Chapter 9
Nine
Jersey Boy
Morning came in sideways.
I woke up to a thin strip of light cutting across my face and the sound of a bike starting somewhere in the yard. For a second I forgot where I was. The ceiling was wrong. The walls were darker. There were knives instead of my usual collection of dented posters and piles of old poker chips.
Then the backpack strap dug into my fingers, and it all came back.
The Shore Viper’s clubhouse. Valkyrie’s room. Air mattress. A bag full of someone else’s nuclear option sitting against my ribs because even in my sleep my hand hadn’t left it.
I blinked the blur out of my eyes and turned my head.
Valkyrie was already up.
She sat on a chair by the door looking to the window, black tank top, hair pulled back in a loose knot, forearms braced on her thighs. The tattoos on her throat and arms looked darker in the early light.
“You snore,” she said without looking over.
“Lies,” I said. My voice came out rough. “I’m a graceful sleeper. Silent as a cat.”
“A dying cat maybe,” she replied.
“How long was I out?” I asked.
“All night,” she said. “You were asleep before I finished pretending not to watch you. You didn’t move. Good for your health. Terrible if someone tried to kill you.”
“Lucky for both of us your hospitality extended to not slitting my throat,” I said. “Appreciate that.”
She hummed, noncommittal.
For a moment we just sat there in a shared silence. I could hear the compound waking on the other side of the walls. Voices in the hall. Footsteps. A door closing. The faint rattle of dishes in a kitchen.
“Eight-Ball and Turnpike should be here soon,” she said finally. “Liberty got a text.”
Something in my chest unclenched. “They ride okay?” I asked.
“I suppose if they’ll be here soon,” she said. “You’ll see for yourself in a minute. Liberty wants you there when they pull in.”
“Of course she does,” I said. “Can’t have me sneaking out the back while the grown-ups talk.”
Her eyes slid to me. “If you were going to sneak out,” she said, “last night was your best shot. You stayed. Smarter choice.”
“Wasn’t staying for you,” I said automatically.
Her gaze dipped to the backpack strap still looped around my wrist. “No,” she said. “You stayed for that. And for him.”
Miami in his hospital bed. Bruised and broken.
I let out a sigh and then stood, bones protesting. “Let’s go,” I said. “If my VP sees me in a girl’s room he may question what I was doing here and I’ll never live it down.”
She smirked. “You assume he’s not going to drag that out of you later anyway.”
Viper territory looked different in the morning.
Last night it had been all shadows and light pools, sharp edges under lamps. Now the sun washed the yard in a flat, honest gray. The fence, the razor wire, the weld scars on the gates, the old factory bones behind all of it. It fit them. Rough. Scarred. Solid.
I stood on the cracked concrete just inside the main building’s doorway and watched the front gate.
Vipers moved through the yard in their own quiet rhythm.
Diamondback under the hood of a truck already.
Indigo with a shotgun resting lazy in the crook of her arm, watching the road as if she could will trouble into giving itself up.
Raven sat on the hood of a car with a notebook in her lap, doodling. Cali swept the stoop with earbuds in.
Then I heard it. Two bikes’ engines approaching.
Even before I saw them, I knew.
The gate groaned open and 8-Ball rolled through first, Turnpike on his flank.
8-Ball looked the same as he always did.
Gray in his beard, lines around his eyes from squinting into sun and trouble.
No bullshit posture. Vice President patch catching the early light.
Turnpike filled his saddle like he filled doorways, big farm-boy build packed into denim and leather, prospect rocker on his cut, jaw tight as he scanned the yard.
Seeing them ride into someone else’s compound with our patch on their backs twisted something inside me. Relief. Pride. And an itch between my shoulders that hated having my people show their throats on someone else’s ground.
Liberty was already crossing the yard to meet them. Valkyrie left my side and flanked her. Rosé hung back half a step, taking everything in with that VP gaze. The Shore Vipers peeled in closer. Not crowding. Not stupid. Just watching.
8-Ball killed his engine and swung a leg over. Turnpike did the same. Both of them set their boots careful and straight, facing the women who owned this place.
“Blackjack sends his regards,” 8-Ball said to Liberty. He kept his tone neutral. Respectful. No bow.
“Blackjack sends a lot of things,” Liberty said. “A headache this time.”
Turnpike’s gaze flicked past them and found me in the doorway. His shoulders dropped a fraction as he tilted his chin to acknowledge my presence.
Valkyrie cut her eyes at me like she noticed his shift.
