Chapter 4
Four
Jersey Boy
Miami in Viper country.
The words hung in the air like smoke that wouldn’t clear.
Nobody said anything at first. Blackjack just stared past us, eyes locked on some point on the wall. The whole room seemed to tilt around his silence. You could feel every man at that table fighting the same urge to move, to act, to fix it.
Priest was the first to break. He shoved his chair back hard enough that it scraped the floor like a gunshot and slammed his fist into the wall. Drywall dented, a little snow of white dust drifting down.
“Fuck,” he said under his breath.
Roadkill had one hand in his hair; fingers pressed to his scalp like he could push the worry out. Snake Eyes stared at the table and blinked slowly. Voodoo crossed himself in a lazy, half-sarcastic way, then did it again more seriously.
My chest felt tight. Miami’s empty chair was a neon sign now, a blinking warning light.
I kept seeing him laughing on that blacked-out bike, head tipped back, that idiot grin on his face like he was untouchable.
Now he was somewhere under hospital lights with strangers cutting him open or doing who fucking knows what. Alone.
“What about Quinn?” Mirage asked quietly. “Someone needs to tell her.”
“Not yet,” Blackjack said. His voice was rough but steady. “Not until we know if she’s getting a bedside or a goodbye.”
It was brutal, but it was true. Telling Quinn too early would just set her on fire, and there was already too much burning going on in all of us. No reason to throw her into the mix too.
Ace shifted the pen between his fingers. “Prez… how was he even that far north?” he asked. “Redline’s south. He texted he was there.”
“Maybe they moved him,” Roadkill said. “Closest trauma center, maybe the ambulance… I don’t know.”
I shook my head. “If they scooped him near Redline, he would’ve gone to Memorial,” I said. “Shoreline’s farther, and it’s up past the line. They don’t cross districts unless they’re closer. Or unless he was already near there.”
Blackjack’s eyes came back into focus and pinned me. “Say it straight, Jersey,” he said.
“He left Redline,” I said. “He had to. You told him to sit tight. He didn’t. That means he felt something. He wouldn’t blow off a direct order from you just for a joyride.”
“Maybe he sniffed out a tail,” Snake Eyes murmured.
“Maybe he sniffed out something in that bike,” Spade jumped in. “Something that made him want it farther from home.”
“Or closer to somewhere else,” Mirage said.
Turnpike cleared his throat. He rarely spoke in Church unless directly asked, but his brow was furrowed hard now.
“We got that other spot up that way, right?” he said.
“Off the grid. The one with the shitty little cinderblock garage. You sent me there once with Roadkill to stash that Charger once a long time ago.”
“The north site,” I said.
Blackjack’s head turned slowly toward the prospects’ bench. Any other MC wouldn’t allow their prospects into church unless patched in. Blackjack was different. He considered their opinions and weighed them just like everyone else. “Who else in this room knows that place?” he asked.
“Me,” Roadkill said. “Mirage. Ace. Spade. Snake Eyes. Miami. Voodoo. Jabs. You, 8-Ball. Jersey. That’s it.”
“Nobody else,” Mirage added. “No family. No old ladies. No friends.”
“Now Jackal, Badger, and Raptor too,” Spade said.
Blackjack nodded once, mind already racing. “If he was headed for Shore Viper country,” he said, “he was probably aiming for that site. North side’s closer to their line. Quieter. Less eyes. If he felt Redline wasn’t safe, that’s where he’d go.”
The idea that Miami hadn’t just randomly wrecked, that he’d made a call, a choice, calmed something in me and twisted something else.
“He thought he was protecting us,” I said. “And the bike.”
Spade’s jaw clenched. “Or he thought the storm was coming to Redline and he didn’t want to be in the doorway when it hit.”
Snake Eyes blew out a breath. “I told you I had a bad feeling about this,” he said.
Spade shot him a look. “You always have a bad feeling.”
“Clock’s right twice a day,” Snake Eyes replied.
Blackjack slammed his palm down, not hard but final. “Enough,” he said. “Speculation is just us scaring ourselves for free. Facts. Miami took the bike from Redline toward the north site, somewhere between there and Viper turf he went down, and now he’s at Shoreline General.”
Ace scratched one last note and set his pen aside. “So, what’s the move?” he asked.
“We finish Church,” Blackjack said. “Then we start making moves.”
He straightened in his chair, turned his gaze on us one by one.
“Nothing we said about the bike changes,” he said.
“It stays ours until we’re paid in full.
We keep our mouths shut about what happened tonight until I talk to Roman.
You don’t mention Steel Serpents, drops, or wrecks to anyone who isn’t sitting in this room. Prospects included.”
