Jersey Boy (Devil’s Aces #1)

Chapter 1

One

Jersey Boy

The road was church.

Chrome for candles. Gasoline for incense. The choir was our exhaust.

We moved as one, a hundred feet of thunder stretched down the expressway outside Atlantic City and aimed at the ocean. Blackjack, our President, rode point, silver beard in the wind, eyes flat as a razor. He didn’t look back. He never needed to. If you couldn’t keep up, you didn’t belong.

Miami, techie and Road Captain rode left of him, loose at the shoulders, that pretty Florida tan catching neon every time a casino billboard flashed across the sky.

He had his helmet visor up like always. Wanted the world in his teeth.

To the right, 8-Ball, our Vice President, sat easy, shoulders sloped, old-timer cool, the kind of calm a man only finds after he’s lived through cages and lawyers and years that try to break you.

He lifted two fingers at a passing trooper.

Didn’t speed up. Didn’t slow down. The law watched us, and we watched the law right back.

I held the third slot. Jersey Boy. Enforcer.

Warlord on paper when need be. The one they sent when talking failed.

The Pitbull as some would say. Wind slapped my jawline tattoos and made the hoops in my ears hum.

Night air tasted like salt and hot metal.

Atlantic City ahead, a sawtooth of lights.

Behind me the line ran tight and clean. Spade, our Sergeant at Arms, rode like a fist, posture coiled, a human concussion.

Ace hovered quietly, secretary brain ticking under that small brown beard, memorizing a night that didn’t want to be remembered.

Mirage, Treasurer, kept his lane perfect, flannel snapping.

Once a corporate suit, now patched and paid in blood and books.

Snake Eyes brought up the back, black mustache clipped neat, frame still thin from chemo, eyes flicking to every mirror and shadow. Our tail gunner never blinked.

Voodoo and Jabberwocky, members without official titles, swayed to their own rhythm two bikes back, music bleeding out of Jabs’ speakers, a street song from a place that knew hurricanes by name.

Voodoo kissed a blunt between gloved fingers and grinned at death like they slept in the same bed.

Priest, our Chaplain, looked like the stained-glass Jesus they always left out of the sermons.

Six-five, muscle and myth, beard flowing, inked saints turned into sinners across both arms. Roadkill’s bike made a new tick; one he’d complain about later and then fix before dawn in his typical obsessive mechanic way.

The prospects rode hungry. Turnpike is as big as a linebacker.

Jackal patient and mean in that bartender way.

Badger all sharp skill, no roots. Raptor, green and trying not to show it.

We ate miles and spit sparks.

Blackjack’s left hand rose, two fingers chopping the air. Stagger tightens. Lanes split. Our formation folded down like a knife. Dock run. Business first. Pleasure later.

The road sank toward the water. The sky turned into a bruise over the bay.

Containers were stacked three high on the Giorlando’s pier, all teeth and rust and codes.

Bright glowing lights blew everything out to bone white.

Men in wool coats waited under a crane that moaned like something alive.

They had the casino posture: good shoes, quiet hands, smiles that never touched their eyes.

We rolled through the gate in a string and cut engines in a wave. Silence punched my eardrums. The sea kept breathing. Gulls screamed about nothing.

Blackjack swung off and the crowd shifted without knowing it did. He walked like a man who’d fought his whole life and decided to keep going. The Giorlando caporegime stepped forward with a face that had cost him money at some point, then earned it back with interest.

“You’re late,” the capo said.

Salvatore—Mercedes—Giorlando. Third son of the Giorlando family. Capo in charge of the Shipping Yards, and all the family’s car interests.

Blackjack checked his watch that wasn’t there. “No. You started early.”

It made the men in coats laugh even though they didn’t want to.

8-Ball slid in beside him, all gray-beard diplomacy, hands open, eyes reading angles.

Miami bounced on his heels and looked toward the cargo like a kid staring through a toy store window.

He loved anything that moved fast and could kill you for it.

I stood with Spade and Snake Eyes near the line of bikes, watching the edges. My job was to notice. To take notes in bruises. To end a conversation with my knuckles if someone got stupid.

A forklift complained and a container settled on a flatbed with a slam that shook the dock. Roadkill read the machine the way priests read scripture. “She needs grease,” he muttered, none too quiet.

The operator pretended not to hear him. Probably didn’t even care.

“Quick in and out,” Salvatore said, voice dry. “Your muscle. Our paperwork.”

“Muscle is the easy part,” Blackjack said.

We spread. Aces to the perimeter. Prospects to the shadows, counting bodies and exits.

