Chapter 7
Seven
Jersey Boy
Riding behind Valkyrie felt like chasing a bullet.
She ate up the road, low over the bars, blonde hair beating the wind where it slipped from the tie at the nape of her neck. Her cut snapped against her back. Shore Vipers patch centered.
My bike hummed under me, steady and familiar, but everything else felt wrong. Wrong sky. Wrong streets. Wrong patch leading the way.
Miami was somewhere behind us, in a hospital on lockdown, half held together by screws and stitches. I should have been there. I should have been in the hallway waiting for another suit with a gun, not chasing some stranger into her territory with a war manual on my back.
The backpack was a constant reminder of what I was really riding with. It felt heavier with every mile. Not just leather and paper. Bolivar. Vincino. Russians. Yakuza. Steel Serpents. All crammed into one book that shouldn’t exist.
If Miami hadn’t pulled it from that bike, it would still be hidden in metal and bolts. Unknown. Safer maybe. Or maybe we would all be dead already.
I didn’t know which version of that future scared me more.
No phone. No way to call home. No way to tell Blackjack I was still breathing. He had heard gunshots and then my line had cut. For all he knew I was still sprawled on a hospital floor with a bullet in my skull and the ledger in a stranger’s hands.
The thought twisted my gut.
Focus. Task in order. I had to get somewhere safe enough to breathe, then find a way to reach him. Until then, the mission was simple. Keep riding. Keep the bags contents safe. Stay alive.
Harder than it sounded.
The landscape shifted as we moved farther north. Quieter streets, smaller businesses, more traffic. Mom-and-pop shops with bars over the windows. Old diners. Murals of saints and lost boys spray painted on brick. Women on porches smoking. Kids on bikes who stopped pedaling to watch us pass.
I could feel the line when we crossed it. No sign or marker, just a tightening in the air.
Valkyrie slowed only when we approached a fenced-in compound at the edge of an old industrial strip.
Big metal gate. Razor wire on top. Old “NO TRESPASSING” signs shot up and rusting. Beyond the fence I saw a spread of buildings that had once been a machine shop or a small warehouse. Now they held bikes, a front yard of scrap, and the low thrum of music pulsed under it all.
Two women stood just inside the fence line. Both armed. One had a shotgun resting over her forearms like it weighed nothing. The other leaned on a baseball bat with nails driven into the top, nose ring glinting, shaved sides of her head inked with waves and serpents.
They watched Valkyrie approach. They watched me even harder.
Valkyrie flashed a hand signal, something between military and street. The gate rolled aside with an ugly metal groan.
I followed her in.
Eyes tracked us from all directions. Upper windows. Shadows near the side doors. The compound was awake even if the world outside was still waking up.
Valkyrie cut her engine in front of the biggest building. I parked a few feet back, keeping the entrance in my periphery. The backpack felt even heavier when I swung my leg off.
I took my helmet off and hooked it on my bars. No reason to hide. The cut on my back already shouted who I was.
A door in the front of the building slammed open so hard it bounced against its stopper.
Lady Liberty stormed out like she was leading a charge. I knew who she was immediately just from how she carried herself and her stature.
Was she petite? Yeah. But she was the kind of small that looked like it was carved from iron.
Long black hair spilled from beneath a bandana tied over her head.
Tattoos climbed her throat and wrapped around the sides of her face.
One arm, from fingertips to shoulder, was completely blacked out, a solid ink sleeve.
The other was a riot of color and lines.
Black tank under her cut. Black shorts and black tights.
Boots. Eyes that had seen more than I wanted to think about.
She had a phone pressed to her ear and a look that said someone was about to bleed.
Her gaze landed on me and held. It was like being pinned to a wall without being touched.
“He’s here,” she said into the phone. “Alive. Looks to be in one piece.”
Her lips curled a little on the last part, like she was disappointed.
She stalked down the steps toward me, stopped close enough that I could see the fine lines at the corners of her eyes, formed from squinting into the sun and glaring at idiots.
“Here,” she said.
She tossed the phone. Hard. I caught it out of reflex, palm stinging.
“Your President wants to yell in your ear,” she added.
I lifted the phone, not sure if I was more worried about what Blackjack would say or what Lady Liberty would do if I said the wrong thing.
“Yeah,” I said.
“Where the fuck have you been?” Blackjack’s voice snapped through the line. “You vanish mid-sentence, I hear shots, and then nothing.”
