Chapter 7
Lady
By nine o’clock, half of Miami thinks it knows who I am.
By ten, the other half is pretending it did all along.
That is the thing about gossip in this city. It doesn’t need truth. It needs good lighting, a little blood, and a woman pretty enough for strangers to feel entitled to her bruises.
I sit on Darling’s bathroom counter with one foot in the sink, a bag of frozen peas against my cheek, and my phone lighting up beside my thigh every three seconds.
Lady Nyx breaks silence after kidnapping.
Saints Outlaws road captain caught in baby scandal.
Clubhouse sweetheart. Lost child. Glitter girl replacement.
Glitter girl. I stare at that one until the words blur.
Then I laugh.
It sounds ugly enough that Darling stops digging through her makeup bag and looks at me in the mirror.
“What?”
“Glitter girl replacement,” I say. “Qué cute. They make me sound like a limited edition Barbie with trauma accessories.”
Darling’s mouth tightens. “Sounds like something Carmen would say. Don’t read it.”
“Very helpful. Should I also not breathe?”
“You know what I mean.”
“I know everybody knows what they mean tonight.” I toss the peas into the sink.
“Shady means he loved the baby but not Cherry. Cherry means she loved him but hated me enough to hand me to men with guns. Carmen means to hurt you and Diablo but keeps picking off women around you instead. The internet means I’m a shiny whore who got kidnapped because I borrowed somebody’s biker. ”
Darling’s eyes go wet.
I point at her. “Don’t.”
“I’m not doing anything.”
“You’re about to breathe guilty again.”
She presses her lips together.
From the bedroom, Disco screams, “Pendejo!”
I lift both hands. “Exactly.”
Darling closes her eyes. “That bird is going to get us all killed.”
“That bird is my emotional support criminal.”
Disco screeches, “?Pretty Lady! ?No roses!”
My smile dies.
The bathroom goes quiet except for the buzz of my phone.
A new notification slides across the screen.
Somebody has made a side-by-side collage.
Me onstage at Eclipse, all body glitter and red mouth.
Cherry in a cropped clubhouse tank from some old party photo, looking soft and sad and young.
Shady between us, cut on, eyes turned away from the camera.
The caption reads: WHICH ONE DID HE CHOOSE FIRST?
My stomach twists.
I turn the phone face down.
Darling sees it anyway. “Lady.”
“I’m going to Eclipse.”
“No.”
“Yes.”
“You were kidnapped yesterday.”
“Technically, early this morning.”
“That doesn’t make it better.”
“It makes me accurate.”
She plants both hands on the counter, glaring at me like she did in high school when I told her I could absolutely pierce my own ear with a safety pin. “You need rest.”
“I need Miami to see me walk into that club on my own legs before Carmen turns me into a sad little cautionary tale wrapped in white roses.”
“You don’t have to prove anything.”
“Yes, I do.” My voice comes out sharper than I mean it to, but I don’t soften it. Soft is a trap tonight. “Not to them. To me.”
Darling’s face changes.
She understands that.
She walked back into Vice Ink after Rico, after Carmen, after Diablo’s almost-marriage sat on her chest like a diamond-studded corpse. She knows what it means to be seen again before fear starts decorating your cage.
“Diablo will lose his mind,” she says.
“Good. He has extras.”
“Shady will be there.”
My pulse jumps like a stupid thing.
I hate that she notices.
I lift my chin. “Then he can practice not being in my way, pobrecito.”
Darling studies me for a long second, then sighs. “Fine.”
“Fine?”
“Yes. But you’re wearing something that hides the bruises enough that vultures don’t get a free meal, and shows enough skin that every gossip page remembers you’re not dead.”
I smile slow. “Mami, now you’re speaking my language.”
Disco screams from the bedroom. “?No roses!”
“Also,” Darling says, pointing toward the door, “we are sending the bird back to Diablo’s office before we go.”
“Disco gets a better security detail than I do.”
“He bites harder.”
“What’s that about? Diablo sent him with us like feathered security, and now you’re sending him back?”
Darling rolls her eyes. “Diablo thinks Disco is an early-warning system.”
“He is. He warns everyone they’re a pendejo.”
From the bedroom, Disco screams, “?Dale! ?Pendejo!”
Darling points toward the sound. “See? Reliable.”
An hour later, Eclipse looks like home. Neon spills purple and blue across the sidewalk.
Valet lights flash over black cars, chrome bikes, fake smiles, and real weapons badly hidden under designer jackets.
The line outside curls around the building, bodies pressed close, phones already raised.
Miami heat clings to everyone, wet and sweet, perfume over sweat, ocean air over exhaust, money over rot.
Home.
Hell.
Same thing, depending on the night.
