Twenty Two
Jersey Boy
I’d forgotten what quiet engines felt like.
Not literally quiet. There were a little over a dozen of us, Devils and Vipers in staggered formations, pipes muttering low as we rolled away from Roman’s half-built monument. A black SUV carrying Vladimir led the way, its glossy shape swallowing and bending the boardwalk light.
Noise-wise, it was still a lot.
But after the lobby, the stairwells, the elevator, and the gunfire, it felt like someone had turned the war down from a scream to a simmer.
I could picture Vladimir in there even without seeing him—hands tied, leg clamped in a tourniquet Priest had wrapped tight enough to make a grown man beg, shoulder fresh with a bullet hole.
The wound Gianna’s knife left under a taped bandage.
He was too stubborn to pass out. Men like him wanted to see how the story ended, even if they were the corpse in the last chapter when the credits roll.
Another SUV had left before we did, cutting hard for the casino.
Roman’s wife and daughter were inside.
I’d watched its taillights disappear while we loaded Vladimir into the other amidst the chaos. That SUV had been the only clean thing around that building—Roman’s blood getting taken home while we sorted out the rest of the mess.
Now all I had to look at was the back of the cage carrying the Russian and the road ahead.
Valkyrie rode in my blind spot, just a hair back and to the right, close enough that if I reached my hand out, I’d brush her bar. Viper cut on, safe key at her throat, helmet hiding her face but not hiding the way she held herself. Relaxed enough to ride, alert enough to kill.
The air from the ocean was colder here. Salt bit the back of my throat. The smell of death and blood had been scrubbed away by the wind and speed.
Blackjack’s phone buzzed in his pocket up ahead. I saw him pat his cut, pull it out at a light, glance at the screen as we idled at an intersection.
He put it to his ear instead of speaker. The night was loud enough without Roman’s voice bleeding through the open air.
We rolled on another block before he put his phone away and then brought a hand up to tap his mic.
“Wife and daughter made it back to the casino,” his voice cracked in my ear.
“Roman’s people have them in the penthouse.
He says they’re safe. He also says his men are handling the cops and the bodies.
They’re calling it a private security incident.
Vandalism. Attempted theft. No charges being pressed. He’ll ‘handle it internally.’”
I snorted softly behind my visor.
Of course he would.
You don’t build empires like his without owning at least half the people who come calling when a gun goes off.
“Any heat coming our way?” 8-Ball’s voice came over the channel.
“Some noise,” Blackjack said. “Sirens up the strip. They’ll be told to look somewhere else. Roman’s men are already on with whoever they need to be on with. It’s giving some people headaches, but it’ll get pushed under the rug like everything else around here.”
“I’ll drink to institutional corruption,” Miami muttered in my ear.
A few laughs over the chatter.
There was a moment of silence, then Miami spoke again. Softer this time.
“You did good, Jersey. You too, Valkyrie.”
“Keep my good reviews coming,” Valkyrie said. Her voice was thinner with distance, but the edge in it was solid. “I live for your validation.”
He laughed.
“Thankful for your techie brain,” I told him. “We’d have been swinging blind without your eyes tonight.”
“Careful,” he said. “Keep talking like that and I’m going to start asking for a raise.”
“You’re not even cleared to ride and you’re already getting paid more than enough,” 8-Ball cut in. “Shut up and enjoy your chair.”
“Fuck you,” Miami said, but there was no heat in it.
I let their bickering run under the ride like background music. It kept the part of my brain that wanted to replay every shot from the boardwalk from doing exactly that.
We cut down through streets that got progressively darker. Less neon. More residential. Then the houses thinned too, and the smell shifted—more sea, less gasoline and fried food.
The south-end beach Roman liked for his ugly business wasn’t on any tourist map. It was a stretch where the dunes swallowed sound and the streetlights forgot to reach.
We turned off the road and into an aged and long-forgotten lot. Cracks in the pavement had been hard-packed with sand over the years. Tires crunched. The SUV rolled to a stop first, headlights flooding the dunes and surf in stark white.
Then, one by one, those lights died.
Engines cut.
For a moment, there was nothing but the sound of cooling metal and waves.
Then the moon took over.
It was high and bright, fat with light, painting the sand silver and turning the water into a moving strip of black glass. The wind off the ocean tugged at my cut and slid cold fingers down the back of my neck.
If the boardwalk had been a stage, this place was its confession booth.
We parked in a loose horseshoe formation behind the SUV. Vipers mixed with Devils, leather on leather. Helmets came off. Hair shook loose. Cigarettes sparked to life like fireflies.
