Wolfe stood in the darkness of the warehouse, smoking a cigarette, outside the bubble of the single lightbulb, watching the supposed mole—a barely adult girl tied to chair. The same one he had seen at the party, the Irish-appearing girl with strawberry-blond hair and freckles. The faint coppery tang of blood and the stale piss smell from other victims of this place was just barely detectable.

The sensation of the cards in his chest was distracting, as was the slight pain in his shoulder and the fading adrenaline jitters that the nicotine wasn’t completely removing.

How had they gotten to him so fast? And with a deckbearer?

Plus, Wolfe had two new levels to make and ten cards to either merge, sell, or add to his deck.

Wolfe shook the thoughts from his head. He needed to focus on the job at hand. First deal with the mole, then deal with the cards.

Harry, the broad-shouldered, six-foot-tall thug from the club, stepped forward, a lit lighter in his thick hand. “C’mon, girlie,” he said, his voice gruff. “Answer the questions or else.”

The girl stared at him with dinnerplate eyes as he leaned forward and then held the lighter under her wrist. She gave a half-breathless scream and then hyperventilated. Her whole body strained against the ropes that bound her to the chair until her tendons showed and her teeth creaked. Tears streamed from her emerald-green eyes as her pale white flesh crisped.

Pete, the slightly taller, wiry thug with beady eyes, kept his gun pointed at her—you couldn’t be too careful with a deckbearer, even if her hands were tied to a chair. “If you’d just answer us, this wouldn’t need to happen.”

Wolfe took a drag on his cigarette and shifted uncomfortably. He didn’t know what the girl had done or what answers Pete and Harry wanted—or what answers Big Man Grimm had asked them to get. I’m just here to make sure nothing goes wrong. Extra muscle in case the deckbearer somehow gets free.

A wrench was lying on the floor next to the girl’s chair. Normally, Pete and Harry would just hit a mole with a wrench until said mole talked, but this girl was thin and small and fine-featured. The two had agreed—after way too much idiotic back and forth—that she’d probably die if they just started beating on her.

Wolfe continued to fidget, vaguely discontent with the situation. Twenty-one years in the business had left him cold to almost everything, but the torture of a barely adult girl was… not something he was fully inured to, he admitted to himself. He had been burned himself once, during a gunfight in one of the labs. Being burned sucked, and he wouldn’t wish it on anyone.

Plus, his traitorous mind whispered to him, this chick was a new angel deckbearer. She had almost certainly been picked to receive her deck because she was a good person.

His own deck had come to him for different reasons, he knew.

That was how it appeared to work—gods favored people based on their virtues, or lack thereof. No one had ever talked to the gods, but the personalities of people usually matched the god-gifted decks they received. Now that he had time to think, and wasn’t under attack, the fact that he had been picked by the Infernal was weighing on him a bit.

“If you don’t want to burn anymore, tell us what you told them!” Harry barked at the girl, bringing Wolfe’s attention back. “I’ll make what comes next quick and painless.”

He pulled the lighter away and the girl’s muscles all gave out at once as she collapsed fully back into the chair, no longer straining against the ropes. She wept silently, but she still didn’t speak, just hung her head. Her strawberry-blond hair spilled limply across her face.

“Maybe we need the wrench after all?” Harry asked, turning to Pete.

Oh, for shit’s sake! Wolfe gritted his teeth. He was already in a mood, and these two could fuck up a grilled cheese sandwich, never mind an interrogation.

He tossed his cigarette on the warehouse floor and stepped on it, viciously grinding it against the cold concrete like it was to blame for what he was about to do. I can’t believe I’m about to get involved.

“Pete, Harry, wait outside,” Wolfe said without preamble. The two weren’t really the bantering types. Wolfe had met dogs with more sense, but he knew that their real value was simple—they were loyal and discrete and could fight half-decently. Not like he could, of course, but still.

“Um, Big Man Grimm wanted her to talk,” Pete said, his gun never wavering from the angel girl’s face.

“Are you gonna make her sing?” Harry asked, his voice suddenly animated. He stood and stepped back from the girl, staring upward slightly at the six-foot-two Wolfe and holding the lighter out. “Big Man Grimm said you’re the best, Wolfe. I can’t wait to see you in action. Seriously, the things people have said…”

Wolfe eyed Harry’s lighter for a moment, then pulled a second cigarette and lit it with a flick of his own lighter. Wolfe took a long drag of the cigarette while staring pointedly at Harry’s lighter. Despite the obvious hint, the goon didn’t stop holding it out to Wolfe, a slight grin on his face.