Darling steps out of the SUV first. Diablo is right behind her. He’s not touching her, but his body knows where hers is in a way that makes every inch of space between them feel chosen.
Sending Disco back must have ratted us out, because Diablo arrives with the expression of a man who found out his woman is walking into a fire and decided to bring gasoline and guns.
Darling is not happy about him tagging along.
I can’t afford to care. Tonight is about walking into Eclipse before Miami decides my career died in a flower warehouse.
Vice and Six stay back like shadows with guns. I can feel more Saints nearby, even if I can’t see them.
And then I see Shady.
Across the street, half in darkness beside a line of bikes.
Black cut. White-blond hair. Ice-blue eyes that find me like the rest of the city forgot how to exist. He stands with one boot on the curb, arms loose, mouth hard, blood probably still seeping under whatever fresh bandage Cosmo slapped on him.
He looks rough, mean, and too damn beautiful for a man who has given me this much trouble.
He doesn’t come closer.
That is the first thing I notice.
The second is that he wants to.
Every line of him is a fight against motion.
Let him fight.
A camera flash pops.
“Lady! Is it true Shady had a baby with another woman?”
Another flash.
“Were you kidnapped because of the baby?”
“Did you accuse Carmen Solano of being behind it?”
“Lady, did you see her response? Are you ready for her lawyers?”
I pause at the entrance and put on my stage smile.
Sharp enough to cut a lens.
“Ask better questions,” I say.
Someone laughs. Someone gasps. Someone yells my name again.
I keep walking.
Inside, Eclipse swallows me whole.
Bass shakes the floor through my boots. Lights sweep across the crowd, turning faces into masks and bodies into movement.
The air smells like expensive tequila, hot skin, fog machine chemicals, and the ghost of every bad idea I have ever called fun.
My ribs ache with every thump. My wrists burn under the cuffs Darling wrapped over my bandages, black leather with silver studs, pretty enough to lie.
I can do this.
Cono, I can do this.
The manager, Nico, meets us near the VIP hall, sweating through a silk shirt. “Lady, baby, we can cancel. Nobody will blame you.”
I look at him.
He lifts both hands. “Okay. Bad start.”
“Very.”
“I meant people are worried.”
“People are entertained.”
He winces.
Darling’s hand finds my back. “Greenroom first.”
“No.” I look toward the main floor. Phones are already turning. Whispers move like smoke. “Booth first.”
Nico blinks. “You want to go straight on?”
“I want them to remember what they paid for.”
Diablo says from behind us, “Security sweep is still running.”
I glance at Darling. “Does he always kill the buzz?”
“Yes,” she says. “We’re working on it.”
Diablo’s jaw tightens, but he says nothing.
Shady appears at the edge of the hall.
He has not come through the crowd. Road captain knows every back way, every service door, every dark route men take when they don’t want to be seen. He stops far enough away that nobody can say he cornered me.
My skin notices anyway.
“Lady,” he says.
Just my name.
Still enough to make my thighs remember his hands.
I hate him.
I want him.
Both can rot together.
“Gringo,” I answer.
His mouth twitches. Not a smile. He knows better.
Nico looks between us and suddenly discovers somewhere else to be. Darling doesn’t move. Diablo doesn’t either.
Shady’s eyes flick to my wrists. The black cuffs. The careful lie.
His face goes darker.
“Don’t,” I say.
His gaze lifts. “I didn’t say anything.”
“You were thinking loud.”
“Hard habit to break, baby.”
“You thinking or being loud?”
“Yes.”
Despite everything, a laugh almost climbs out of me. I kill it.
He sees that too.
“I’m not here to stop you,” he says.
“That a new hobby?”
“Trying it out. Feels like shit.”
“Good.”
His eyes burn. “Yeah. Figured you’d like that.”
A shout rises from the main room. My name. Then another. Chanting starts, half supportive, half bloodthirsty. Lady. Lady. Lady.
The stage wants me.
The gossip wants me.
Shady wants me.
Only one of those gets fed tonight.
I step toward him. Darling tenses, but I lift two fingers at my side. I’m fine. I’m not fine. Same dress, different lighting.
Shady stays still.
I stop close enough to smell him. Smoke. Leather. Soap. Blood under clean clothes. My body pulls toward him with embarrassing loyalty.
“Where do you want me?” he asks.
The question hits harder than a command ever could have.
Not come here.
Not stay there.
Not mine.
Where do you want me?
I look at his mouth. Bad idea. Terrible idea. My favorite kind.
“Far enough to prove you can listen.”
His jaw flexes.
Then he steps back.
One step.
Two.
Three.
He places himself at the mouth of the hall, close enough to see me, far enough to obey.
“Here?” he asks.
I swallow.
“Dale,” I say. “There.”
He nods once. “I’ll be there.”
I walk past him before I do something stupid.