Chapter 15
Fifteen
Jersey Boy
War didn’t let you shower in peace.
I stood over the sink in my room, shirt off, wrists braced on chipped porcelain, watching pink water spiral down the drain.
The blood wasn’t mine. It was the leftovers of that Cartel guy from the Vipers’ bar.
The one I’d pinned to the counter and whose throat I opened with a broken bottle.
His blood still clung under my nails and in the creases of my knuckles.
I’d scrubbed twice already but it still felt like it was there.
My nose ached where we’d headbutted. My cheekbone throbbed. My ribs hummed when I breathed too deep. It was a familiar symphony.
The Devil’s clubhouse around me felt different after the gate show. Same walls. Same smell of oil and old smoke and cheap cleaner. Just… tighter. Like the whole building had pulled its shoulders up.
In the room behind me, Valkyrie sat on the edge of my bed, elbows on her knees, watching me through the doorway in the cracked mirror.
“You missed a spot,” she said.
“Where?” I asked.
“The haunted look in your eyes,” she replied.
I snorted, grabbed the towel, and wiped my face. “That one’s permanent.”
We’d barely had time to breathe since the SUVs rolled off and Blackjack got those three calls—strip club, bar, gunshop all hit like a row of glass bottles on a fence. Message work. Three broken fingers.
I dropped the towel on the sink and reached for a clean shirt I had sat on the counter. The one I’d been wearing had a brown smear on the front where the cartel guy’s blood had dried tacky.
Valkyrie’s gaze tracked the motion. I could feel it, her eyes on my skin.
“You good?” I asked, without looking at her.
“Define good,” she said. “No one I care about died today. Yet. That’s my baseline right now.”
“Same,” I replied.
The air went quiet for a second.
“Can I use your bathroom?” she asked suddenly.
I glanced back at her. “You think I’m gonna say no?”
“I’ve seen some of the things you boys call bathrooms,” she said. “Could be a war crime in there.”
“The only casualty in mine is my dignity,” I said. “Go ahead.”
She pushed off the bed and crossed into the room. Even tired, she moved like she was built for battle—balanced, ready. She brushed past me, close enough that the heat of her shoulder kissed my bare arm.
I stopped short. She did too.
For a heartbeat we were inches apart. Her breath hit my chest. Mine hit her forehead. The bathroom light caught on the chain around her throat, the little flash of the safe key nestled against her collarbone.
Her eyes dropped.
Not in a shy way. In a “taking stock” way.
They ran over my chest, stopping for half a second on every scar, every line of ink across my throat I’d had done in Miami’s room at three in the morning. The black sweep of the Devil’s ace on my shoulder. The old white puckered half-moon just under my clavicle that I didn’t talk about.
Her hand moved before either of us thought about it.
Fingers sliding up, knuckles brushing my stomach, palm flattening across my abs like she was checking if they were real. Skin on skin. Warm. Callused. Curious.
My muscles tightened under the touch. Not on purpose. Just… instinct.
She seemed to realize what she was doing a half-second after. Her eyes went wide. Her hand jerked back like she’d put it on a hot stove.
“Shit,” she blurted. “Sorry. I— that was—”
I caught her wrist before she could retreat all the way.
Not hard. Just enough.
She froze.
We were still close enough that one wrong move would’ve had us kissing or headbutting. I chose one.
“Hey,” I said, voice lower than I meant. “Don’t apologize.”
Her pulse jumped under my fingers. Her eyes lifted to mine. Up close, I could see every tiny fleck of color in them. The tired, the fear she’d never name, the anger she wore like armor.
There was a split second where I could see her decide to bolt. Put a joke between us. Snap the tension in half and kick it under the bed.
I didn’t let her.
I pulled her closer that last inch.
Our mouths met.
It wasn’t pretty or practiced. It was that kind of first contact born out of too many almosts and almost-dies. Harder than it needed to be. Hungrier than it had any right to be in a room that still smelled vaguely like someone else’s blood.
She made a small sound—surprised, half-protest, half-something else—and then her fingers were in my hair. The other hand fisted in the waistband of my jeans like she wanted leverage.
The world narrowed to the press of her lips, the taste, a soul soothing venom, the way her body fit against mine like we’d been doing this longer than twenty seconds.
When I finally pulled back, it was only because my lungs filed a complaint.
She stared at me.
She looked… shocked. Not in that “how dare you” way. But in that “did I just do that” way.
“Why the hell did you—” she started.
