Oye, gringo. Took you long enough.
Smart mouth. Bloody mouth. My mouth, if I had earned the right to think it.
I haven’t.
That truth sits under my ribs meaner than the bullet graze in my side. Cherry’s voice follows it, crying in the middle of Vice Ink while Lady bleeds on a screen.
You sat there while I lost your baby.
Yeah. I did.
And I did what men like me do when grief gets too honest. I shoved it in a dark corner, fed it guilt when it rattled, and acted like silence made me decent. Now that silence has hands. It has white roses. It has Lady chained in a flower warehouse while men use my old sins as bait.
Besides, I still have no idea if her baby was mine. Cherry’s a club whore with a body count higher than she was when I fucked her. Being with her was easy because there was never possibility I’d fall in love. Not like with Lady.
Diablo rides ahead of me, black cut snapping against his back, shoulders set like the city itself pissed him off and he plans to collect. Vice is on my left. Magic and Six are behind us. Dune and Tubbs split off two blocks back to take the rear service road. Key Rat’s voice crackles in my ear, sharp and jittery through comms.
“Traffic cam on Northwest service lane shows one refrigerated truck parked crooked at the east dock. No plates on the van. Two bodies outside smoking like they don’t know they’re about to meet Jesus with bad breath.”
“Jesus is busy,” Magic says. “Send them to Cosmo.”
“Cosmo’s praying,” Six mutters.
“Cosmo prays before he sins,” Vice says.
I flex my fingers around the throttle. “Y’all done with church announcements, or can we rescue my woman before these assholes start charging us by the minute?”
Diablo glances back once.
Even through the helmet, I feel the warning.
My woman.
He heard it.
He also heard Darling before we left. Bring her back as Lady. Not as your pride.
That one landed. I’m still bleeding from it.
“She’s alive,” Diablo says over comms. “That means we move smart.”
“She’ll stay alive if we move fast,” I answer.
“She’ll stay alive if you remember you’re road captain.”
I hate him a little because he is right.
I know roads. Exits. Bad turns. The places men run when they think panic makes them invisible. I know Miami’s ugly backside, the service alleys behind pretty clubs, the warehouses that move flowers by day and bodies by night. I know the difference between a rescue and a trap.
This is both.
Lady gave us the road.
Two left. Three right. Planes scream. Trains cry. Flowers.
My girl made a map with blood in her mouth and a rose in her lap.
Now I have to be good enough to follow it.