Liberty jerked her chin toward me. “As you can see your boy is alive,” she said. “You can tell Alice that part went right. We kept him alive for the night.”
8-Ball followed her glance, found me, and the careful stoicism cracked. He crossed the distance in several long strides.
I stepped out to meet him.
He grabbed me by the back of the neck and pulled our foreheads together, hard enough to sting. It was half headbutt, half hug.
“Thought I was going to have to put your picture on the wall,” he said. “Would have been an ugly way to start a morning.”
“You ain’t that lucky,” I said. My throat went tight anyway. I squeezed his shoulder once, then let go.
Turnpike hovered just behind him. “Good to see you still breathing, brother,” he said.
“You too,” I said.
“Here,” 8-Ball said as he pulled something from his cut and slapped it into my hand. A phone. New. Same model. Already powered on.
“Prez had Mirage set it up last night,” he said. “Numbers are in there. Club, work, the usual degenerates. You owe him a beer for having Spade sit still for half an hour while he re-entered all the contacts.”
“Fair,” I snorted.
Liberty let us have our moment, then cut in with all the subtlety of a sharpened axe. “Good, everyone’s still full of feelings,” she said. “Now let’s get to business. Inside. My office.”
Her gaze moved over us, ticking names in the air. “Me. Rosé. Valkyrie. Eight-Ball. Turnpike. Jersey Boy. Blackjack on a wire. Everyone else, back to your posts.”
There were no arguments.
***
Liberty’s office suited her.
It had a big metal desk that looked like it had been stolen from a shipyard, scarred and heavy.
One wall was covered in photographs. Girls with black eyes and bandaged arms, smiling with fresh cuts on their shoulders.
Bikes lined up. Bars reclaimed. A younger Liberty with shorter hair and blood on her knuckles.
The other wall was maps. Territory. Routes. Pins. Notes in tight handwriting. It was the same kind of skeleton we had in Blackjack’s office, but with different arteries.
She dropped into the chair behind the desk.
Rosé leaned against the filing cabinet to her right.
Valkyrie took up space near the door. 8-Ball and Turnpike took the two chairs opposite the desk like they’d been summoned to the principal’s office.
I stood off to the side, close enough that if I placed the bag down, I could react before anyone else acted stupid.
8-Ball set his phone on the desk and hit speaker. It rang once.
“Alice,” Liberty said before he could even finish saying hello. “Your VP and your boys are in my room. Time for you to stop dancing around and tell me what you dragged into my clubhouse.”
Blackjack’s voice came through, tinnier over the phone but still heavy. “Good morning to you too,” he said. “Eight, you breathing?”
“For now,” 8-Ball said. “Jersey too. He looks like shit, as usual.”
“Then the day’s starting off better than it could’ve,” Blackjack said. “Liberty, you got the place locked down?”
“It’s my house,” she said. “It’s always locked down. Question is, are we locking something in or keeping something out? So, that depends on what you’re about to say next.”
“You saw the bag,” Blackjack said. “Obviously the bike wasn’t carrying dope or guns. We wouldn’t be treating this so carefully. It’s something else. Are you sure you want this to be made your business more than it already is?”
“My enforcer saw your boy walk into that hospital empty and walk out with a pack like his spine depended on it,” Liberty said.
“She saw a suit with a gun follow him with intent. Watched that same suit try to take him out and traded bullets with him in the hallway because of this bag. That makes it my business.”
“Fair enough,” Blackjack said. “That’s why we’re having this conversation instead of you finding out through body bags.”
Liberty tapped her fingers once on the metal.
“Before we go deeper,” she said, “I want it clear. If I put my girls between this mess and your club, you don’t get to freeze me out later.
No half-truths. No ‘that’s family business’ bullshit.
You want my coils around this, you give me full access to whatever you know.
Both now and if it gets worse. That’s the deal. ”
There was a pause on the other end. “You always did drive a hard bargain,” Blackjack said. “What are you asking for exactly?”
“I want a hand on the wheel,” she said. “If this bag ends up getting leveraged, traded, burned, or dropped in somebody’s lap, my club gets a say.
I want your word you don’t make a move involving this thing without me or my VP present, one way or another.
No side deals. No secret shipments. And if this turns into a war that bleeds into our streets, your boys stand shoulder to shoulder with my girls. No hesitation.”
8-Ball met my eyes. We didn’t need words. This was exactly what we had hoped for and exactly what scared the shit out of us too.