Twenty One #3
His eyes flickered. Just for a second.
Then he smiled.
“Tesauro Vincino is… flexible,” he said. “He and Isabella like improvisation. They like spectacle. If the best we get is his wife dying here instead of in some controlled environment…” He shrugged. “Then we still end with a good show. If I can take a few Devils with her, I think he’ll clap.”
Behind him, Gianna’s jaw clenched. Her eyes went briefly to her mother, then to Vladimir’s weapon. Then to us.
“Valkyrie,” I murmured under my breath. “Two o’clock, behind the front desk. Suit with a pistol. Three o’clock, shotgun behind that column near the window. Vlad in center. Wife and daughter still in play. Miami, you seeing anything else?”
“Yes,” Miami said, voice going sharp. “Boardwalk cams just lit up again. I’ve got movement. The guys from the street side are splitting. Four headed your way down a side corridor, using the service entrance like they know the blueprints. The rest are repositioning toward the boards.
Shots cracked then from the front desk. Concrete chipped near my face.
Miami went to speak but I didn’t hear it. The cartel member popped his head and gun out again. I leaned just far enough to send two rounds his way. One gouged the column. The other caught his shoulder. He screamed, and the shotgun dropped as he reeled back.
Valkyrie’s voice cut across the chaos.
“Vladimir,” she called. “If you kill either of those women, Roman will make sure you’re alive for every second of what happens to you next. You really want that to be the story?”
His gaze slid to her.
“You must be the Viper,” he said. “Liberty’s war dog. We read up on you.”
“Good. I hope you read the part where I don’t bluff,” she said. “Let them go. Surrender to us, maybe you get to breathe long enough to see what Tesauro does when he no longer has a use for you.”
A muscle twitched in his cheek.
He was smarter than the Serpents. That was the problem. You could see the calculating behind his eyes, running through scenario after scenario, deciding which way to jump.
He shifted his grip on the wife.
“I can’t surrender to you,” he said slowly, “I’d lose all leverage then. I’d be putting my throat in your hands, and I know you’ll just throw me back to Roman. I think I much rather prefer this.”
He tightened his arm around Roman’s wife and started to move, her body between him and our line of fire. He took one glance at Gianna who stepped out and moved behind him. One of those looks of “If you don’t comply and follow, I shoot her in the head.”
The remaining suited gunman by the front desk popped up and started firing again, giving him cover fire. The cartel member, clutching his arm, grabbed the dropped shotgun with his other hand and began to drag it toward a column.
“Jersey,” Miami said in my ear, voice clipped.
“Street side team is about to breach. Four cartel and Vincino just hit the inner corridor. They’re going to try to flank you.
Boardwalk side, I’m seeing a couple of civilians walking past who just realized something is going on.
They’re backing away, but we’re about to have sirens coming from all directions if they call it in. You need to move this party along.”
No shit.
“Back,” I hissed to Valkyrie. “Boardwalk side. We fall back. Make him think we’re retreating.”
We started to edge toward the doors, moving behind toppled palettes and low temporary walls.
Vlad saw it.
He thought he was herding us back outside into a trap as he began to walk toward us with Roman’s wife as his hostage.
Good.
We reached the boardwalk-side doors and opened them. The night air hit like a slap. Colder out here. Salt thick in my nose. The boardwalk spread out around us—wide planks, empty stretch, lights from the other casinos painting the horizon.
We dove behind a stack of wrapped patio furniture just outside the doors as Vlad’s men spilled past him and out onto the boards.
Gunfire erupted.
Bullets chewed splinters out of the wood around us. One round punched through the plastic-wrapped stack, close enough to my head that I felt the air shift.
I hit the planks hard, tasting old salt and dust. Valkyrie dropped beside me, shoulders tight.
“Miami?” I barked. “Updates?”
“Blackjack’s team just breached street side,” he said.
“Whole building’s lit up. I’m seeing muzzle flashes on your level in the interior corridors.
Your immediate problem though? You’ve got seven hostiles inching their way to your position on the boardwalk—four in suits, two cartel, one Serpent who must’ve come down another way.
Vlad and the women are halfway between the doors and the lobby.
He looks like he’s trying to get them to push your way because of the gunfight that’s now going on street side. ”
Another round of shots smacked into the wood behind us. I looked down at my gun, checking I had a fresh clip in to prepare for the imminent exchange. Valkyrie did the same. I took a deep breath and exhaled slowly, knowing I had to make a move now or else we’d just be sitting ducks.
