Page 37 of Damron
The next page was worse—a photo of Giammati, hair slicked back and face smeared with smugness, walking into a strip mall at the edge of town. Flanked by two Dire Straits bikers, colors on display, one hand on his shoulder like they were old friends or maybe just that close to caving his skull in.
I tried to process it. “Why would a politician risk this? Why not keep the deniability?”
“Because he thinks he’s untouchable,” Nitro said, lighting up another cigarette. “He doesn’t see us as a threat. He thinks he’s already won.”
Damron didn’t say anything, but I could see the violence behind his eyes. He handed me the photo. “You see the background? That’s the Santa Fe Ridge. It’s their clubhouse now. Used to be a goddamn bowling alley. They bought it up and turned it into a fortress.”
Nitro nodded, exhaling smoke like a fucking dragon. “We watched him go in. He spent two hours inside. Came out laughing. Shook hands with Ghost. Then he drove straight to his campaign HQ.”
I felt a chill. “He’s making a play. Not just for me—he wants the whole state.”
“Wants it bad enough to go to war,” Damron said.
They talked in that clipped shorthand, trading names and codenames and past beefs that left me feeling like a tourist in my own life. For a second, I wondered if I’d ever really knownDamron, or if I’d just loved the outlaw in him because it was easier than loving the parts of myself I’d tried to run away from.
“Giammati’s got the money and the muscle,” I said. “What do we have?”
Damron and Nitro exchanged a look. “We’ve got us,” Nitro said. “And we don’t lose. Not when it matters.”
There was a strange comfort in that, even though it sounded like pure MC bullshit. I looked at the photo again, at the way Giammati stood with his arms around two men who would slit his throat for a nickel, and wondered what the price on my own life was these days.
“Next steps?” I said, trying to keep my voice steady.
Damron was already moving, stowing the evidence, eyes on the street. “We hit them first. We hit them hard. No warning, no PR. Just a message.”
Nitro grinned, showing a mouthful of bad teeth. “That’s more like it, Prez.”
I felt the old thrill, the one that had drawn me to this world in the first place—the idea that sometimes you could punch back, even if it broke your knuckles. I followed them down the alley, the night suddenly sharp with solutions.
If Giammati wanted a war, he’d get one.
###
The clock over my stove read 2:23 a.m., and the world outside was dead quiet except for the occasional siren threading its way through the city. Inside my apartment, the only sound was the clink of glass against glass as Damron poured another two fingers of whiskey into a mug that still had traces of ramen flavor in the bottom. The coffee table was a graveyard of takeout: cold lo mein, a pizza box with two slices left, a bag of fries that had gone limp and congealed into a single salty brick. I’d traded my silk robe for sweatpants and a T-shirt, but the makeup from therally was still caked along my jaw, like the night’s armor hadn’t quite come off.
We’d spent the first hour after the meeting in silence, each of us staked out at opposite ends of the couch, pretending that the TV’s low volume and the endless flicker of cable news were enough to drown out the day. When the bottle was half-empty, the conversation started to thaw. Not the way normal people talked—never about weather or sports or the things you could say without needing a lawyer—but the language of two people who knew exactly how to wound each other, and did it anyway because that was safer than admitting what was actually wrong.
“I still don’t get it,” I said, staring at the ripples in my drink. “Giammati could’ve just run a smear campaign. Instead, he decides to cozy up with the one crew that’s made a career out of trying to kill you. How do you even broker that?”
“You don’t. You let them take a few teeth, then you smile and hope you’ve got enough left to chew what’s coming.”
He sat forward, elbows on his knees, the sleeves of his T-shirt rolled up to reveal the mess of tattoos and scars that mapped out every fight he’d ever lost. For a second, I caught him watching me, like he was trying to memorize the slope of my face for an eventual police sketch.
“Maybe he thinks it’s leverage,” I said. “Or maybe he wants to see me sweat before the debate.”
Damron shrugged. “Politicians are like that. Never happy with just a win. Always gotta twist the knife.”
A silence stretched out, then snapped. He poured another round, this time splashing more on the table than in the glass. I couldn’t tell if his hands were unsteady or if he just didn’t give a shit about the mess. My own hands were curled tight, knuckles white, nails bitten down to the quick.
“Remember the first time you brought me to a club meet?” I asked, uncoiling just enough to let myself lean back.
He almost smiled. “You mean the time you called the SAA a ‘human tire fire’ and then drank him under the table?”
“That’s the one,” I said, letting the memory hang between us. “I thought they were going to bury me in the desert.”
He laughed—real, this time—and the sound was better than any whiskey I’d ever tasted. “You didn’t scare easy. That’s what I liked about you.”
I wanted to say, “That’s what I liked about you, too,” but the words got stuck somewhere behind my teeth. Instead, I took a slow sip and stared out the window, letting the city lights blur.
