Section 36
Heel
Lucky
I sit on the bike across the road like an idiot in a helmet, engine off, watching iron bars that don’t move.
She’s in there.
“I’m not going in,” I say out loud, because apparently I need to clarify things for the part of me that has a death wish.
The morning air smells like cut grass and expensive privacy. I don’t belong here. That part is obvious. I didn’t belong in Valenti’s house either, but at least there everyone knew exactly what kind of animal I was.
I start the bike and turn away.
If she wants to see me, she will.
That’s the deal I made with myself somewhere between guilt and dignity.
Back at the apartment, I take the helmet off and set it on the kitchen counter. It looks smaller without me in it. Less myth. More plastic.
Diablo sniffs me like he suspects betrayal.
“Same,” I mutter.
I strip off my jacket and drop into a chair. The quiet presses in. I’ve never been good with quiet. In the army, quiet meant waiting for something to explode. With Valenti, quiet meant someone had already decided.
I lean back until the ceiling is all there is.
I enlisted at nineteen because I wanted something clean. Structure. Rules. A version of masculinity that didn’t involve collecting debts from men who looked like they’d stopped believing in God years ago.
My father called it running.
He wasn’t wrong.
The army was simple at first. Wake up. Follow orders. Don’t die. Don’t let the guy next to you die.
You’d be amazed how much purpose you can squeeze into that.
Then came the deployment. Heat like a hand around your throat. Dust in your teeth. Nights that felt too quiet.
The explosion wasn’t cinematic.
A roadside IED wired poorly and detonated early. I remember the light more than the sound. The way they talk about the light at the end of the tunnel, but all I could see was blinding light of the supposed train about to turn me into roadkill.
But it didn’t.
When I woke up, my back felt like it had been peeled open with a cheese grater and left out in the sun. They told me I was lucky. The blast hit behind me. The armor took most of it.
Most.
The guy in front of me didn’t get “most.”
He got gone.
I got scars.
I got discharged with a handshake and a brochure about resilience.
I went home to Chicago with a body that hurt in weather changes and a brain that didn’t sleep without noise.
Valenti’s men found me at a bar off Halsted. I was three whiskeys deep and explaining to a stranger why I hated fireworks.
They liked my build. They liked that I didn’t flinch when they mentioned violence. They liked that I followed instructions.
It wasn’t ideology or loyalty, it was simply proximity.
You stand next to something long enough, it starts to feel like gravity.
Valenti liked me because I didn’t ask questions. Because I could hold a door and scan a hallway and not need to be told twice.
He never saw me as smart. Just useful.
That suited me fine.
The first time I understood what I’d signed up for was when Valenti decided Sylvie Hart was leverage. I was assigned to surveillance first, then extraction because I could carry weight and keep my mouth shut.
Helmet on. No questions.
I carried her down a stairwell that smelled like mold and weed. She looked at me once, straight through the visor.
Evaluating.
Like she was memorizing me for later.
I could have made it worse. I didn’t.
I could have made it better.
I didn’t do that either.
That’s the part I don’t excuse.
I didn’t hit her. I didn’t threaten her. I didn’t participate in whatever twisted performance Valenti enjoyed.
But I was there. That’s enough.
When Valenti fell, I didn’t run because I was loyal.
I ran because I was tired.
Tired of being muscle. Tired of being the wall someone else leaned their cruelty against.
I heard about the woman running Red before I ever saw her. Gia Serrano. The daughter who didn’t crumble. The one who made men twice her age sweat without raising her voice.
The first time I walked into her office, I thought she’d throw me out.
Instead, she hired me because her dog liked me.
Just my luck.
The rest… escalated.
I didn’t tell her about Valenti because I wanted to be the version of myself she saw.
The one who stands between her and bullets.
The one who listens.
The one who doesn’t need to be ordered to stay.
I told myself timing mattered. That I’d explain once things stabilized.
Stability is a myth.
Diablo drops his head onto my thigh, heavy and deliberate.
“Yeah,” I say. “I know.”
He looks up at me like I’ve missed something obvious.
“I didn’t do it to get close to her,” I tell him. “That would’ve required planning.”
He sneezes.
Fair.
I rub behind his ears and let the guilt sit where it belongs. It’s not self-punishing. It’s a weight I earned.
My phone buzzes, and both me and Diablo perk up at the sound. Gia?
“You’ve got Lucky.”
Bellini’s voice comes through smooth and smug. The disappointment is physical. Damn.
“You should have told her.”
“I was getting there.”
“You always were slow with the important things.”
This fucking guy. If I were low on Valenti’s corporate ladder, Bellini wasn’t even close to the first rung. Crawling in the dirt desperate for approval. How he ended up next to Frank at that table is a fucking mystery.
“You want something?” I ask.
“I want to know if you’re going to make this messy.”
“I don’t do messy.”
He laughs softly. “You used to.”
“People change.”
“No,” Bellini says. “People adapt.”
I think about the bomb. About Sylvie’s eyes. About Gia standing in a loading dock like a queen daring the city to blink.
“Yeah,” I say. “They do.”
A pause.
“You’re not going to come after Frank?” Bellini asks, almost curious.
“I don’t solve problems that aren’t mine.”
“And she isn’t yours?”
“She’s her own,” I reply, my fingers holding onto Diablo’s collar with whitening knuckles.
Another pause. Calculating.
“Interesting,” he says, and hangs up.
I set the phone down.
Diablo shifts closer.
There was a version of me who would’ve driven straight to wherever Frank was sitting and rearranged the furniture with his face.
That version is easy.
Restraint is harder.
I stand and move to the window. The city lives below, indifferent.
“She’ll ask,” I say to the dog. “Or she won’t.”
If she doesn’t, I’ll respect that too.
Diablo knocks his tail against the cabinet.
“Yeah,” I murmur. “We’re not chasing.”
I pick up the helmet and set it back on the hook by the door.