Coming to the Tangled Web always left Ashe nervous, especially after Caralina’s overheard intel that was now incredibly suspect. Ashe was all but convinced that Alejandro had orchestrated all of it just to keep Ashe from getting closer to the Viuda matron. It had worked too, she was now a leader in her own right, having secured territory and people to a degree that she could genuinely say she was a gang leader.
He had played her like a fiddle, and the thought of it galled her.
The front of the bar remained unassuming along Grisham Avenue, with no sign showing that the old building was in all reality, a bar. That was by design, and the location was only known by word of mouth. Ashe hadn’t understood how much trust Crystal was showing her by inviting her to meet the team there. She could have easily had them meet at her house instead.
Now, Inferno stood at the entrance, with her core team at her back. Five strong, and a chip on their shoulders. The Viuda leader was hopefully in the wind thanks to her mom, but that still left the gang in a state of flux. She would have left standing orders to her trusted lieutenants, but those would be defensive in nature. A holding pattern would just be playing into Alejandro’s plans at this point, and Ashe was done with that.
“You know,” Robbie began as he looked up at the Tangled Web. “Meeting your mom might have been my first interaction with a cop that didn’t end with getting shot at.”
Crystal snorted even as Brie and Keiko practically cackled. Ashe tried to level a flat glare upon the grinning man, but she couldn’t hold it, falling victim to the laughter as well. It made a sick sort of sense too, given Robbie was one of the scariest looking black men that Ashe had ever met.
Yet, he was also one of the most loyal.
If nothing else, he’d cleared the pall that hung over their group. Not wanting to waste that, Ashe pushed the doors open, everyone in the bar falling silent as she did. There were more people present than usual, and Ashe recognized a few of them from her prior visits. She kept her eyes forward, looking across the way to where Mercedes was waiting for them.
Ashe hadn’t known it when they first met, but the woman was a Viuda Lieutenant and an old friend of Robbie going back nearly two decades. Mercedes wasn’t looking at Ashe, but at a point over her shoulder as she strode forward. Ashe stepped aside just as she reached Robbie, and slapped the shit out of him.
The whole room waited with bated breath following the echoing slap.
Robbie rubbed his cheek. “I deserved that.”
She slapped him again.
“Damn right you did,” Mercedes hissed. “You told me nothing, just up and vanished, and left me thinking you had died! All for what? To gain the trust of a madman? I should kill you and feed you to the damn geese!”
The man flinched, and Ashe still didn’t know the story behind the man’s fear of geese. It was a good fear, to be honest. She had been attacked by one before, only to watch a gator eat it moments later. As a result, she never developed the same fear the man known as Headhunter seemed to have of the birds.
“Have you seen how fast those creatures can strip flesh from bone?” Robbie whispered.
“I have,” Mercedes said. “Got a whole gaggle that I’ve been feeding fried chicken just for this occasion, coward.”
“Damn, now I’m jealous,” Keiko said.
“Wasn’t from here,” Mercedes said. “I’d be a fool to waste that on trained attack geese.”
Ashe wanted to laugh at the exchange, but she had a feeling that it wouldn’t be appreciated. She was an outside force now, even if members of her team were once Viuda, they were now operating under her banner.
As if sensing her thoughts, Mercedes turned to face Ashe. “Inferno, you have some nerve reaching out to me. We welcomed you, helped you find the men that wronged you, and this is how you repay us?”
Ashe considered posturing, playing up her image and reputation, it would be easy enough, but it would also lead to further conflict.
“I fucked up,” Ashe admitted. “I ran on bad intel and made mistakes. That was on me, and I drove the wedge between us as a result. Nothing will change that, but I can work to make up for things from here out, if you will let me.”
Resisting the urge to fidget under Mercedes’ piercing gaze was taking an effort greater than almost anything Ashe had endured. For all that she had done, all that she had become, there was still a remnant of that bullied girl from when she took that first step that led her to this very moment. When Mercedes did deign to speak, her voice was deceptively calm.
“Is Yessina safe?”
Ashe didn’t flinch or look away. “As safe as she can be given the state of the city.”
The woman stepped forward, her hand snapped out and pulled Ashe close. It took every ounce of self control she had to not react to the sudden motion, nor to defend herself when she felt the blade press against a gap in her armor that was ready to slip between her ribs.
