Page 10 of Spade

Aces mounted up, cranked the throttle, and shot out ahead. I followed, the engine hummed in my bones, the blue-white light still burned onto my eyes, and the unspoken shit between us thickened with every block closer to home.

***

The bone room hadn’t moved. Same yellowed bulb, same dead air, and Selene at the end of the table, only now there was a glass of bourbon in front of her. The color looked rich enough to be a gemstone, but she hadn’t touched it. She just traced circles on the rim with her index finger.

Aces and I sat.

“Report,” Selene said, like she was calling for cards.

I started from the beginning: the block, the building, the window, the camera. Described the layout of the milking room and the men inside—how they rotated in and out, how none of them ever said a word. I listed the details: the recliners, the porno screens, the collection tubes, the cycle times, the workers in scrubs. Aces picked up the thread, clocking the angle of the rear camera, the weakness in the window, and the rough square footage. “No sign of a second floor,” she said. “But basement access wasn’t visible from the back or side.”

Selene nodded after every beat, eyes narrowed, as if she was sketching the whole thing out in her head.

I paused, then told her about the basement. The overheard conversation, the word “overflow,” and the suggestion that it wasn’t all volunteers. Described how the workers tensed up, how they wanted nothing to do with what happened below.

That was when Selene’s mask faltered. Not much—just a tightening of the jaw, a little squeeze at the edge of her eyes. She picked up the bourbon glass and looked at it, but her hand didn’t shake. She set it back down, untouched.

“Any sign of club presence?” she asked.

Aces shook her head. “Didn’t see a single patch. Staff and, uh, talent only.”

Selene nodded, filed it away. “You think it’s a Queens operation, or are they fronting for somebody else?”

“It’s them,” I said. “They were using lingo I’ve heard before. Same hard edge, no frills, no men in sight except on the receiving end.”

She took that in.

“I need time to decide how we play this,” Selene said, voice low, almost soft. “This isn’t just a turf violation. It’s something else.”

Aces said, “The basement’s the problem.”

Selene flicked her eyes at him, then me. “Agreed.”

She let it hang. The silence stretched until it started to hurt.

“I’ll call a sit-down with the officers when I have a plan,” she said. “In the meantime, no chatter. Not even to your seconds. I want the club clear of any blowback until we control the field.”

I nodded. Aces did too, but slower.

“Understood,” I said.

Selene finally looked straight at me. Held my eyes with a weight I felt more than saw. “You did well,” she said, as if she’d practiced saying it and was still surprised by the taste.

“Thanks,” I said.

She released the look, and the room seemed to empty out all at once. Aces stood and left first, the same as always. I lingered a second, eyes on the glass of bourbon.

Selene didn’t drink it. She just stared into the amber, like there was something there to be read if you looked hard enough.

“Something you’re not telling me?”

I nodded. “There were women in the basement bathing in come.”

“What the fuck is wrong with people?”

I didn’t mean to smile, but it came out anyway, and Selene watched it like she was daring me to make a joke. I didn’t, mostly because I couldn’t decide if that shit was funny or just the least surprising thing about Vegas since the time I’d seen a guy get stabbed with a frozen hot dog on a dare at the Riviera.

I stood there waiting for Selene to pull something more from me, but she just nodded like the confession squared with everything she’d already mapped out. Her lips twisted, maybe at the memory of the old days, maybe at the shape of what our club had become.