Chapter 14 #3
“We’re comfortable here,” the man said. His accent was a mix—East Coast on top, something else underneath. “We figured you would be too. Being home and all.”
“You’re on the wrong side of my fence to be talking about our home to me,” Blackjack replied.
The man smiled like he’d expected that answer and wanted it.
“Relax. We just came to talk,” he said. “A courtesy, you could say.”
“Funny,” I muttered under my breath. “Your idea of courtesy usually comes with bullets.”
His eyes flicked to me. He didn’t comment. But he’d clocked the Vipers patch. Good.
“You ain’t exactly known for conversation,” 8-Ball said. “More for making messes.”
“The world changes,” the man said. “Our employers thought it would be polite to let you know they’ve noticed yours getting… ambitious. Sitting with Giorlando. Passing words around.” His smile thinned. “Passing pictures.”
Tesauro had got the photos too then somehow. And shared the news.
“Your employers being who?” Blackjack asked, playing dumb and doing it better than most.
“You already know his name,” the man said. His gaze hardened. “Tesauro Vincino doesn’t appreciate thieves. Or meddlers. Or men who think they can interfere with business they haven’t paid to sit at the table for.”
“He can send me an invoice,” Blackjack said. “I’ll file it under ‘shit I wipe with.’”
A low chuckle went around the Aces closest to us.
The messenger looked at the clubhouse. At the bikes. At the men on the roof. At me. He measured all of it.
“You’ve got a nice setup here,” he said. “Bikes. Bars. Little side ventures. Play money. Family. It would be unfortunate if something happened to it because you couldn’t mind your own lane.”
“Something already did happen,” I said. “To our hospital. Our junkyard. Our yard. That wasn’t us wandering into your lane. That was you swerving into ours.”
His jaw ticked. He didn’t look at me again. Coward’s trick—only talk to the man who you think matters.
Blackjack’s voice lost the humor.
“You drove to my door with your cars and your snakes, and you think you’re going to scare me into playing dead?” he asked. “You think I haven’t buried louder men than Tesauro Vincino without anyone ever finding the spots?”
The messenger’s smile came back.
“We don’t need to scare you,” he said. “We just need you to do the math.” He gestured vaguely at the SUVs behind him. “We have more bodies than you have bullets. More men than you have beds. More money than you have patience. This isn’t a question of if we win.”
He leaned closer, fingers curling around the cold metal of the gate.
“It’s a question of when.”
Behind me, I heard Spade mutter something that sounded like, “Fuck math.”
Blackjack stepped up to the fence, close enough that if it hadn’t been there they’d have been sharing breath.
“You tell Tesauro this from me,” he said, voice gone low and sharp.
“You tell him the Devil’s Aces don’t fold because someone throws more chips on the table.
You tell him he sent Serpents into a junkyard and didn’t get his toy back.
You tell him he sent cartel boys into the wrong yard and fucked with our allies. You tell him he wanted a war.”
He smiled then, slow and mean.
“And he’s got one. This? You driving past my house with your windows up? This is nothing. This is pregame. He keeps pushing, he’s going to find out exactly how bad it feels to have the deck stacked against him for once.”
The messenger considered him.
Then he laughed.
“Keep talking like that,” he said. “Makes it easier when we have to explain to our bosses why your clubhouse is a smoking pile of rubble.”
He let go of the fence, took a step back.
“This was a courtesy call,” he went on. “There won’t be another.”
He turned and walked back to his SUV without looking over his shoulder. The Serpents by the bikes revved once. Doors shut. Engines flared. The little convoy then rolled away into the dark.
We watched until the taillights vanished.
No one spoke until the rumble had fully faded.
Then Blackjack’s phone rang.
The sound cut through the yard like a shot.
He pulled it out, looked at the screen, and grimaced. “Yes? Talk to me.”
We only heard his side, but that was enough.
“Slow down,” he said. “Is anyone dead?” His jaw clenched. “Good. Then breathe and explain.”
Pause.
“How bad?” His eyes went flat. “Fire? Or just glass?”
Another pause.
“Call the fire department if you haven’t already. Tell them it was a drive-by with kids and bad decisions, not a cartel warning shot. We don’t need the law sniffing.” He rubbed his forehead. “Yeah. I’ll send bodies to secure it.”
He hung up. The phone rang again almost immediately. He glanced at it.
“Rudy,” he said this time. “Let me guess. The Lodge?”
