Chapter 5
Lady
By the time we get back to Vice Ink, I hate every hand that reaches for me.
The SUV stops behind the old church, and the second the door opens, men crowd the space like leather walls. Diablo’s men. Shady’s brothers. Guns still hot, faces still hard, voices low and careful like I’m made of cracked glass instead of rage.
“Easy,” Gville says, reaching for my elbow.
I look at his hand.
He pulls it back like I might bite.
I might.
“I can walk,” I say.
My voice comes out rough from cold air, smoke, and not screaming when I had every right to. My throat hurts. My wrists throb. My knees feel like cheap glitter after rain, but I put one boot on the pavement, then the other, because if one more man carries me today, I’m going to start swinging.
Shady gets out on the other side.
I feel him before I look. That is the stupid part.
After everything, my body still knows exactly where he is.
That quiet violence he wears like a second cut.
He is bleeding through his shirt again. Because men like Shady think pain is a suggestion and medical care is something that happens to weaker people.
He starts toward me.
I lift my hand.
He stops.
That should not hurt as much as it does.
“Lady,” he says.
The way he says my name makes my chest ache, and I hate him for it. I hate him for standing there with blood on him and that ruin in his ice-blue eyes like he gets to be broken too. I hate that some weak, scared part of me wants to crawl into his cut and let him make the whole world smaller.
That part of me can shut the hell up.
“You don’t get to touch me right now,” I say.
His jaw tightens.
He nods once.
No fight. No smartass answer. No rough little baby to make my knees forget my brain.
That might be worse.
The back door to Vice Ink opens, and Darling comes running out with Diablo right behind her.
She is bruised, bandaged, and still beautiful in that soft, stubborn way that makes me want to wrap the world in barbed wire so it stops touching her.
She hits me hard enough to hurt, arms around my neck, face in my hair, shaking like she’s the one who just got dragged out of a flower freezer.
“Cono,” I whisper, grabbing her back. “Careful, mami. I’m dramatic, not dead.”
A broken laugh tears out of her.
Then she sobs.
That does me in more than the kidnapping did.
I squeeze my eyes shut and hold her with my ruined wrists screaming against her back. She smells like the hospital still and Diablo’s leather. She feels real.
“I told you not to make it your fault,” I say into her hair.
“I didn’t listen.”
“I know. You never do.”
“Neither do you.”
“Yeah, well, look where that got me.”
She pulls back and touches my face so gently I almost flinch. Her eyes move over my split lip, my cheek, the marks on my wrists. Then her gaze goes past me to Shady, and something cold crosses her face.
Darling knows.
The ground under me shifts, even though I’m standing still.
Boca’s bloody grin flashes behind my eyes.
Ask him about Cherry’s baby.
Shady freezing.
That one breath.
Men think betrayal is always loud. A slammed door. A woman screaming. A bed still warm from the wrong body. They don’t understand the smallest pause can gut you clean.
Darling’s hand slides into mine.
“Come inside,” she says.
“I’m not going upstairs.”
“I know.”
“I’m not being locked in a room.”
“I know.”
“I’m not letting prospects babysit me like I’m a club purse somebody has to guard.”
A bird screams from inside the clubhouse.
“?Dale! ?Pendejo!”
I blink.
Darling closes her eyes. “Disco.”
Another screech. “?No roses! ?Dale! ?No roses!”
For one second, the whole back lot goes quiet.
Then Magic mutters, “That bird’s got better instincts than half the club.”
Disco fluffs up like he understands he has just been promoted.
Despite everything, a laugh punches out of me. It hurts my ribs, my lip, and something deeper I don’t have time to name.
Disco screams again. “?Diablo! ?Pendejo!”
Diablo looks at Darling. “Your bird’s disrespectful.”
Darling wipes her face. “Our bird learned from you.”
I lean into her, just enough. “I missed that feathered little menace.”
“He missed you too,” she says, then glares at Shady over my shoulder. “Some people did.”
I don’t look back to see his face.
If I look, I might weaken.
Vice Ink swallows us in stained glass and smoke.
The old church is a war room now. Men move everywhere.
Crypt is on a laptop near the bar, tracing money with blood on his sleeve.
Alpha stands at the altar table, screens open, a beautiful, cold face frozen on one monitor.
Key Rat is pacing with three phones and talking so fast I only catch every third curse.
Six stands by the front doors with a shotgun.
Cosmo has a medical kit open and the expression of a man ready to pray or punch, whichever works faster.
Disco is perched on a rolling stand by the bar, feathers fluffed, crest up, black eyes wild. His new cage sits behind him, shiny and reinforced because apparently even birds in this family need upgraded security. He sees me and bobs hard.
“?Lady! ?Pretty! ?No roses!”
My throat closes.
“Oh, baby,” I say, and cross to him before anyone can tell me not to.
