Page 120 of Jagger's Remorse
"What?"
"I think you can actually pull this off. Take over Sinaloa. Rule Northern California." He looks up at me. "You're not the college girl I left alive five years ago."
"No. That girl's dead. You killed her."
"And what rose from her ashes?"
I think about it. About everything I've become, everything I'm becoming.
"A dragon," I finally say. "One that's done playing with matches when she could burn down the world."
"That's my girl."
"Always."
My phone buzzes.
Raven:
Package delivered safely. Mom's getting treatment tomorrow.
I show Jagger. "Blade's safe."
"Another life saved from Eduardo's games."
"For now." I set the phone aside. "But Eduardo's right about one thing. Someone always has to bleed. The trick is making sure it's the right someone."
"And who's the right someone?"
"Anyone who threatens what's mine." I pull him down beside me. "My club. My family. My man."
"Possessive."
"Learned from the best."
We lie there in the gathering dark, planning a future built on blood and power.
It should feel wrong. Instead, it feels like destiny.
Eduardo wanted to create a weapon.
He succeeded.
He just never considered that weapons can turn on their makers.
Six months, I think. Maybe less.
And then the little dragon becomes the queen of her own empire.
CHAPTER NINE
Jagger
The Sombra warehouse squats in Redding's industrial district like a cancer waiting to be cut out.
Three a.m., fog thick enough to choke on, and my woman's voice crackles through the earpiece.
"Two guards on the north entrance. Lazy fuckers, smoking instead of watching."