“You’re not doing that thing,” she snapped suddenly, glaring at me from inches away.
“What thing,” I asked.
“The suicidal hero thing,” she said. “I know that look. You’re about to go full John Wick, and you’re not fucking John Wick, Evan. You’ll just get yourself killed.”
“Better me than you,” I said before I could stop it. The truth came out raw. “I’d rather die protecting you than see those beautiful eyes of yours with no life in them.”
Her expression cracked at that. Just a hairline fracture. Enough for me to see the panic under the anger.
“Got any other ideas on how to get the fuck out of this?” I added, because we were still in a gunfight and honesty wasn’t body armor.
She exhaled hard through her nose. Another bullet whizzed over our heads, slamming into the concrete facade near us.
“No,” she said. “But if you want me to honor your desire to protect me, then you have to honor my desire to protect you.”
“Valk—”
“We rise and fall together,” she cut in.
Our eyes locked.
Something under my ribs stuttered, then settled with a new, brutal kind of certainty.
I studied her.
She was breathing fast, but her hands were steady. There was a bead of sweat on her throat. Dust streaked her jaw. Her eyes were bright and furious and completely alive.
I realized then, in that stupid, suspended moment, that I knew exactly what Miami had meant.
I’d been pretending this thing between us was something I could maybe think about after the smoke cleared. After Tesauro was dead, after the ledger was just paper instead of an active threat, after we weren’t living in a kill box.
There was no guarantee there’d be an after. Not for me. Not for her. Not for anyone.
If I kept waiting, the only thing I was going to end up with was regret and a name on the wall.
I was done waiting.
I wanted her in every version of the future where I still had a pulse. My Quinn. My fucking home.
“King and…” I started.
“Queen,” she finished.
“Any backup on our side?” Valkyrie asked before we made our move, teeth clenched.
“Not yet,” Miami said.
I could hear Miami’s breathing suddenly spike through the static.
“Wait,” he said. “Holy shit.”
“What,” I snapped.
“Bikes,” he said. “A lot of them. Coming in hot.”
Valkyrie’s head jerked toward me.
“Serpents?” I asked.
No answer from Miami, just static.
A fresh volley of gunfire slammed into our cover. One of the patio sets behind us shuddered, stuffing blowing out of a ripped cushion.
“Fuck!” I shouted.
I glanced at Valkyrie, replayed her saying “Queen.”
Those words we spoke shouldn’t have worked in this context. They were too big. Too romantic. Too stupid, considering we were both crouched in borrowed cover on a shitty stretch of boardwalk with the Bolivar cartel and Vincinos trying to perforate us.
It still fit.
I nodded. Just once.
“Okay,” I said. “On three. We go up, we put as many of them down as we can. If we die, we die side by side. If we live, we’re talking about what the fuck this is when the guns stop.”
Her throat bobbed. Her mouth twitched. “Deal.”
I raised my gun, muscles coiling.
“One,” I said.
Bullets chewed wood closer now. Shouts. Someone barking orders, their voice thinned by adrenaline.
“Two.”
I could hear bikes in the distance now. A faint, growing roar under the ocean and the gunfire. We couldn’t be here when the Serpents arrived. We needed to end this, now, or we wouldn’t leave this spot. We’d die before we could even get to our feet.
Miami’s voice came in my ear, urgent, at the same time I finished my count.
“Jersey, Valk, heads up—”
“Three,” I said.
We rose.
The shots that exploded through the air weren’t ours.
They ripped over the stuttering roar—automatic fire, controlled.
I spun toward the sound.
They came out of the dark in formation, engines howling, front wheels bumping over uneven planks without slowing.
Shore Vipers.
Lady Liberty at point, long hair whipping out behind her helmet, cut flapping. Half a dozen more women staggered behind her in a V shape, guns braced, firing as they rode toward us.
Muzzle flashes strobed their faces. Bullets tore through the cluster of suits and cartel boys trying to box us in. One spun and went off the edge of the boardwalk, screaming as he was hit and fell to the sand below. Another folded on himself, chest opening under the impact.
Valkyrie ducked and then popped up, adding her fire to the chaos. I swung back toward Vlad’s men, catching one of the remaining suits in the neck as he tried to take aim at our approaching backup.
He dropped, hands clawing uselessly at the blood.
Miami’s laughter crackled in my ear, almost manic.
Liberty rode past us, close enough that I could see the whites of her eyes in the helmet cutout. She swung her gun toward the boardwalk doors, laying down a line of suppressing fire that chewed up the wood near where one of the cartel members was trying to regain his feet.