Disco sidesteps on his perch, then leans his head toward me. I lift one shaking finger and scratch the soft feathers near his cheek. He makes a low, sweet sound, nothing like the demon screams from outside.
“Pretty Lady,” he says.
I smile, and it splits my lip again.
“Liar,” I whisper.
“?Pendejo!”
“That one’s true.”
Shady makes a sound behind me. Almost a laugh. Almost pain.
I keep petting the bird.
I don’t turn around.
Darling stays glued to my side. Diablo stays close enough to catch her if her legs give, but not close enough to cage. Good. He’s learning. Men can learn. Slowly. Painfully. Usually after ruining things first, but sometimes they learn.
Cosmo steps toward me. “Need to check your wrists, nina.”
“No.”
His brows lift.
I point at the kit. “You can check them right here. In the open. With Darling beside me. Nobody moves me to a back room. Nobody puts hands on me without telling me first. Nobody says easy unless they want to lose teeth.”
Cosmo’s mouth softens. “I never planned to take you anywhere.”
Shady says nothing.
That silence rubs against me like a raw seam.
Darling pats my shoulder.
Cosmo cleans my wrists while Disco watches him like a tiny feathered judge. The antiseptic burns, and my vision flickers white at the edges, but I don’t make a sound. Darling does. A tiny wounded noise she tries to swallow.
“Stop,” I tell her.
“I didn’t say anything.”
“You breathed guilty.”
“I don’t breathe guilty.”
“You do. It sounds like Catholic school and panic.”
Disco bobs. “?Panic!”
Darling points at him. “Traitor.”
Diablo stands behind her, one hand loose at his side, eyes on the door where his brothers keep moving. He looks at me when Cosmo wraps the bandage.
“You did good,” he says.
I stare at him.
“I got kidnapped.”
“You stayed alive. You gave us a road. You got yourself found.”
I hate that the words land. I hate that my eyes burn.
“Don’t be nice to me, Diablo. I’m hanging on by spite.”
He nods like he understands. “Spite counts.”
“It’s my best quality.”
“Second best,” Darling says.
I glance at her. “Careful. I’m fragile.”
“No, you’re not.”
Thank God someone remembers.
Cosmo moves to my cheek next. Shady shifts where he stands near the bar, and I feel every inch of him fighting himself. Wanting to come closer. Wanting to touch. Wanting to fix what can’t be fixed with blood on his knuckles.
I let Cosmo tape a small cut near my temple. I let him check my pupils. I let Darling hand me water. I let Disco steal a corner of the gauze wrapper and drop it like he murdered it for me.
I don’t let myself look at Shady until I have no choice.
Because the room has gone too quiet.
Cherry is not here.
That is the first thing I notice when the air changes. Magic comes in from the hall behind the bar, wiping his hands on a towel. His face is blank in the way men’s faces get when they’ve been near ugly truth and put their emotions in a box so they can carry it later.
“Where is she?” I ask.
No one pretends not to know who I mean.
“Back room,” Magic says. “Watched.”
“Alive?”
His mouth twists. “For now.”
Shady’s voice cuts in. “She stays that way.”
My head turns.
Blood on his shirt. Dirt on his jeans. Knuckles split. Eyes locked on mine like I’m the only road left in Miami.
“Don’t,” I say.
His jaw flexes. “Don’t what?”
“Don’t use that voice like you’re the reasonable one. I’m not asking because I want her dead.”
“I didn’t think you were.”
“I’m asking because a woman helped hand me to men with guns, and somehow everybody in this room knows more about why than I do.”
The room goes still.
Disco whispers, “No roses.”
I stand.
Darling catches my hand. “Lady.”
“I need the truth.”
“You need rest,” Shady says.
I laugh.
Wrong answer, gringo.
His face tightens like he knows it too.
“Mira,” I say, stepping away from Darling. “You don’t get to decide what I need anymore. Maybe you never did.”
He takes that hit without moving.
Good.
Let it land.
I walk toward him, slow because my knees are still traitors. Every step hurts. My ankles burn from straps. My ribs ache. But I make it across the floor because he needs to see me standing when I ask.
Boca got one thing right.
I need to ask.
“Is Cherry’s baby yours?”
No one breathes.
Shady’s eyes hold mine.
This time, he doesn’t freeze.
Too late, maybe.
But he doesn’t freeze.
“Maybe,” he says. “The baby didn’t live.”
My stomach drops. That is the cruelty of truth. Sometimes it still hurts after it stops being a surprise.
Darling moves behind me, but she doesn’t touch.
I look at Shady’s mouth. The same mouth that kissed my thighs. The same mouth that called me baby while I was tied to a chair. The same mouth that left this out.
“Say it all,” I tell him.
His eyes darken. “Lady.”
“Say. It. All.”
He swallows. “Cherry got pregnant last year.”
The room disappears around the edges.
Last year.