Page 24 of Femme Fatale
“That’s the backup server location. All my father’s real books, the kind he doesn’t show the IRS or his own muscle. If you want to burn him down, that’s the fuse.”
Nines grabbed the drive and disappeared, already scanning it.
Selene’s face didn’t move. “Why now?”
“He crossed a line,” I said, and it wasn’t even a lie. “He’s hurting people who don’t deserve it. And I’m tired of cleaning up bodies that should still be breathing.” I looked around the room. “And, Simone called me. I appreciate what you did for her.”
She nodded. “You know what happens if you’re playing us?”
I nodded. “You kill me slow.”
She gave a half-smile. “Slower.”
Joker looked at Selene, then at me, and for the first time, I saw curiosity. “How do we know you’re not setting us up for a hit?”
I leaned in, putting my hands on the table so everyone could see the old scars—cigarette burns, healed-over knife wounds, a thumb broken and set wrong. “You don’t. But if you want to take the fight to Jack Smalls, you need someone who knows the back door.”
Selene stood, and the rest stood with her. A wall of leather, steel, and cold resolve.
“All right,” she said. “You’re in. But you so much as sneeze in the wrong direction, and one of us puts a hole between your eyes.” She nodded at the other women, and they all but Selene vacated the room.
She waited until the last bootheel faded, then circled me, never taking her eyes off mine. In the flat Nevada morning, the air smelled like burnt copper and her cigarette breath as she leaned in.
“A favor for a favor,” she said, and I heard the threat in it, and the exhaustion, too. “You tell me what line your father crossed. Not the one you feed the girls. The real one.”
I let out a long breath, the kind that costs you more than a year in prison ever could. “You want the truth?”
She just nodded, and I could see the history stamped in her eyes, layer on layer of old nights and bad men and the bone-deep need to never be weak again.
“My mother was a runner for his crew,” I said. “He never loved her, just liked the idea of a family. She was killed delivering for him, and he made me watch the tape.”
Selene didn’t blink. “And Simone?”
“She was eight,” I said, and could feel the way that memory scraped my insides raw, like rebar. But I also noticed how it caught her attention. “He told me it was my job to keep her safe. He’d punish her if I didn’t. So I did everything he asked, even when it meant breaking bones on kids who’d never see nineteen.”
Selene tapped a nail on the table, three times, slow, like counting down my story. “What changed?”
I looked at her, really looked, and saw someone who’d lost the same things I had, only she’d set the world on fire instead of letting it burn her. “He started selling girls younger than Simone. Lied about their ages, used them up, then sent them south.”
She flinched, almost imperceptibly, but I saw it. “You helped him,” she said, flat.
I nodded and let the guilt show. “Until I couldn’t.”
She sat. The chair creaked under the force of her, and she ran a hand through her hair, like she needed to find the right words out of a snarl. “I don’t do pity,” she said, “but I do revenge. You want in, you give me a reason to believe you won’t bolt when it gets rough.”
“I won’t,” I said, and meant it. “But you need to know—I’ve done things. Bad things. You want to kill me after, I’ll hand you the gun.”
She snorted. “You’re not special, Zeke. Every person in this place has done things they regret.”
The door opened, and Joker stuck her head in. “The USB is legit. Jack’s moving two million in armament before Friday. Warehouse on Sahara.”
Selene smiled, and it was the first indication she had any warmth left. “Looks like we’re in business.”
Joker left and closed the door.
“You’re father fucked you up the way my mother fucked me up,” Selene said.
I waited for a sneer, or the slow-dawning condescension of a woman who’s decided men are collectively a genetic mistake. But all I got was a tired, sardonic smile, like we’d both been benched by the same coach for the same busted play.