I didn’t need to hear the answer to know he was right. His shoulders tightened.
“They shoot anyone?” he asked. “How many rounds?” he let out a huff. “Somebody upstairs likes you. Next time, duck lower. Board everything up. Keep the regulars away until we say otherwise. We’ll send replacements for any damaged stock.”
He ended that call, got a third before the phone even left his hand. Swore under his breath. Hit accept.
“Rich?” he said. “Please tell me our armory’s fine.”
Silence. His eyes closed briefly.
“Fuck,” he said softly. “Damage report.”
The silence stretched. 8-Ball’s hands were fists at his sides. Jersey’s jaw was grinding so hard I could hear his teeth.
“Yeah,” Blackjack said finally. “Far side of the racks. Could’ve been worse. Could’ve been better. Anyone hurt?” a sigh of relief. “Good. Lock it down. Inventory everything. Whatever walked, we assume it’s going to be pointed at us.”
He hung up.
For a second, he just stood there in the yard surrounded by his men, phone hanging from his fingers.
Then he did something I wasn’t expecting. He laughed. Once. It wasn’t an amused one. It was the sound a man makes when something in his head snaps into place in exactly the way he’d hoped it wouldn’t.
“Strip club,” 8-Ball said quietly.
“Bar,” Spade added.
“Gunshop and armory,” Jersey finished.
Blackjack nodded.
“They firebombed Sin City’s front and shot the windows out,” he said. “The Lodge took rounds through the glass and doors so bad they’ll be finding shards for a year. Outlaw Armory got hit on its far wall. Glass, racks, some stock gone. No bodies.”
“They wanted that,” I said. “No body count. Just damage.”
“They threatened us to our faces,” Turnpike said from behind me, voice low. “While their friends went around town and took swings at every kind of money we make.”
He shook his head, lips curling.
“That’s deliberate,” 8-Ball said. “Message work. ‘We know your flesh. We know your liquor. We know your hardware.’ Three different income streams. Three broken fucking fingers.”
“Most people would bow after that,” Spade muttered. “Kiss the ring, say sorry, blame it all on a misunderstanding.”
Everyone looked at Blackjack.
He slid his phone back into his pocket. When he smiled, it was all teeth.
“Devils Aces don’t fold,” he said. “We double down.”
A low, vicious sound rolled through the yard. Agreement. Approval. Hunger.
I felt something inside my ribcage even answer it.
Liberty had said once that war doesn’t make a man anything. It just shows you what he already is. Watching Blackjack in this moment, I believed it.
He turned to me and Jersey.
“This is going to get worse before it gets better,” he said. “Roman’s going to hear that his docks and his city aren’t the only things Tesauro’s playing with. He wanted a war. We’re going to give him one. But we’re not doing it blind.”
He looked back toward the road where the SUVs had vanished.
“They think they’re the only ones who know how to send messages,” he said. “They think they can bleed our businesses and scare us. They forgot the part where we can make them bleed back.”
The yard started moving again as orders were shouted—crews to go check on the clubs and armory, others to reinforce the gate, some to clean and reload and sit waiting.
I caught Jersey’s eye.
He looked different here than he had in my bunker back at the compound. Shoulders a little straighter. Jaw set. That same quiet heat in his gaze when it landed on me.
“Welcome to the party,” I said.
He huffed out a breath. “Thought I was already at it.”
“This?” I said, glancing at the men loading magazines with calm efficiency. “This is still foreplay.”
He half-smiled. “You Vipers have a fucked-up idea of flirting.”
“We learn from the best,” I said.
Out on the horizon, the casinos on the strip glittered like they didn’t know their foundations were about to shake.
They’d hit the Vipers. They’d hit the Devils. They were probably going to be knocking on the Giorlando’s door next.
For a second, standing in that yard, I understood something that made my chest go tight.
We weren’t just in it now.
We were it.
The line between their ambition and the world they wanted to burn.
And if they thought we were going to just step aside and let them redraw the map?
They didn’t know Liberty.
They didn’t know Blackjack.
They didn’t know me.
Not yet.
Looking at Blackjack now, the Devils circling their own, then at Jersey standing with his shoulders squared, I realized something.
Tesauro hadn’t just picked a fight with a family.
He picked a fight with two nests of people who didn’t know how to quit.
They thought they were breaking fingers.
All they’d really done was give us something solid to wrap our hands around.