“In case this all goes south quick,” I cut in. My voice came out rough. “If we end up bleeding out in some parking lot or alleyway, I didn’t want to be sitting in hell beside the Devil, pissed at myself that I never got to taste you at least once.”
Her mouth opened then closed.
“You’re an idiot,” she said finally. But there was no heat in it.
“Yeah,” I agreed. “But at least I’m honest about it.”
Her hand was still on my waist. Mine was still around her wrist. Neither of us seemed in a hurry to change that.
Someone pounded on the door.
“Jersey!” 8-Ball’s voice, muffled through the wood. “Valkyrie! Prez wants you in his office. Now.”
We jumped apart like teenagers caught in the back seat.
Valkyrie stepped back, straightening her cut, eyes doing that thing where they tried to slam steel shutters down over everything. I dragged the shirt over my head, fingers fumbling the hem.
“On our way,” I called, sounding way more composed than I actually felt.
I grabbed my boots, shoved my feet into them without bothering with the laces.
She glanced at me once on the way to the door. There was a question in it. About what that had been. What it meant. Whether this was the worst possible time for something like that. If it would happen again.
I didn’t have an answer yet.
We didn’t have the time to search for one.
8-Ball was waiting in the hall, arms crossed. His gaze hit my face, then hers. He clocked something. He wasn’t stupid. But he didn’t comment.
“Roman’s on the line,” he said. “Blackjack wants both of you in the room.”
The fatigue that had been dragging at my shoulders snapped tight.
Enforcer mode slid back into place like it had just been waiting for a reason.
“Let’s go,” I said.
We then followed him down the hall.
***
Blackjack’s office felt smaller with so much war in it.
He sat behind his desk, phone in the middle on speaker, the screen glowing bright against scratched wood. Spade leaned against the filing cabinet, Mirage took up space by the window, Ace was perched on the arm of a chair. 8-Ball closed the door behind us and stayed near it like a wall.
Roman’s voice came through the speaker low and controlled. The kind of voice you got when you’d built an empire on other men’s bones and got tired of shouting about it.
“…three places simultaneously,” he was saying as we had stepped in. “No coincidence. Calculated.”
Blackjack jerked his chin at us, then at the phone. Sit down and shut up was universal language. I stayed on my feet.
Valkyrie stood to one side of the desk, arms folded. I took the other side, near the corner. Close enough to see the phone.
“You believe us now?” Blackjack asked.
He didn’t sound rattled. He sounded insulted.
“I believed you before,” Roman replied.
Blackjack leaned forward, forearms braced on the desk. “This is the part where you say the words out loud,” he said. “So, my men know what side of this you’re standing on.”
Another small silence.
“The Giorlando family,” he said slowly, “stands with the Devil’s Aces and the Shore Vipers. Tesauro Vincino has made hostile moves against our shared interests, our docks, and our people. That makes him my enemy just as much as yours.”
Spade let out a low breath. Mirage’s jaw flexed.
“There it is,” Blackjack said. “War it is, then.”
“War was already declared,” Roman replied. “I’m just acknowledging it formally.”
“Doesn’t change the problem we talked about at the casino,” Blackjack said. “You still got rot in your walls. You know it. That ledger just gave you names for some of the mold. But you still don’t know which beams are carrying it.”
Roman exhaled quietly. “I’ve had conversations,” he revealed. “Dock captains. Accountants. A few middle-men who seemed to be living slightly above what I pay them.”
“Let me guess,” 8-Ball said. “Everyone swore loyalty. No one knew anything.”
“Not anything they were willing to admit while still attached to their fingernails,” Roman said dryly.
“I’ve made it very clear that anyone caught feeding the Vincinos information will wish they’d died in their mother’s womb and were never born.
People get stupid when they’re scared. Sometimes they get honest. So far, I’ve only gotten stupid. ”
“Talk is slow,” Blackjack said. “And we’re out of time.”
Roman didn’t argue.
Blackjack glanced at me, then at Valkyrie, then at the phone.
“You know as well as I do that a ledger this detailed doesn’t just happen overnight,” Blackjack said.
“The Vincinos didn’t wake up last week and decide to fuck you.
To fuck us. They’ve been building this for years.
Buying people. Stitching a takeover together.
You poking around now is just making whoever’s in on it dig deeper and clean up behind themselves. ”
“Suggestions?” Roman asked. He didn’t say it like a man asking for help. He said it like a man asking what weapon you were about to hand him.
Blackjack didn’t hesitate.