Page 28 of Seneca
He stood, and the other officers followed. The meeting was over. Seneca helped me to my feet, and we left the room together, the air behind us thick with loyalty and old blood.
In the hallway, I stopped him. “You knew, didn’t you? About Jenna?”
He shook his head. “Not until Nitro got the texts. I figured she was being leveraged, not that she’d crossed.”
I thought of the years I’d spent defending Jenna, the secrets we’d kept for each other, the way I always thought I’d be the one to leave first. Fuck, I was.
“She used my name,” I said, voice small. “She sold me for ten grand.”
Seneca touched my shoulder, thumb pressing into the joint until it hurt. “That’s not on you, Catherine. It’s on her.”
I nodded, but the pain didn’t go away.
We walked back to the bar. Nitro was waiting, a map already spread across the counter. He glanced at my face, then at Seneca. “Is she holding up?”
Seneca answered for me. “She’s tougher than you.”
Nitro smirked. “We’ll see.”
I took a seat, pulling the whiskey close. My hands still trembled, but I poured anyway.
The men began plotting routes and safehouses, talking in a shorthand I barely understood. It was all territory and leverage, the same language as any courtroom, just with more at stake.
I listened, silent, letting the truth settle.
Jenna was gone. The only family I had left was the enemy’s enemy.
The club never slept, but the war room buzzed with a new kind of energy. By dusk, the patched-in brothers and a few old-timers had filled every corner of the main hall. Damron stood at the head of the table, arms folded, jaw set, while Nitro and Seneca turned the pool table into a makeshift operations map. Every flat surface was commandeered. A battered corkboard, salvaged from someone’s failed attempt at corporate respectability, was now the club’s intelligence hub—crowded with polaroids and DMV headshots.
Damron addressed the room in clipped commands. Nitro translated them into logistics like who would run the perimeter, which girls would move the cars, and who was on watch with what hardware. Most of it was foreign to me, but some part of my brain, the old Bellini instinct, started making connections. I remembered the way my grandfather talked about “contingency” and how power was always about outlasting the opposition, not just outgunning them.
I hovered near the map, trying to stay out of the way. Seneca was never more than a step away.
Nitro had commandeered a whiteboard from the wall and started sketching blast zones around the clubhouse. “If they come from the main drag, we pop the charge here.” He pointed with a marker, then looked at me. “You ever use plastique, Judge?”
I shook my head. “Just saw it on CSI once.”
He barked a laugh. “Most of those shows are bullshit, but the principle’s sound. It’s about scaring the enemy, not blowing them up. C-4’s for show. The real fight’s over before the boom.”
Seneca grinned, the tension in his face slackening for a second. “You gonna teach her how to wire a car?”
Nitro snorted. “If she survives tonight, maybe.”
I was hearing things no judge should ever hear. There was a pretty good chance one of these club members would be standing in front of me in court one day. What then? I couldn’t look the other way. Despite what was happening with Seneca and me, I still had a job to do. Then, it hit me. He still had thirty days to serve, unless I reduced it. But how would that look?
Damron called for quiet, and the room stilled. He pointed at the board. “Martinis have two shooters in town, maybe more. Our guy at the bus depot says a third came in this morning. Heavyset, walking with a limp.”
The judge in me surfaced. “That’s probably Gino the Deliverer. He did a stretch at Otisville, got shivved in the knee. Can’t run, but he’s a killer.”
Every eye in the room turned to me.
Damron nodded, impressed. “You know these people?”
I shrugged. “Family dinners were complicated.”
Seneca squeezed my hand under the table, a quick, rough affirmation.
I stepped closer to the map, forcing my voice steady. “My grandfather used to say that Martini was all flash and no patience. If he’s sending hitters, it means he’s desperate. But he’s not stupid. He’ll use local muscle until they fuck up, then bring in someone from out of state to finish it. If you see new faces at the old Italian bakery on Fourth, that’s his staging ground.”