“I sent my mom, Linda Hamilton, to get her out of the city,” Ashe said in the softest whisper she could manage. “Say whatever you want about the police, Mom’s one of the good ones, or she was before she decided not to arrest me.”
Mercedes blinked, first at the name, then at the admission that she was Ashe’s mom. The knife didn’t move away from her ribs, and the moment stretched out. With each beat of her heart Ashe began to wonder if the knife would slip in and she’d be left to bleed out on the floor. She’d never noticed it before, still too naive on prior visits, to realize the truth.
The Tangled Web was a gang bar, and everyone within was a member of the Viuda. She’d known that, but it wasn’t until she stood there with the prior months behind her that she actually understood what that meant. From the corner of her eye, she could tell that the entire bar was ready to jump in at a moment’s notice and wreck her shit. It was no different than when Robbie had stepped into the apartments and her girls sized him up. This was very much not her territory.
Crystal would try to help her as would Brie, but she doubted Robbie would put himself on the line if it did come down to violence. Keiko was more of a toss up. She didn’t like not knowing if they would have her back, but at the same time, she hadn’t come to start trouble, so she hadn’t even considered where the lines might be drawn. Ashe had just assumed, and that was why her life was now in this woman’s hands.
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Which was probably why she was pissed enough to do something stupid.
“Either get it over with, or stop posturing. We have more important things to deal with than a pissing contest between the two of us.”
The knife pressed into her shirt just a bit harder, the cut resistant material doing nothing to stop the fine edge from digging into her skin. Then, Mercedes sighed and pulled back, leaving Ashe to rub at the spot.
“Alright, what do you intend to do about that snake, Alejandro?”
“Kill him for being a human trafficking prick,” Ashe said, trying not to think about what was going on with Caralina and what it might mean. Ashe would get her back, if for no other reason than to question her about the rumors. Ashe had trusted the pregnant woman, but with each passing hour that was eroding away.
“That’s it?” Mercedes asked with a raised eyebrow.
Ashe shrugged. “We aren’t a large group, and though I have a good team at my back, I don’t think we could win an outright war against him. He’s willing to work with the Patriots to kidnap girls off the streets, I can’t let him get away with that.”
“And you don’t work with them?” Mercedes demanded. “I heard about your meeting with the Silver Cross. Don’t think I don’t know you’re playing both sides too.”
“Cross is my uncle,” Crystal said, taking a step forward. “I don’t like working with him either, but we had enemies on all sides and he doesn’t like how my father is approaching things.”
“Oh goodie, one of the scariest fuckers to live is your uncle,” Mercedes mocked. “That makes it all better now?”
“No, and we knew he had an agenda of his own,” Crystal said. “It doesn’t excuse things, and we aren’t making excuses. We’re owning that mistake.”
Mercedes snorted derisively. “Words are cheap, and you’ve worked with the worst to undermine us. You’ll have to work to prove this isn’t just another cheap ploy to try and take over the Viuda for that insane fucker.”
“Then we’ll work at it,” Crystal said casually, despite the tension in her voice.
Ashe could certainly appreciate her ability to remain calm under pressure, that was a skill that Ashe hadn’t perfected yet. She was just glad that her team was at her back, and was supporting her.
“No bullshit,” Mercedes bit out. “Why should we trust you?”
“You shouldn’t,” Ashe said immediately. “We were fucking duped, and we’re paying the price. All I can offer you is the promise that we’re going after the bastard, and that we’ll do all we can to get Yessina back whole and hale.”
“Way to flex your English Lit there,” Keiko muttered only for Brie to elbow her.
Ashe stood firm, ignoring the bickering behind her in favor of presenting a stoic front for everyone watching. She needed their confidence, for everyone to know that they didn’t have an enemy in her or her people. She needed their help if she was going to stand against Alejandro and prevent him from effectively sweeping all the players off the field.
“Words mean nothing,” Mercedes said, turning away, “show me some actions befitting those words and then I’ll talk with you as if your word has merit.”
Internally, Ashe seethed, but she understood why she was being dismissed. She had worked against the Viuda on false information, and no amount of words would make up for that. No, if she wanted them to help, then she needed to do something to warrant restoring that trust.
“I agree,” Ashe said, turning back towards her team. “Come on, let’s get some results to show these women, we owe them that much.”
