Page 30 of Iggy

Iggy’s smile disappeared.

“What promise?”

Bunny looked down at her bourbon. For the first time since they walked in, she seemed almost tired.

“The one Edison made.”

Gunner’s jaw tightened at the name. Edison Hale, the real name of the previous president of the Graveyard Saints, had been dead ten years and still managed to cost living people sleep.

“Say it clean.”

“Twenty million to the Swamp Rats,” Bunny said. “Promised before he died. Not borrowed on paper. Not clean enough for court. But promised in front of men who don’t need signatures.”

Skull sat back slowly. The booth creaked beneath him.

“For what?”

“Passage, protection, and silence,” Bunny said. “Edison wanted a pipeline through their swamp routes without paying every time a shipment moved. The Swamp Rats wanted a stake big enough to buy loyalty for a decade. Edison gave them a number he thought the next war would cover. Then he died, the war didn’t pay, and Neela inherited the throne with that promise sitting under it like a bomb.”

Razor took off his shades and folded them carefully.

“Due date?”

“Friday at midnight,” Bunny said. “At least that’s what the whisper became after the Swamp Rats sent word last week. Pay by then, or the debt stops belonging to the club and starts belonging to Neela personally.”

Iggy stared at her.

“How does a debt become personal?”

“The old way,” Bunny said. “Blood and leverage. They take everything around her first. Safe houses. Garages. Trucks. Names. Even bikes. Then they come for her piece by piece until somebody decides mercy is cheaper than revenge.”

Gunner looked toward the dark window. Beyond his reflection, the road was empty except for the parked bikes and the slow blink of insects in the porch light.

“So Neela gambled club money because Edison wrote a check with somebody else’s future.”

“She didn’t call it gambling,” Bunny said. “She called it buying time. She called it keeping the Saints independent. She called it making sure no man who hated her got to say Edison’s chair was too big for a woman.”

“And what do you call it?” Razor asked.

Bunny smiled without humor.

“Neela being Neela. Brilliant right up until brilliance needs a body count.”

For a long moment none of the Shadow Warriors spoke. The bar seemed to lean closer around them. Ice cracked in Bunny’s glass. The ceiling fan groaned. Out by the pool table, one of the old men scratched badly and muttered a curse, but even that sounded distant, as if the whole room understood the conversation at the back booth had lowered the temperature.

Gunner finally leaned forward.

“This new investment. You think it’s real?”

“I think she believes it is,” Bunny said. “And that scares me more than if she knew it was rotten. We all know she’s been stealing from the club for years, making investments that she wants, not the club. The boys are becoming suspicious and she’s in deep shit.”

Skull folded his arms.

“Why agree to see us?” Bunny’s eyes went to the door, then to each of them in turn.

“Because by Friday, every hungry club between here and Baton Rouge will smell blood. The Swamp Rats want their twenty. The Saints don’t have it. Neela thinks she can pull a miracle out of a market that already tried to eat her alive. And if she fails, she won’t be the only one who burns.

“If she can’t get her hands on her daughter, they’ll take the club, the bikes, the members, all of it. Willing or not. Then, they’ll take her. She’ll go from president of a club to a club whore being used for the entertainment of everyone. Do you know how many clubs will line up at the Swamp Rats club to get a piece of her?”