paperwork?”
Nines said, “We have a Google form. I’ll send it.”
I let my eyes stay on Jenna, watched the way she processed it all—every twitch in her jaw, every micro-glance at the Harlots, every flicker of calculation. I’d been half sure she was dead, or at least gone for good.
Selene waited until the air was tight enough to strum, then said, “I have a prospect patch in the bag. Yours if you want it.”
Jenna looked at me, not Selene, as she said, “What’s the catch?”
“No catch,” Selene said. “Just a test.”
Jenna’s mouth pulled tight. “When?”
“Now.” She nodded at me. “Spade’s your sponsor.”
Jenna rolled her shoulders, like shaking off an old coat. “What’s the test?”
Selene didn’t hesitate. “Survive.”
It should have been cheesy. It wasn’t. Not with Selene.
Jenna flicked her gaze once at the fire, then at the Harlots, then back to me. I nodded, just a millimeter, not enough for anyone but her to see.
“Yeah,” Jenna said. “I’ll take it.”
Selene pulled the patch out of her jacket, tossed it underhand. Jenna caught it without looking down, hooked it on her finger, and held it there.
“The Queens will want your ass,” I said.
“I don’t care, Sis.”
“We got you,” Selene said.
I grabbed her by the back of the neck and pulled her in, not a hug, not exactly, but the way we used to do it as kids—chin on my shoulder, arms locked, holding tight enough to break a rib.
She squeezed back, hard. We didn’t say a word, just stood there, bracing each other against the world and the heat and the eyes.
Jenna broke first, stepping back. She wiped her nose with the back of her hand and slipped the patch into her vest. “You got somewhere to be?” she asked.
“Always,” I said.
She nodded, then did something I hadn’t seen in years. She smiled. Big, stupid, full of teeth.
The rest of the Harlots relaxed, a visible shift, like a barometric drop. Joker muttered something about pancakes again. Aces grinned, all teeth and bone, then fished out a cigarette and lit it off the fire’s edge.
Selene just watched me, then Jenna, then the ruined building. “We’ll ride out together,” she said. “Show of force.”
I looked at Jenna, and she looked at me. We both knew what came next. Road, dust, heat, and the knowledge that every line in this life had to be redrawn every night.
But for the moment, we had the fire, the silence, and the simple, vicious fact that neither of us had blinked.