Roman was already there, standing a few yards away near the lip of the dunes. He appeared to be out here all alone. A dark vehicle with its lights off sat down a path not far away. I couldn’t tell if anyone else was inside. A driver, a bodyguard, one of his sons.
He’d changed since the last time I saw him up close. Not his face—still all hard lines and tired eyes and that particular brand of old-world arrogance that came from surviving long enough to become the problem instead of the solution. But his clothes.
No jacket. Just a white shirt, sleeves rolled to mid-forearm, somewhere between dress and work. Slacks soft enough to move in. Shoes that had walked over enough men that a little more blood wouldn’t show.
He looked like he’d stepped out of a different kind of movie than the one we’d just crawled through.
Blackjack walked up first. 8-Ball shadowed him. I fell in with them without really thinking about it. Valkyrie did the same on my other side.
Lady Liberty and two of her women moved in from the opposite arc. Her hair was still half-wild from the ride, Viper cut flaring at the bottom like a flag.
Roman turned as we approached.
For a second, he didn’t say anything. Just took us in. The cuts. The scuffs. The drying blood on some of our clothes that didn’t belong to us.
Then he nodded.
“My wife and daughter are home,” he said. No thank-you yet. Just that piece of information, placed down between us like a chip on a table. “They’re in the penthouse. Shaken, but alive.”
A muscle in his jaw twitched.
“Thank you for that,” he added.
Blackjack dipped his chin once. “We did what we said we’d do,” he said. “You asked us to look. We looked. We found them. We brought them back.”
“And my traitor,” Roman said.
Blackjack’s mouth tightened. “He’s here too,” he said. “Like you asked.”
The older man exhaled. “My men will handle the rest of the mess,” he went on.
“Cops. Cameras. Curious neighbors. As far as the city is concerned, what happened at the site tonight was nothing. An attempted theft. A few hotheaded security contractors firing weapons when they should have held their temper. I’m not pressing charges.
I’ll handle it myself. That’s what I told them. ”
He smiled then. It didn’t reach his eyes.
“They’re so used to letting me deal with my own problems, that they barely even pretend to argue.”
A strong wind came off the ocean and passed over us. Roman glanced back at the crashing waves before looking back at Blackjack.
“I’m indebted,” he said simply. “Again. I still owe you for Dante at the Velvet.”
Blackjack shook his head and jerked his chin toward me and Valkyrie.
“Thank them,” he said. “Jersey and Valkyrie took point. They’re the ones you owe a drink to.”
Roman’s gaze locked on us.
It felt like being pinned to a wall by a spotlight.
“Come,” he says. “Both of you.”
My boots feel heavier than they should as I step forward. Valkyrie falls in at my side, shoulders squared, chin up. We stopped a few feet from him.
Up close, the lines around his eyes looked deeper.
“Devil,” he says to me. “Viper,” he says to her.
I nodded. “Yes, sir.”
Valkyrie doesn’t say sir. Just inclines her head once. Respect without submission.
“You pulled my wife and daughter out of that building,” he says, looking between us. “You stood between them and men who wanted to turn them into a message. You could have walked away. Left it to my people. You didn’t.”
“It wasn’t just us,” I say. “Blackjack. 8-Ball. Priest. Turnpike, Snake Eyes, Spade. Liberty’s girls. Miami on the feeds. We all did this, together.”
Roman’s eyes narrow slightly. Then he huffs something that’s almost a laugh.
“Alice,” he says to Blackjack. “I don’t remember you ever being so modest at that age.”
Blackjack snorts. “That’s because you were too busy getting me into trouble to notice,” he shot back. “Or maybe your memory’s going soft.”
“My memory’s fine,” Roman replied. “It’s my patience that’s changed.”
8-Ball smirked.
“Fair,” Blackjack said.
Roman looked back at us. “Regardless. You two were the tip of the spear. You chose to stay and fight for my family when the bullets started. That matters to me. So don’t downplay what you did. That it was just a collective from everyone. That’s good. Rare. Modesty in people who’ve earned praise.”
Roman then put a hand on Blackjack’s arm, pulling him a half-step closer. For a second, the three of us and Liberty were a knot in the sand, the rest of the world blurred.
“Look around,” Roman said softly. “Remember this. My world. Your world. These lines between them? They’re getting thinner.
My family…” He tipped his head back toward the city.
“…and your machines. Your patches. We’re not the same.
But we share business, and enemies. And that matters more than the differences. ”