Chapter 14
Fourteen
Valkyrie
By the time the Devil’s Aces compound came into view, the sky over Atlantic City looked bruised.
Not pretty purple-and-gold sunset bruised. Just that flat, exhausted gray that meant night was coming whether you were ready for it or not.
The Aces’ clubhouse sat off the main drag, tucked behind old warehouses and dead lots, close enough to taste the ocean and far enough the tourists never saw it. High chain-link fence topped with razor wire. A heavy gate. Cameras. Dog of a building sitting squat behind it, low and wide and waiting.
Very different from our old factory with its ghosts and graffiti.
Same feeling in the air, though.
Territory.
Jersey Boy rode point, my front tire steady in his mirror the whole way down. We’d barely spoken on the trip. Didn’t need to. The road noise and the war in both our heads did the talking for us.
As we rolled up, two Devils were already at the gate.
One with tattoos creeping up his throat like ivy, patch on his cut said Spade. The other had a smirk built into his face. His patch read Mirage. Both had their guns just low enough to be polite but just high enough to remind you where you were.
Mirage lifted two fingers in a lazy salute when he saw us. “Open up,” he said.
The gate groaned open, and we rolled in.
The yard was full of bikes. Some lined up neat, some abandoned at angles that said their owners had come in too fast and were too focused to care about symmetry.
The Devil’s Aces patch was everywhere—on their signature red leather cuts, on walls, painted huge on the concrete as a reminder you were walking on their hallowed ground.
Dozens of heads turned as we pulled in. Conversations stuttered. Tools paused mid-turn.
Jersey’s engine cut out beside mine. For a heartbeat, the sudden quiet around us felt like a held breath.
Then he swung off the bike and there he was again—Evan, Jersey Boy, whatever name you slapped on him—back where he belonged.
Blackjack was waiting.
He stood near the clubhouse steps, boots planted, hands loose at his sides.
8-Ball at his shoulder, arms folded. Behind them, Turnpike, Snake Eyes, and Raptor the baby prospect hovering with too-wide eyes.
All the teeth. Jersey—Evan, had given me the run down on everyone in the club.
Most were easy to spot before I even read the names on their cuts from his descriptions.
Turnpike I met already, along with 8-Ball their VP.
I’d seen Blackjack before in a photo on Liberty’s wall from her younger days. This was the first time I was close enough to see the lines at the corners of his eyes. The way his jaw worked like he’d been chewing on anger all day and hadn’t found anything tough enough yet.
He moved as soon as Jersey took his helmet off.
“Get over here, asshole,” Blackjack said.
Jersey stepped forward. Blackjack reached out, fisted a hand in the front of his cut, and slammed their foreheads together. Not hard enough to hurt. Hard enough to say I’m here, you’re here, and I’m going to beat you if you scare me like that again.
They stayed there for a second, brow to brow before Blackjack let him go.
8-Ball stepped up and clapped him on the back, rough enough to rock him. “Good to see you, kid,” he said.
“Some people starting to think you got adopted,” Turnpike snorted.
A ripple of dark laughter moved through the men. It broke something in the tight quiet around us. They didn’t hug. They didn’t say they’d been worried. They just insulted him like they were afraid he might disappear if they acknowledged the hole he’d left.
It felt familiar in a way I didn’t like admitting.
Blackjack finally let him go and looked past him.
At me.
“Valkyrie,” he said. “Yeah?”
“Blackjack,” I replied with a nod. “Big welcoming party.”
He smiled, but it didn’t touch his eyes. “High alert means more bodies. And besides, you brought my Enforcer back breathing, put a Serpent in the dirt and cartel dogs under your heel,” he said. “You get more than just a wave from the porch.”
He stuck his hand out.
I took it.
His grip was firm, but not testing. Respect, not a challenge. Our eyes met and held. I saw the same thing I’d seen in Liberty on the night she’d handed me a napkin with her writing on it.
A predator who knew exactly how much blood was about to be spilled and was already counting the cost.
“Welcome to the Devil’s Aces clubhouse,” Blackjack said formally. “While you’re under this roof, you’re not a guest. You’re one of ours.”
“Careful,” I said. “You say that too loud, someone’s going to think you’ve gone soft.”
“If they’re dumb enough to say it out loud,” he replied, “they won’t be talking for long.”
8-Ball’s gaze flicked past us to the gate, the street, the shadows. “Close her back up,” he ordered.
“Inside,” Blackjack then said. “We talk, then we sit in Church. War council after that.”
“Lead the way,” I said.
