Chapter 17
Seventeen
Jagger
The gym floor blurs past—faces turning, conversations dying mid-word. Nobody stops us. Nobody dares.
The parking lot hits like a wall of heat.
I don't release her until we reach the bikes. "You're riding with me," I say.
She doesn't argue. Just nods once, sharp, and climbs onto the Ducati behind me.
I feel her hands settle on my waist as I fire up the engine. The bike roars to life beneath us, and I pull out into the street without checking mirrors.
Rain threatens in the distance—dark clouds building on the horizon. The wind picks up as we cut through the Quarter, and her grip tightens around my ribs like she's holding on to something solid in a world that won't stop shifting.
By the time we reach her apartment, my jaw aches from clenching.
When we enter, she heads straight for the bathroom, her voice tight. "Shower," she says over her shoulder. "We still need to rinse off."
I trail after her and wait until she has the shower running and the light on before I risk checking her over properly.
"Let me see."
She turns to face me, arms crossed over her stomach. There's a red mark blooming on her cheekbone.
"I'm fine."
"Let me see," I repeat, voice flat.
She turns, shows me a bruise forming on her shoulder.
"That's it?"
"She’s hardly trained," she pulls away, drops her shirt back down. "It was more of a temper tantrum. I handled it."
"You shouldn't have had to."
Her eyes flash. "No. And maybe if you’d show more restraint, I wouldn’t have."
The accusation lands like a physical blow.
"We talked about this. It was part of the cover," I say.
"How many, Jagger? How many women did you take to bed as part of the cover?"
Steam billows from the shower.
It’s the oldest accusation in the book, and I’ve heard worse. Every op has its cost, and sometimes that cost wears lipstick.
But hearing it from her—someone who still believes in lines you don’t cross—makes me wish I could explain how few choices there really were.
"You think I wanted to use her like that?" My voice is too loud in the small space. "You think I enjoyed—"
The lie tastes bitter even as I say it, because some part of me did stop thinking, stopped weighing the cost, and just did what was easiest.
I know what it makes me. Have known for years and kept doing it anyway.
"Yes, Jagger. I do think you enjoyed it.”
I don't have an answer, not one that makes any of this better.
Every excuse I have dies in my throat because they're all just ways of saying I chose this. Over and over, I chose this.
She stares at me, waiting. When I don't speak, something in her expression shifts. Not anger anymore.
Disgust.
That look guts me worse than anything Marquez could do.
"Get out," she says.
"Adena—"
"Get out, Jagger."
There’s no clean way to do what I do. I’ve gotten good at lying about motive—saying it was strategy, saying it was control. This time, with Adena, none of those are going to fly.
“Sorry, Tiger,” I say. “I can’t leave. I really do need to shower.”
She does a double-take, exhales hard, recalculating before she gives me a cool stare. “Fine. Make it quick. I’ll wait outside.”
She exits and leaves the door open a crack, standing outside just as my phone buzzes in my pocket.
Paco.
Trouble at the gym, hombre?
I stare at the words on the screen, working my jaw as I strip off and leave my gun where I can easily reach it.
The water saturates the bandage Adena slapped on, and I rip it off and force myself to feel every second of it. I’m starting to understand why she prays. She’s reaching for a solution that doesn’t require more bloodshed.
Adena
The warehouse district stretches out around us—gray buildings melding into gray sky, chain-link fences rusted at the edges, everything anonymous and industrial.
Jagger takes a corner too fast and my body leans with his, instinct overriding anger.
The Ducati screams through the turn and straightens out, and I feel the tension in his shoulders through his jacket.
We pull up to a building that looks exactly like every other building on this street. No signs. No markers. Just cameras mounted on every corner, black eyes watching everything.
Jagger kills the engine, and the sudden silence feels too loud. I'm off the bike before he can turn around, before he can offer help I don't want.
Security nods us through without a word.
Inside, the warehouse opens up—high ceilings, fluorescent lights harsh enough to make my eyes water, pallets stacked three deep along the walls.