And Ashe did owe them. She was too quick to trust what she wanted to see, and Alejandro played off her own naivety perfectly. No doubt Edward Ellington was also manipulating her for his own ends, whatever those happened to be. Whatever the truth of it all was, Ashe knew that her girls would come first.
Finding a way to show the Viuda that she was serious about her declaration would be tricky, but Ashe would do it. Fighting Alejandro on her own wouldn’t be viable, she didn’t have the numbers to wage an effective war against the man, and without that, any strikes would result in a level of retaliation that she couldn’t handle.
No, Ashe had to think of something else, an angle that didn’t support violence, but proved that she was with them in fighting against the man. She also needed to distance herself from Silver Cross, even if he was interested in seeing her succeed, she needed to remember that his offer of help was always a poison pill. He had done as much, if not more, to pit her against the Viuda as Alejandro accomplished with his manipulations.
Ashe wanted to call her mom, make sure that she was okay and that Yessina had been secured. Unfortunately, she wouldn’t be able to do that without risking both of their lives. Instead, she pulled up Jessica’s number and sent a message, the reply that came back was a screenshot from the app.
First up was a picture taken from a distance, but it wasn’t hard to recognize Caralina in it. She was being led away by several armed men, but she wasn’t resisting them either. It looked to have been taken from the hospital, maybe an upper floor? The picture was sent by one of the girls that had seen the whole thing from her room, but passed out from her meds before she could hit send.
“Someone saw Caralina get taken,” Ashe said. “She didn’t seem to be under duress at the time, but she and the baby were alright.”
Keiko breathed out an explosive sigh of relief, but behind them, Mercedes sounded like she had choked. Ashe looked back with a raised eyebrow, and watched the woman knock back a shot of something that had been passed to her by the bartender.
“Something wrong?” Brie asked.
Mercedes nodded, then swallowed a second shot. “Damn, I hoped my team got to her before she could be extracted.”
Ashe felt a cold chill run down her spine. “I’m sorry, but I have to ask. The fuck did you try to do to one of my girls?”
“She ain’t yours,” Mercedes coughed out. “She was bought and paid for before you ever got her out of that mess. She’s Alejandro’s girl, and I can almost promise you that the kid is his.”
“No she fucking isn’t,” Keiko exclaimed, her fist slamming down on the bar. “She spent months in that hellhole, and they treated her no better than anyone else.”
“Sorry to be the one to break it to you,” Mercedes said softly. “She’s a good liar, I’ll give her that, but I’ll never forget that face.”
Ashe reached out, holding Keiko back before she could surge forward in anger.
“You said it yourself,” Ashe said in a hushed tone. “He had someone close to me, she was on the list, as were you and Brie. Hell, Jessica was on the list too. I’m not changing how I operate, but I’ll have a talk with her when we get her back, okay?”
Keiko glared back, eyes sparking in rage. “I’m going to be there for this talk, that’s not negotiable.”
“Fair enough,” Ashe said.
Robbie placed one of his hands on Keiko’s shoulder and leaned in to whisper to her. Whatever was being said was obviously not pleasant, but Ashe wasn’t going to attempt to pry. Looking around the bar, she could see the tension, and how most of the occupants would rather gun her down than work with her. She’d destroyed her rapport with the gang, and that wasn’t something that could be fixed overnight. Hell, it would probably take years before trust was restored to any meaningful degree. All because of bad intel and information warfare. It was a bitter lesson, but one she wouldn’t soon forget.
Knowing that things weren’t going to smooth over anytime soon, Ashe moved to leave when something banged against the rear door. Looking back, Ashe quickly put her hands up as half the building had their guns out and trained on her.
“It’s not anything I am aware of,” Ashe said.
Mercedes didn’t let her out of her eyesight, but gestured for someone to go check. There was silence for a moment, then someone came limping in, their weight supported by the masked man that had been sent. The new arrival was wearing sweats, and their gray hoodie was stained dark with blood. She couldn’t see under the hood as the figure looked around the bar before their eyes fell upon Ashe and stilled.
She knew those eyes, and Ashe’s heart jumped into her throat at the knowledge of what their presence meant. Something had gone horrifically wrong, and they were all about to pay the price.
“Where is she?” Ashe demanded. “Why did you come here alone?”