***
The Aces’ clubhouse smelled like motor oil, sweat, stale beer, and lemon cleaner someone had resignedly thrown at the walls that morning.
Not that much different from ours, really. Just louder. More trophies. Less lipstick.
Photos lined the walls—old runs, older bikes, men who weren’t breathing anymore.
A few framed newspaper clippings about arrests, accidents, some “human interest” bullshit piece about bikers doing a toy run.
Their colors hung behind the bar like altars.
A few cuts also adorned the walls, perhaps fallen members or retired. Could have been either.
It was a home for monsters. Same as mine. Just in different paint.
Blackjack’s office sat off the main room.
Smaller than Liberty’s. Cluttered in a way that said he knew where everything was even if no one else did.
Maps pinned to one wall. A battered desk that had seen more than just paperwork.
Two chairs in front, one behind. 8-Ball took up a space by the filing cabinet like he’d grown roots there.
I leaned against the wall after I walked in. I didn’t sit in another club’s chairs unless I was invited or threatened.
Jersey took one of the chairs opposite the desk. He looked like he’d been home for five seconds and his bones were already settling differently.
Blackjack dropped into his seat, grabbed his phone off the desk, and flipped through something quickly. His jaw ticked. Then he tossed the phone down like it offended him.
“Roman got the photos,” he started. “Ledger pages, dead Serpent, Cartel corpses, and Liberty’s glamour shots of your junkyard art project.”
I nodded.
“I sent it while you two were riding south. Ledger spreads with Bolivar and Steel Serpents braided together. The page where they talk about using his docks like they’re their own private highway. The dead Serpent in the junkyard. Your clubhouse after the hit. All of it.”
“How’d he take it?” Jersey asked.
“Like a man who just found out somebody’s been fucking his wife in his own bed,” Blackjack said. “He didn’t yell. Didn’t posture. Just went very, very quiet.”
8-Ball’s mouth twitched. “That’s worse,” he said.
“It is,” Blackjack agreed. He rubbed a hand over his face, beard rasping.
“He said the ledger lines up with the things he’s been feeling in his bones for months.
Money going funny. Dock schedules shifting a quarter inch to the left.
People who used to look him in the eye suddenly needing to study the floor when they talk. ”
“And now there’s proof,” I said.
“Now there’s more proof,” he corrected. “He didn’t believe it until we brought this problem to his doorstep.
Now all this proof has made it all click.
He’s testing harder. He’s got his accountants’ re-running numbers.
Quiet audits on shell companies. Dock captains being ‘invited’ in for conversations.
He’s looking at everyone’s phone logs, everyone’s personal schedules. Everything.”
Jersey’s fingers tapped against his knee. “Any movement on that fake route?” he asked. “The pier and warehouse you two lied about when Vladimir was in the room?”
“Nothing,” Blackjack said. “No one’s touched it. No extra eyes. No extra bodies. No one sniffing around yet. Either the rat got spooked or they’re smarter than we gave them credit for and are waiting to see where the first body drops before they make a move.”
I folded my arms.
“Or,” I said, “they’re busy opening other fronts and don’t have time to chase a maybe when they’ve got a sure thing in their hands. Ledger’s more valuable than one route.”
Blackjack nodded once. “Roman said the same,” he said.
“He doesn’t know yet who’s doing the actual selling.
Son. Consigliere. Dock-side leak. Someone in between.
All of the above. But he’s done pretending it might just be coincidence.
He told me if the ledger keeps lining up with what his own quiet digging finds, he’s going to start cutting pieces off his own family tree. ”
“He sound scared?” 8-Ball asked.
“No,” Blackjack said. “He sounded insulted.”
He leaned forward, elbows on the desk.
“That’s where we are,” he said. “Roman’s trying to clean his house at his own speed.
We don’t control that. Tesauro is probably on the phone taking progress reports personally.
Meanwhile the Steel Serpents are running fetch and die missions.
Those Bolivar boys are hitting our allies.
Hell, they just sent them Serpents into a junkyard and lose bodies at the Vipers’ yard. ”
He met my eyes.
“We’re not waiting for the next surprise,” he said. “We can’t. If we keep waiting, we’ll only be behind.”
“Or they’ll think us too weak,” Jersey said.
Blackjack grunted. “From here on? We assume war’s already landed and we act like we’re under siege until it’s over.”
“That language I understand,” I said.
He pushed back from his desk.
“Church,” he said. “Time to update everyone.”
***
Devil’s Church felt like every judgment room I’d ever walked into.