Chapter 13 #2
The backpack sat dead center on the middle shelf. I stepped in, lifted it out, and set it on a nearby worktable.
“Ready?” Valkyrie asked.
“No,” I said. “But let’s do it anyway.”
I unzipped the pack and pulled the ledger free.
It always hit me the same way, that book. The leather, worn but not weak. Pages bulging slightly from the amount of lives crammed inside.
I opened to the sections I’d mentally marked.
“This one,” I said, flipping to a page webbed with lines between initials and numbers. “Steel Serpents and BC—Bolivar Cartel. Routes in and out of Philly.”
I held the book flat and raised my phone. The camera shutter confirmed the photos being taken. Click. Click.
Another page. This one a neat list of Roman’s dock numbers, with notes about “third-party leverage” and “potential Russian pivot.” Another picture. Then another.
“Roman’s going to enjoy this light reading,” Valkyrie said.
“He asked for a peek behind his own curtains,” I said. “We’re just giving him the flashlight.”
I turned to the marked section referencing “The Russian.” The same title repeated in tidy, impersonal handwriting. Beside it, little symbols—half circles, triangles—like whoever wrote it didn’t want to spell out exactly how important that piece was, just in case someone else ever read it.
“Definitely this,” I muttered.
“Smile,” Valkyrie said dryly.
I snapped it.
When I shifted for one last shot of an overview—names, arrows, codes all on one spread—her hand moved at the same time as mine. Fingers brushing the edge of the page just where mine was about to settle.
Skin on skin.
It wasn’t much. Just that small, rough slide of callus over callus. But something about being in that cold concrete box with death on paper between us and war humming above made it feel like a live wire.
We both stilled.
Her fingers didn’t pull back right away. Neither did mine.
For a heartbeat, the ledger stopped being a bomb and turned into just an excuse for our hands to exist in the same small space.
I looked up.
Her eyes were already on me. Not assessing. Not calculating an angle or a threat. Just… there. Dark. Tired. Softened at the very edges in a way I’d never seen on her face when she was awake.
“You never asked my name,” she said quietly.
It hit me then. She was right.
I’d been shot at with her. Nearly bled with her. Slept on her floor. Trusted her with a book that could get us all killed. And I still only knew her by the patches she wore on her cut.
“You never offered,” I said, almost gently.
Her mouth quirked.
“Bronwen,” she said. “That’s what it says on the old papers and the old scars. Valkyrie’s what it says on my cut. You get to pick.”
“Bronwen,” I repeated, tasting it. It fit her worse and better at the same time. “I’m Evan.”
She huffed out a breath that might’ve been a laugh. “Jersey Boy suits you better,” she said. Then, softer, “But… Evan works.”
Her hand finally withdrew from the page. She let it fall to her side instead of going for a second joke.
“Earlier,” she said. “At the yard. You could’ve stayed where you were. Let that Serpent take the shot. It would’ve been clean. Smart. Self-preserving.”
“Is that what you wish I did?” I asked.
Her eyes narrowed a fraction. “No,” she said. “I’m saying you didn’t. You moved. You caught him before he caught me.”
She took a breath like this cost her more than the sprint into gunfire had.
“Thank you,” she said. No sarcasm. No buffer. Just the words.
It landed heavier than any compliment I’d taken from a man twice her size.
“Yeah,” I said quietly. “You’d have done the same.”
“I did,” she said. “At the hospital.”
Fair.
We stood there, close enough that I could see the little scar just beneath her jawline, the one a tattoo hadn’t quite covered. Her gaze dropped once to my mouth before coming back up. Mine did something similar. Instinct. Gravity.
If the world had been kind for two seconds in a row, I might’ve closed that space.
Instead, the ceiling shook.
It wasn’t subtle. Dust sifted down from the floorboards above us. The bare bulb rattled on its chain. A split-second later, the distant crackle of gunfire filtered through concrete—muffled, but unmistakable. Someone shouted. The faint roar of engines, too loud and too many to be bikes.
We both jerked back at the same time.
“Fuck,” she breathed.
I snapped the ledger shut, shoved it into the bag, and yanked the zipper shut. Valkyrie swung the safe open wider and slid the backpack back onto its shelf. No ceremony this time. Just necessity.
She twisted the key, yanked it out, slammed the safe door, slammed the heavy outer door, locked it on muscle memory.
Another burst of gunfire above, closer now. A bottle shattered. Somewhere, someone screamed.
“Move,” she snapped.
We hit the stairs at a run.
The main room was chaos.
