Page 29 of Spade

11

Spade

There’s a difference between the chemical reek of bleach and the crisp iron stink of blood, but no one walking the floor of a casino can smell either. I trailed both from the elevator bank, through the main gaming pit, and into the back corridor with the stained carpet, my boots tracking the afterbirth of the night’s work over a thousand square feet of worn blue-and-gold. The Royal Harlots were in a room that used to be a VIP lounge, walls still padded in tufted white vinyl, table big enough for eight if everyone kept their elbows to themselves. Most of the girls had ditched their cuts for the night, but the hierarchy needed no leather. The arrangement said everything.

Selene at the head of the table, body square, the kind of posture that made even the expensive upholstery look like a throne. Joker to her right, chair tipped back and one boot—scuffed black, chromed sole—balanced on the table’s edge. Joker’s hands folded behind her head, showing every inch of tattooed wrist, a smile playing like a threat around the corners of her mouth. Aces to Selene’s left, bulk folded in on itself, forearms bracketed tight to the tabletop, gaze level and not wandering. Glitz midway down, ledger open and pen already drumming a soundless tattoo against the cover. Nines with a lined yellow legal pad and a mechanical pencil poised for the kind of notes that didn’t need to get taken, but always were. Tempest against the back wall, arms crossed, left thumb hooked under the wide strap of her tank. Tempest never sat if violence was on the agenda.

I didn’t bother with a greeting. Everyone here knew the shape of my shadow and the sound of my boots. I moved to the empty chair left for me—third down, Selene’s line of sight unobstructed—and let the jacket stay on. Under the light, the back of my left hand flashed a Rorschach from an arterial I’d missed in the dark. No one flinched. Glitz’s pen stilled, and the room ran on hold until Selene started.

“We have a problem with the Queens of Chaos,” Selene said, hands folded together so that the knuckles lined up neatly. “Not some cross-country road beef. Local.”

Joker dropped her boot from the table, the chair landing on all fours with a dry scrape.

“Intelligence came back tonight,” Selene continued. “They’re running a live-show operation out of a commercial squat near Washington and Civic Center. Ground floor is a storefront, blacked-out windows, you can’t see shit from the street. Upstairs, they’re cycling men through on an hourly basis. The men pay to get sucked off. Women in the basement pay to bathe in semen. That’s the pitch.”

“Fucked up way to make money for their club,” I said.

Glitz cocked an eyebrow, flipped a page in the ledger. “That’s it? They’re charging for a fuck show in a strip mall?”

Aces closed her hands into two slow fists, knuckles whitening. “They’re draining them?”

“Milking, then draining, then discard,” Selene said. She kept her voice flat as a ruler. “Next batch is already in the pipeline. We need to find out how far in advanced they have men scheduled.”

No one said anything for the space of a few breaths. Nines’ pencil stopped, the point hovering over the yellow legal pad. Glitz went still. Joker looked at me, then back to Selene, as if trying to gauge which of us would take it harder.

Selene swept the room with her eyes. “The problem isn’t so much what they’re doing as where they are doing it. That’s North Strip, our fucking side of the city. Our responsibility.”

“They’ll open other come centers,” Nines said. “All around Vegas. We need to stop that shit now, before it spreads.”

A slow, surgical silence. You could feel the options cut away, one by one.

Joker said, “We hit it.” Not a question. “Shut it down, send them back to Sacramento with a message they won’t mistake.”

“Agreed,” Aces said. No voice inflection, just a factual entry on a ledger somewhere behind her eyes.

Glitz didn’t look up from her notes. “I can pull records, get an idea of cash flow and comps, maybe flag credit cards running through the front. But they don’t show up anywhere public, I’m betting. All off-books.”

“Doesn’t matter,” Tempest said from the wall. Her voice could sand paint off steel. “We go in, we hit them. Take out the equipment, torch the files, free what’s left. Make it clear they never come this way again.”

Selene waited until the table fell silent again. “Spade leads entry. Joker on breach. Aces secures the perimeter, top, and bottom. Tempest drives the extraction, van, and bodies. Glitz, you start the financial kill-switch—any evidence, you ghost it. Nines, live comms, real time. I’ll run over-watch, stay mobile, and patch anyone who needs it.”

Nines looked up, nodded once, and resumed writing.

I didn’t move, but every nerve was already tuned to the blueprint. “We want them all alive?”

Selene looked at me for a long time. “If they surrender, yes. If they run, you make the choice. But the ringleaders—I want names and faces. Alive.”

Joker grinned, something like approval, and cracked her neck left, then right. “Hell yes.”

Tempest finally uncrossed her arms, hands flexing at her sides. “Are we going full colors?”

Selene shook her head. “This is a surgical job, not a parade. All black, no patches. In and out. No noise for Metro. No press.”

“Timeline?” I asked.

Selene checked her watch, the movement so slight it might have just been habit. “We’ll give it a few days. They’re most vulnerable at shift change, two-forty in the morning. They don’t expect trouble until the day shift swaps. We take them while they’re off-guard and before they can burn evidence.”

Aces said, “Entry?”