Mirage took a clipboard from an underling and started tracing numbers like he was finding a pulse.

Ace stood nearby, pale eyes memorizing the whole scene.

He’d write it later in a way that would make sense if anything ever needed to make sense.

The first container opened on packs of vacuum-sealed coffee. The second on machine parts wrapped in grease paper. The third was a lone motorcycle in a crate.

Miami’s smile changed.

“That’s not on the manifest,” Mirage said, low.

“It is now,” Salvatore said.

Miami moved first because that was who he was.

He drifted to the crate like it whistled to him.

The bike inside was beautiful in a wrong way.

Black paint so deep the dock lights fell into it.

Frame geometry that wasn’t factory but wasn’t custom like some man with taste had spent months on it.

It was custom like someone had printed a blueprint and sent it to a ghost to build in a room with no windows.

“You buying or you babysitting?” I asked Salvatore.

“Anonymous client asked us to move it through. Wired a large sum.” He shrugged.

“Paid up front?” I asked.

His smile disappeared. “Large sum. Six figures.”

“For a bike?” I asked, looking at Prez in disbelief. Why would someone pay upfront, six figures, for a bike that looked average—in my tastes—at best?

Blackjack’s gaze cut to mine. I didn’t nod.

Didn’t need to. Miami was already inside the crate, hand on the triple tree, eyes unfocused like he was listening to something under the metal.

He ran a thumb along the welds. Found the tank seam with his nail.

He smelled it. He always did that. He claimed he could tell if a bike had a soul by the way the gas smelled on a cold night.

Snake Eyes drifted closer, half shadow, half ghost. “Feels wrong Prez,” he said.

“Everything feels wrong to you,” Spade interjected. He scratched at his knuckles, itching for a reason to bleed.

“Wrong can save your life,” Snake Eyes said. His voice was between a dry cough and a sermon.

“Prospects,” Blackjack called without looking. “Perimeter. Nobody new steps on this pier.”

“Yes, Prez,” Turnpike said, body already moving. Jackal slipped behind a stack of pallets and vanished. Badger’s eyes mapped fire exits and chokepoints. Raptor watched the water and forgot to breathe.

“Something wrong?” Salvatore asked.

Blackjack turned to him. Stared at Mirage for a brief moment before turning back to the capo. “You want us to move some stuff, including an item not on the manifest.”

“And that’s a problem for you? You’ve moved stuff unlisted before.”

Blackjack chuckled, tilted his head with a crack. “Not a problem. Just prefer a head’s up. You’ll owe us.”

Salvatore nodded with a smirk. “You’ll see some extra dough. Oh, and head’s up.”

Blackjack let out a single laugh that was more like a grunt.

The crane swung again. Another container clanged down and vomited cold air and the smell of oil. Mirage flipped through pages and tried to be unimpressed. Salvatore kept talking about numbers like numbers meant anything to metal.

“What’s the hurry?” 8-Ball asked him quietly.

“Storm coming,” Salvatore said. “We want to tuck this away before the wind changes.”

There wasn’t a cloud in the sky. I filed it for later.

Priest wandered close, rolling his shoulders, flexing hands big enough to break a jaw like a wishbone. “You want me to bless this crate, brother?” he asked Miami.

Miami didn’t look up. “Already holy.”

“You and I got different churches,” Priest said with a chuckle.

“Same god. Same speed,” Miami said. He looked over at me, eyes bright. “You feel that?”

“What.”

“Like it’s humming.”

“It’s a machine.”

“So am I.”

I smirked.

Salvatore watched us watch the bike. His men kept their hands in their pockets too long as a new car idled at the lot’s edge and left without coming closer. The night had a scratch in the vinyl.

Blackjack stepped in. “We’re not here to stand around. What’s the pull out?”

“Four pallets in one truck to the Mirage, two in another to Lucky Jacks, one in the third to the north lot for a truck,” Salvatore said.

“And that.” He jerked his chin at the black bike.

“That goes to a storage unit drop site west of here. We have a key. We have a guy who will watch it until pick up.”

“Then your guy can move it,” Spade said.

“Our guy doesn’t want a soft hand to move it,” Salvatore said. “He wants you.”

“We’re not furniture movers,” I said.

“You are what the family pays you to be,” Salvatore snapped, smile fading.

8-Ball breathed out slow. “Work is work,” he said. “We’ll help roll it, then we’re gone. Nobody saddles it. Nobody starts it. Nobody takes anything that doesn’t belong to us.” He gave Miami a look that was not unkind and not a suggestion.