Page 48 of Femme Fatale
Stephanie grunted, tearing the sleeve off her own jacket to wipe fingerprints off the desk. “Good. Get the bikes ready.” Nines nodded and vanished as quietly as she’d come.
I checked the window. No sign of movement in the lot, just the sick blue glow of neon and the stutter of distant sirens. Vegas had a way of swallowing noise, even gunfire.
When I turned back, Zeke was standing over his father’s body, gun hanging from his hand. His face was unreadable, but the tremor in his jaw said more than words.
“You okay?” I asked.
He looked at me, blinked hard. “Never,” he said, and it was the truest thing I’d ever heard from him.
Stephanie didn’t offer comfort. She just clapped him on the shoulder and said, “You did good, kid.” She turned to me, and I saw a new respect in her eyes. Not the grudging, patronizing kind. Real, bone-deep respect.
“Time to go,” she said. “You want to leave a message for the next asshole who tries to take your place?”
I thought about it. Then I grabbed Jack’s wolf necklace from the lamp and looped it over the doorknob, the charm catching the light like a tiny green curse.
We headed out, Zeke trailing behind. At the exit, he stopped, pulled me close, and kissed me hard enough to taste iron. His hands were trembling, but hungry. For a second, the world narrowed to just the two of us and the pulse that ran between our ribs.
He broke the kiss, held my face between his hands. “Go,” he said, voice raw. “I’ll call the cops. I’ll say it was self-defense. It’s cleaner that way.”
I wanted to argue, but I saw the steel in his eyes. He needed to do this alone.
“Don’t let them eat you alive,” I said.
He smiled, bloody and beautiful. “I never do.”
Stephanie and I mounted our bikes, the engines coughing to life like old gods waking up. Nines and the rest of the crew waited by the lot, faces set and eyes bright with adrenaline.
We didn’t speak as we rode out, just let the hum of the city fill in the blanks. Behind us, the casino faded into the darkness, and with it, the last grip Jack Smalls ever had on the world.
I didn’t look back. Not once.
The Strip unreeled ahead, a living wound, and I gunned the throttle until the pain in my leg became a blur. We rode into the night, the wind cold and absolute, the horizon wide open and waiting for the next war. I was sure it would come, but until then, I needed to be patched up.
Chapter Thirteen
Zeke
The line went dead. I stood there a second, phone pressed to my ear, not sure which felt worse, the ringing in my head or the ache where the bullets had chewed up my side. I let the phone fall, watched it bounce on the mahogany and spin to a stop by the silver .45. Blood kept seeping through the seams of my shirt. Some of it was mine. Most of it was my father's.
The room stank of copper, a sharp tang clinging to the silk wallpaper, pooling in the carpet around his body. Jack Smalls sprawled across the base of his desk, legs twisted, lips parted, eyes rolled half-closed in what would pass for sleep if he wasn't already leaking out onto the rug. The suit, a custom Italian design, was ruined. The man inside, even worse.
I felt nothing for him. Or maybe I just didn't have the energy left to hate. I sagged into the nearest chair, one of those executive models made for men with more money thanbackbone, and held my guts, counting the steady ooze of blood through my fingers. It was warm, wet, and real. I'd spent my whole life feeling like a ghost; now I was more alive than I'd ever been.
A minute passed. Maybe two. Somewhere in the casino below, a siren started up. It was one of ours, not the city. The place had a warning system that piped in a special frequency, just loud enough to get under your skin and set your teeth on edge. The women at the bar would hear it. The security guards might, too, if they hadn't already run for the hills. The only one who cared about me now was my sister, and I doubted she'd show up for anything less than a funeral.
I wiped my hand on the inside of my jacket, slicking blood across the lining. The movement sent a knife of pain up my ribs. I grunted, then laughed. It sounded like a cough with no sense of humor.
I'd killed my father. There was nothing left to say about it. I doubted that he would see my mother where he was going, but in the chance he did, I hoped she would kick his ass.
Outside the office, the marble floors were cold and silent. I heard the sound before I saw her, the click of Simone's heels, sharp and measured. She walked with the same precision she'd had since we were kids, always balancing, always calculating the risk in every step. The door creaked open, and the light from the hallway cut a long, thin blade across the crime scene.
She stopped in the frame, one hand still on the knob. Her other hand covered her mouth. Her eyes—Jack's eyes, but with all the violence bred out—went wide as she took in the blood, the ruined carpet, the corpse.
I tried to look at her, but my neck stiffened up. I settled for staring at her feet. "He made me," I said. "It was him or me."
Simone didn't answer. She edged around the slick on the marble, each step deliberate, every muscle tight. She wore anavy skirt suit, designer, the kind you could only buy if you had blackmail on three county supervisors. Her hair was up, not a strand out of place. She looked like she'd come for a business meeting, not to watch her brother end their family line.
She stopped two feet away, just past the blood halo. Her eyes flicked to the phone, then the gun, then my hands. She didn't ask if I was okay. She didn't have to. We weren't the kind of family that checked on each other's wounds.
