Page 38 of Femme Fatale
"Sorry, boss," she said.
I smoked it down to the filter. I didn’t remember breathing in, just the burn in my chest and the acid in my stomach. I looked up at the sky, hoping for stars, but all I got was black.
Jack Smalls had killed the only man I ever trusted. And now, there was only one thing left to do.
I stood, wiped my hands on my jeans, and looked at the crew. "This isn't over," I said. My voice sounded dead, hollow.
The women nodded, eyes hard.
Joker said it first. She took the burnt end of the cigarette, flicked it onto the sand, and looked right at me. “We fuckin’ kill him.”
There wasn’t any debate. There had never been. Just a moment where I had to remember how to breathe, how to stand, and not shake, while everyone around me waited for my word. Even Glitz, who mostly cared for the green, looked at me like money wasn’t worth shit if we didn’t end Jack Small for good.
I nodded, and that was it. The plan was gospel. Kill Jack Small at all costs.
We rode back, the long way, around the skeleton suburbs east of town, each neighborhood more unfinished than the last. I didn’t remember the ride, just the heat of the wind and the waythe blood stuck in the seams of my jeans, drying but never, ever leaving.
At the clubhouse, the lights were all off, but I saw the movement inside. Stephanie was there, sitting at the head of the old bar, two of her own crew from the NYC chapter behind her. She was dressed for a biker funeral, wearing all black, with a silver chain at her neck. The look she gave me when I entered was a mix of anger, pride, and something else. Pity, maybe. Or the ghost of pity, stretched too thin to show.
I hung my cut on the chair and walked right to her. “It’s done,” I said. My voice cracked.
She stood. “Your crew took three million off a cartel warehouse. Cops are turning the city inside out.”
I shrugged. “Let them.”
She studied my face. I realized then that, for the first time, I was older than she’d ever seemed to me before. I wasn’t a kid anymore. If I ever had been. “Jack will answer for it,” I heard myself say.
Stephanie nodded, but her jaw was tight. “We’ll fix this, Selene. But not with a gunshot on the Strip. That’s a war nobody wins.”
“Maybe that’s what it’s supposed to be,” I said, and felt the bitterness burn up through my teeth.
Stephanie didn’t flinch from it. “He killed club members.” Her eyes flicked to the other women, all of them battered and rimed in sweat, all of them pretending not to watch the scene. “So what’s your move?”
I looked at the money, at Joker’s leg where she’d tied off the wound with an old club scarf, at the way Spade kept her arms crossed and her eyes locked on the wall, as if by sheer will she could bring Zeke back. I thought of my mother’s voice, when she’d take the switch to me and say, ‘What you start, you finish.’
“I kill him,” I said. “I take it all.”
Demise let out a low whistle. “Just you?” she said, and I realized she meant it. Not a challenge. Not a taunt. Just a question of logistics, a practical inquiry from a woman who’d killed more men than I’d slept with.
“Just me,” I said. “He’ll expect a crew. He won’t expect… this.”Stephanie took a step closer and, impossibly, hugged me. I felt her ribs through the jacket, her head pressed against mine. It lasted only a second, but it was a second I needed.
“Whatever you do,” she whispered, “make it clean. And leave them something to fear.”
“I always do,” I said, and she smiled—just a flash of teeth and then gone.
I turned to Joker. “You good?”
She laughed, dark and wet. “You gonna ask me to stay home?”
“You can’t run,” I said. “You can bleed, though, if you’re stupid.”
She winked. “I’ll take the pain.”
The rest watched, waiting for orders. I gave them anyway. “Lay low till midnight. He’s coming for us. We get him first.”
Tempest arched her back, yawned like a dog. “You want him alive?”
“Only his head,” I said.