“Phone took a bullet,” I said. My hand still tingled. “Wasn’t me. I’m still pretty.”
“Debatable,” he said. I heard something in the background, maybe Mirage or Spade muttering. “Talk. Fast.”
“Miami’s alive,” I said. “I saw him. He’s banged up in places I didn’t know you could break, but he seemed fixable. He woke up long enough to talk. He confirmed he pulled what was in the bike before the crash and stuffed it in a backpack. That backpack is here. On me.”
“Contents safe?” Blackjack asked. His voice was flatter now. Dangerous.
“Yes,” I replied.
Silence. Then a low curse.
“Where is the rest of it?” he asked. “Whatever else was in that pack.”
“In the bag,” I said. “I didn’t touch the tech. Just the book. I can feel it. This is worse than I expected. If someone knows Miami pulled this, if someone knows I have it, you can kiss any quiet days goodbye.”
“Too late for quiet,” Blackjack said. “What about the hospital?”
“A shooter showed up,” I said. “Suit on, gun low. Was walking straight for Miami’s room.
Valkyrie came in hot, told me to get down, took the first shots.
Hit him twice, maybe three times. He ran.
We had an active shooter alarm. Security and cops flooded the place.
She dragged me out a side exit before they could decide the guy with the patch was involved in the problem. ”
“And the cameras?” he asked.
“She says they have someone who can wipe them. They also have a girl inside who is going to keep eyes on Miami.”
“You trust that?” he asked.
I looked over at Valkyrie. She was standing beside Liberty now, head tilted, watching me with those icy eyes. Arms crossed, jaw tight. Other Vipers had gathered behind them. A wall of ink and leather.
“I trust that anyone who just put themselves between me and a bullet isn’t trying to sell me out before lunch,” I said. “Beyond that, trust is expensive. So, we’ll see.”
Blackjack grunted.
“Where are you now? Clubhouse or some other location?” he asked.
“Clubhouse,” I said. “Liberty dragged me here on a leash. She doesn’t look thrilled.”
“I’d be more worried if she was,” he said. “Listen to her, but don’t let that bag out of your sight. Not for anything. Not even if she says she’ll keep it safe for you. That bag isn’t leaving your back until I say so. You understand me?”
“Loud and clear,” I said.
“Eight-Ball is heading up there later,” he added. “I am sending him as my voice. You’ll stick with him once he arrives. Until then, Liberty’s house, Liberty’s rules. You fuck this up, you don’t just answer to me. You answer to every brother who has to live with what comes next.”
“Yes, Prez,” I said. “Sorry this is happening.”
“Don’t apologize for almost dying,” he said. “You apologize to me only when you do die.”
I nodded with a smirk.
Lady Liberty then walked over and snatched the phone back the second it left my ear. She didn’t move far, just paced in one tight circle in front of me.
“Alice,” she said before she walked a few steps away, her back partially to me, but her voice carried.
I could still hear Blackjack on the other end, his tone low and controlled, but not the words. Liberty didn’t bother to lower hers.
“You brought a war onto my turf,” she said. “Into my hospital. You know how I feel about that.”
Pause. Blackjack answered something.
“You didn’t plan on it,” she repeated. “I believe that. You’re a lot of things, Alice, but you’re not stupid enough to piss on my floors on purpose. But intention doesn’t change fallout.”
Her gaze slid over her shoulder toward me, assessing, measuring. I stood still. No point in pretending I wasn’t listening.
“He has a bag on his back that might be a nuclear bomb by the way I can tell he’s protecting it,” she said.
“You think I’m going to just let him ride off into the sunset with it and hope your boy doesn’t get ventilated in the next twenty-four hours?
I need to know what’s in my house. Or I make my own way to the answer. ”
She said it casually, but I heard the threat under it. If she couldn’t get the information from us, she’d rip it out of the canvas herself, and then all bets were off.
Blackjack’s voice came through faintly, sharper. She listened, eyes narrowing.
“I don’t want a war with you,” she said eventually.
“You know that. I have enough to keep me busy without adding your bullshit into the mix. But from where I’m standing, war’s already here.
Shots were fired. Blood was spilled. That makes my girls a target.
So, you tell me how I’m supposed to feel generous when the match was in your hand? ”
Another pause.
Her shoulders eased a fraction. It was the tiniest shift, but it was there.