Page 26 of Femme Fatale
I didn’t need to answer. The air had gone heavy. I’d lived with this my entire life.
“My father,” I said. “Sounds like he brought your new friend Kara.”
Selene’s jaw locked. The officers started prepping. Spade checked the sight on her AR. Glitz swept all the phones into a Faraday bag, then started popping panels on the wall safe. Joker rolled her shoulders and flicked the safety off her sidearm. Aces—cool as a refrigerated corpse—just palmed her own Glock and headed for the porch, her movement a blueprint for how to look unafraid.
I got up and followed. Selene was right behind me. For a heartbeat, we were alone in the threshold, bathed in that gold-hour wash that made the club insignia glow like a neon wound above the door. It could’ve been any day, any city, but tonight felt different.
The rumble of engines started as a distant vibration. It crept up the walls and through the soles of my boots until the whole world seemed to be tuned to the growl of V8s and Harley big twins. Two black SUVs and four bikes, just like Nines said, coming in tight formation down the cracked stretch of road that led to the old mining lodge.
The bikes fanned out and hit the front gravel in perfect formation, spraying rocks like shrapnel. The SUVs came to a stop behind, engines idling with a predatory hum. The vehicles were all custom matte black, with zero chrome, and windows tinted to the point of illegality, even by Vegas standards. The kind of tint that says, “Fuck you, I’ll pay the fine.”
Doors opened in sequence. The bikes first. Women in all black, full-face helmets, patches stitched boldly. They drew down immediately, ARs and shotguns leveled. The SUVs followed, and out stepped Jack Smalls.
My father looked like he’d been carved from old driftwood, all sinew and gristle and fury. Age hadn’t softened a single part of him; it had just burned off the unnecessary. His eyes were deep-set and dead as a doll’s, but they didn’t miss anything. He took it all in. Looked at the security lights, the reinforced door, the full crew arrayed on the porch, and Selene standing in front like the last gunslinger in the world. What he didn’t see was my attraction to the woman he now hated. Unlike most men, I likedmy women to be strong and determined, but also to let go with the right man around them. I got that sense from Selene.
Beside him, Kara. If Jack was stone, Kara was polished glass, eyes always scanning. Her posture was straight, every gesture deliberate. She had a smile that didn’t quite reach her eyes, and when she looked at Selene, you could feel the voltage. Kara wasn’t just muscle. She was a knife, and she was here to cut.
Jack took a step forward, hands open but not relaxed. “Evening, boy,” he said to me, his voice pure sandpaper and snake oil. “You always did have a flair for the dramatic.”
Selene spoke first. “You can turn around, Jack. This is my place. My town. You want a seat at the table, you ask for it.”
Jack grinned. If I ever went down on Selene, I’d have to keep a watch out for those big balls she was using to talk to my father as if he didn’t matter in Vegas. “Tables are for equals. You’re not there yet.”
Kara didn’t speak. She just eyed Selene, slow and predatory. Then her gaze found Joker, Spade, and Aces, sizing them up. Even outnumbered two to one, I felt their confidence. It was the confidence of a cat watching a cage of mice—no need to chase, wait for them to die scared.
Jack looked at me and finally nodded, as if acknowledging I was even in the room. “You ready to come home, son?”
He always called me “son” when he wanted to remind me who’d die first in a hostage situation. “I’m not yours anymore,” I said. “You fucked up, Dad. I told you I was done.”
He laughed, but it was the old-man laugh, the kind you only ever heard in hospitals or war movies. “You’ll always be mine, Zeke. You want to play games with these girls, fine, but you know how it ends. Pussy ain’t worth more than family.”
Selene stepped forward, half a pace ahead of me. Her presence was all black powder and steel. “If you want him, you have to come through me.”
Kara’s lips twitched. “That can be arranged.”
The tension was beyond description. Every patch on every jacket, every bead of sweat, every knuckle-white grip on every gun was a prelude to a massacre. But no one moved, not even to blink.
That’s when Jack gave the signal. It was a nothing gesture, just a flick of his left ring finger. But everyone saw it.
The rear door of the first SUV swung open. Out came Simone. My sister.
She was in worse shape than the last time I’d seen her. Hair tangled, face bruised, lip split. But her eyes were unbroken. She looked at me and didn’t even blink. She walked forward under her own power, two of Jack’s goons close behind, one hand gripping her elbow just to remind everyone she was property, not family.
The sight of her in that state was like getting shot with a round that you didn’t know was in the chamber. My breath caught, and for a moment I saw everything else as if through a telescope—distant, warped, unreal.
“Simone,” I said, but my voice came out in a dry rasp.
Jack let the moment hang, then said, “Time to come home, both of you.”
I wanted to say something brave, some kind of final fuck you, but the only thing I could think of was how she was standing. She’d set her jaw in a way that told me she knew this was going to hurt, that she was already preparing for the next punch.
Selene’s hand drifted to her piece, slow and deliberate. “You don’t get to walk in here and claim what you want, Jack.”
“That’s exactly what I do,” he said. “Every single day.”
Kara finally spoke again, her voice a smooth blade. “You want to draw down, do it now. But we both know how this ends.”
Joker muttered, “Fucking melodrama,” but the safety on her Glock was off.