Gunshots turned into thunder as soon as we hit the top step.
The front windows of the clubhouse were already spiderwebbed or blown out entirely, glass glittering on the floor.
Girls took cover behind overturned tables, bar stools, whatever they could grab.
Indigo barked positions from somewhere near the door.
Medusa was yelling something gleeful and obscene from behind a flipped couch.
The roar of engines outside wasn’t from bikes. It was heavier. Guttural. SUVs.
“Gate’s hit!” Cobra shouted from somewhere by the wall. “They rammed the corner! One vehicle breached the fence!”
“Inside?” Liberty’s voice cut through like a blade.
“At least one,” Indigo answered.
We ducked as another spray of bullets chewed through the already broken glass and punched new holes in the far wall. Plaster puffed. A bottle on a shelf evaporated in a flash of liquid and shards.
“Positions!” Liberty barked. “Keep them off the windows and doors! Don’t bunch up! We have to push them out!”
Valkyrie grabbed my sleeve, yanked me low behind an upended table.
“At least two trucks on the road,” she said. “Maybe more. They’re probing and hitting us at the same time.”
“Cartel?” I asked.
She stared at me and nodded to confirm.
A sharp cry cut through the gunfire.
Not fear. Pain.
It came from outside, near the yard.
“Anaconda!” someone yelled.
“Fuck,” Valkyrie hissed.
A brief pause in the gunfire allowed Liberty and all the others to push outside.
As I shadowed Valkyrie and approached the door, another sound cut across my brain.
A strangled, gurgling cough from the bar area. The unmistakable thump of a body being thrown against wood.
I twisted.
California was behind the bar, or had been.
Now, a man in black was halfway over the counter with his hand locked around her throat.
He’d come in through the side window I hadn’t even noticed was broken yet.
His other hand was fisted in her hair, slamming her head back into a row of bottles.
Glass shattered around them, liquor pouring down like cheap rain.
He barked something in Spanish I didn’t catch and yanked her forward only to smash her into the bar again.
Her feet kicked uselessly, boots scraping against liquor-slick floor.
“Valkyrie!” I snapped. “Cali!”
Her head whipped in the same direction. Her face went flat, soft edges gone.
Before she could react further, I was already on the move.
I vaulted over a table.
The ground between me and the bar felt longer than it was. Bullets zinged and whined somewhere to my right, but for once I didn’t give a shit about trajectories. The man had a gun on his hip and his hand on Cali.
“Hey!” I roared.
He turned his head, just enough. Dark eyes, white teeth, blood on his knuckles, that cartel look—money and violence and arrogance all poured into one too-clean black shirt.
That fraction of attention was all I needed.
I hit him shoulder-first.
We crashed into the shelves behind the bar. More glass exploded and showered over us. His hand slipped off Cali’s throat as his balance went to hell. We tumbled sideways in a tangle of limbs.
He swung wild, fist clipping my cheek hard enough to send stars across my vision. I grunted, grip locking on his wrist before he could go for his gun. He was big. Strong. Not just a suit with soft hands. He’d done this before.
He jerked his head forward. The headbutt got me across the bridge of the nose. Pain flared white. My eyes watered. I tasted iron.
Good. I was awake now.
I drove my knee up into his ribs. Felt something give. He snarled, tried to wrench free. We slammed into the bar again, this time with his back taking most of it. A row of shot glasses tipped and shattered around his head.
His hand finally broke my grip and went for his gun.
I didn’t think. I grabbed the nearest thing my fingers landed on.
A bottle. Already broken. Top missing. Jagged glass teeth.
I shoved him harder into the bar, pinning his gun arm as best I could with my weight. He was strong, bucking against me, spitting curses, teeth bared. I could hear Cali coughing behind me, wet and desperate, trying to get air into her kicked-in lungs.
He spat at me, tried to turn his head to bite.
I slammed the broken bottle into the side of his throat.
Not once. Not a half-hearted jab either. I drove it in, using the edge of the bar for leverage. I felt the resistance of skin, the snap of something arterial, the sudden give as it broke through.
Hot spray hit my face, my hands, and the wood.
His eyes went wide. The something is wrong kind of wide. The bottle lodged and my fingers slid, slick and red. He gargled something that might’ve been a word and then wasn’t anything at all.
His body went heavy under mine.
I let the glass go and grabbed his gun hand, prying the weapon out of fingers already losing strength. He twitched once, twice, then slumped far enough that gravity peeled him off the bar and onto the floor in a wet heap.
“Cali,” I said, turning.