Men move between them with the kind of efficiency that comes from doing the same thing a hundred times: loading, counting, sorting.
Paco emerges from a side office, a knowing smirk on his face. "Boss wants fifty sets."
I don't bother responding, just push past him into the small room he's pointing at and drop my bag on the floor.
The space is barely bigger than a closet—desk, lamp, stacks of blank forms already waiting. A frosted glass window looks out onto the main floor. I can see shapes moving through it, hear voices muffled and indistinct.
Jagger leans against the doorframe, watching. His eyes shift between me and Paco like he's calculating something.
Paco drops a folder on the desk. Papers slide out—insurance forms, chain-of-custody documents, all the bureaucratic scaffolding that makes poison look legitimate.
"Insurance paperwork for the clinics," he says. "Chain of custody for the shipments. Expanding distribution, so we need everything airtight."
"Fifty sets," I repeat.
"Sí. You good?"
I don't answer, just open the folder and start sorting.
Jagger pushes off the doorframe. "I'll check back in a few," he says, not to me, to Paco.
The next few hours are a blur of controlled forgery—pulling clinic IDs from past paperwork, copying signatures from Paco’s reference sheets, matching timestamps to shipment logs, and aligning every form so the numbers flow the way a legitimate audit would expect.
About two hundred documents by the time I’m done.
All the while, I whisper the same quiet prayer: that none of these faked signatures or reconstructed custody trails ever circle back as blood on real people.
Just before midday, I realize Jagger hasn’t come to check on me. With apprehension building as to why, I push back from my desk, and go looking.
The warehouse floor spreads out before me—rows of industrial shelving loaded with unmarked boxes, workers weaving between them like they've memorized every path. At the far end, someone's set up a folding table with takeout containers and paper plates.
Voices drift over from near the pallets where Jagger and Paco are standing with two other guys I don't recognize. I move closer without meaning to, drawn by the sound of conversation, the need to be around people even if they're the wrong people.
"—move I've seen in years," one of them is saying. "Attacking la güerita in front of everyone?"
Paco laughs, sharp and mean. "That's what you get when you let them think they matter."
My stomach twists, but I keep walking, moving along the edge of the shelving like I'm just stretching my legs.
"She was just a warm body," the other guy says. "That's all any of them are to Jagger. He knew it. She didn't."
"Estúpida enough to swing on someone with witnesses everywhere," Paco continues. "Rosa saw it. Mercedes saw it. Now el jefe knows, and you know how he feels about people showing disrespect to his lieutenants."
I know it was a role, but hearing them talk about Lucia like she was just a piece of equipment Jagger used and tossed aside makes my skin crawl. It’s a reminder that in this world, the only thing keeping me from being next is the man standing at the center of it.
Jagger's voice cuts through, low and hard. "I'll handle it."
The laughter stops.
"?Estás seguro?" Paco asks.
"She put hands on my woman. My problem." No room for argument in his tone. No room for anything but certainty.
Ice floods my veins.
Jagger looks up. Sees me standing twenty feet away, half-hidden behind a pallet.
Our eyes meet.
"Paco," he says, still looking at me. "I need keys to a van."
"?Ahora?"
"Now. We're handling it together." He jerks his head toward me. "Adena. Let's go."
Every eye in the warehouse shifts to me. Paco. The two guys whose names I don't know. Workers pretending not to watch while absolutely watching. All of them waiting to see if I'll obey.
Waiting to see if I'm really his woman or just another girl who thought she mattered.
I can feel the heat of their stares, a wall of men waiting for me to flinch. It’s suffocating. I force my legs to move, stepping out from behind the pallet. I don't look at Paco or the others; I keep my eyes on Jagger. I have to follow him. There’s nowhere else for me to go in a place like this.
Jagger catches the keys Paco tosses, the metal jangling in the silence, and heads for the side door, leaving me no choice but to follow him into whatever comes next.