All four prospects answered in unison. “Yes, Prez.”
“Mirage,” Blackjack said. “You start running numbers on a new rate. Hazard, discretion, retroactive for tonight. When I sit down with Roman, I want a figure that makes his eye twitch.”
Mirage gave a short nod. “I’ll have it.”
“Ace,” Blackjack went on. “Minutes locked down. Nobody sees ’em but me and 8-Ball.”
Ace tapped his pad. “Got it.”
“Spade, Priest,” Blackjack said. “Start preparing everyone. If this turns into something ugly, I don’t want anyone surprised when the first shot gets fired and I want this place ready to be locked into a fortress at the drop of a dime.”
Priest’s knuckles cracked again. Spade’s lips curved into something that wasn’t quite a smile.
“Snake Eyes,” Blackjack said. “You get me everything you can sniff out on cops, EMTs, tow companies, and any eyes near that crash. Who called it in. Who responded. And what happened exactly.”
Snake Eyes nodded slowly. “On it.”
Blackjack leaned back. “Church is adjourned,” he said. “Brothers, keep your heads. Watch our streets. Nobody does anything stupid on their own.”
Chairs scraped again as everyone rose. The room filled with the low rustle of leather and the clink of chains and buckles. Men touched shoulders, muttered short prayers, curses, promises.
I stood, but stayed where I was. I knew that look on Blackjack’s face. He was in move-making mode.
He pushed his chair back and stood. “Jersey,” he said. “With me.”
Only me. No one else.
He left the chapel without checking if I followed.
He didn’t have to. I was on his heels down the hallway, the sound of Church fading behind us, the noise from the bar growing ahead.
When we passed through the main room, heads turned, questions hanging in eyes and never making it to mouths.
Tanya stood behind the bar, hand wrapped around a rag she hadn’t moved for a full minute. Vicky and Eve weren’t there. Thank God.
Blackjack didn’t slow. He cut straight for the door at the back marked OFFICE and shouldered it open. I slipped in after him and shut it, the click of the latch sealing us into a smaller, quieter world.
His office smelled like smoke and paper and old leather. Maps of the city were pinned to the wall, covered in colored pins and lines showing territories, routes, trouble spots. A safe sat behind the desk. A gun lay atop a stack of ledgers like it had been set down absentmindedly between tasks.
Blackjack dropped into his chair with a grunt and pulled his phone out. The light from the screen painted his beard in blue.
“First, Roman,” he said.
I leaned against the filing cabinet, arms crossed, heart still running too fast. I knew better than to talk now. My job was to watch, listen, and be ready.
He scrolled through a short list of numbers and hit one. The line rang twice, then a voice answered. Italian, smooth, controlled.
“Pronto.”
“Roman,” Blackjack said. “It’s Alice.”
He hardly ever used his real name. Never with us. Hearing it now made the hairs on my neck stand.
There was a pause on the other end. “Blackjack,” Roman Giorlando said. “To what do I owe the pleasure at this hour?”
Pleasure. Yeah.
“We got a problem,” Blackjack said. “Tonight’s dock shipment. The special cargo your people asked us to move.”
There was a pause just a fraction too long. “You’ll have to be more specific,” Roman said. “My family moves a lot of cargo.”
“The blacked-out bike that came in off your pier,” Blackjack said.
“No markings, no paperwork. Came off one of your containers. We were told to take it to a secure unit. Contact name Carlo. No show at the drop. Instead, we got greeted by mercenaries on bikes with possible Vincino money all over them.”
Silence. Not the smug kind. The dangerous kind. I watched Blackjack’s eyes and saw something shift there.
“When,” Roman started, “did I ask you to move a bike?”
Blackjack’s jaw tightened. “Your capo, your son. Salvatore. He said it came through, anonymous client, large pay, six figures. It was your containers, your men. Salvatore’s domain.”
“That may be,” Roman said. His voice had cooled. Not with anger, with something else. Confusion. “But I did not authorize any special cargo involving some motorcycle. Nor did I order my men to involve your club in such a delivery.”
“You telling me your sons are freelancing now?” Blackjack asked. No mockery, just steel.
“I am telling you,” Roman said carefully, “that this is the first I am hearing of any such transaction. No one brought me paperwork. No one asked for my blessing. If anyone is slipping things through my docks without my knowledge, I have a breach. If my own blood is making deals behind my back, I have an even bigger one.”
It was the first time I’d ever heard Roman sound off-balance. Not out of control. Just genuinely surprised. The Don of Atlantic City, the man whose fingerprints were on every dollar that mattered, had been left out of the loop.