“I don’t need your lighter, Harry,” Wolfe said, holding his own up.

Harry nodded and put the thing away in his suit pocket.

Pete and Harry still wore their cheap gray suits, and still reeked of thug. In their own bizarre ways, however, Pete and Harry were professionals more than thugs—or perhaps just in addition to it. Most people would have made some excuse to take advantage of the poor girl, robbing her of what tiny dignity she could have before they killed her. Pete and Harry were all business, though, treating her no different than any other suspected mole.

Although Wolfe seriously doubted the girl appreciated that right now.

The angel deckbearer watched Wolfe, squinting as she tried to make him out in the dim light provided by the single bulb. Trying to remain fatalistic, Wolfe thought. But he recognized the tiniest hope in her now-dry eyes. I wonder if it’s hope that I’ll save her or hope that she’ll find an opening to use her cards on me once I’m the only one here. Neither possibility bothered Wolfe.

“I also don’t like to be watched while I work,” Wolfe said. “I’ll handle it. Go outside.”

Pete and Harry both continued to hesitate. Probably trying to resolve the situation in their minds—Wolfe was pretty sure they had three brain cells between them. He knew what they were thinking, though.

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

They were under orders from Big Man Grimm, but Wolfe was his fixer. Basically, his right-hand man, the closest person to him in the organization who wasn’t a family member. Everyone knew it, just like they hadn’t challenged him when he sat at the table in the club earlier. Big Man Grimm had given them order, but Big Man Grimm had also sent his fixer to oversee them.

Wolfe decided to give them a nudge in the right direction. “Don’t make me ask a third time, guys. You’re already one deeper than most people get.”

For a wonder, the implied threat seemed to get through, and Pete holstered his gun and grabbed Harry. Then he hesitated again, however.

“You gonna be okay alone with a deckbearer?” Pete asked.

Wolfe rolled his eyes at the irony. “I’ll be fine. I just killed one tonight.”

“Really?”

“Yeah,” Wolfe said, and pulled the cards from his pocket to show them. “Plus, I understand this girl got her cards in the drop, right? She was god-gifted at the start of the new set?”

The two nodded while staring at Wolfe with wide eyes.

Wolfe held his own gun up. “I’ve got a gun. Baby deckbearer like this can’t summon fast enough or strong enough to stop me from ending her. And most deckbearers need their hands to summon. She can’t do anything to alter the situation, trust me.”

Pete nodded slowly again, and then the two of them finally walked out of the warehouse. It was still raining outside, and the brief rush of cold, wet air from the night outside was a welcome relief to the stale atmosphere Wolfe was in.

After they closed the door, Wolfe put his gun away and then just slowly smoked as he watched the girl. Whoever had turned her in may not have used the wrench on her, but she had obviously been smacked around, whether to subdue her or just because they thought she was a mole, Wolfe wasn’t sure. He figured it wasn’t Harry or Pete, so it must have been whomever she was originally at the club with.

One eye was black and swelling, her lips were split, and half her face was a giant bruise. Ditto her upper left arm. Blood soaked the front of her white T-shirt and dark splotches marred her ripped jeans.

“What’s your name?” Wolfe asked.

The girl was silent.

Wolfe took another drag of his cigarette, then spoke, as much sardonicism in his voice as he could manage. “If you won’t even tell me things that Pete and Harry already know, I might as well just go get them.”

“I go by Shel,” Shel said.

Wolfe mulled that over for a bit. He wanted her whole name, but alias would be fine, he supposed.

The silence must have unnerved her, because Shel eventually asked, “Are they going to kill me?”

Wolfe took another drag. “Yeah.”

Shel sagged deeper into the chair, her head hanging. “No way around it?”

“I doubt it,” Wolfe answered. “It can be quick or it can be really drawn out. Pete and Harry don’t have the imagination to lie about stuff like that. I’ve seen, and done, some dark shit in my time, but I’d rather not watch a girl die screaming. So, I’d appreciate it if you cooperated.”

“I…”

“And what do they think you did?” Wolfe asked, cutting her off. He knew the basics but wanted to establish her relationship to truth and get her talking both.

“They think I ratted the Grimm family to the police,” Shel answered.

“Why?”

Shel exhaled, her whole body seeming to deflate. “Well, when I manifested my deck in front of everyone—and it was an angel deck—they grew suspicious. Took my phone from me and checked it. Found the Noimore Police Department main line on it.”

Now we’re getting to the heart of it, Wolfe thought to himself.

“You work for the Grimm family?” he asked her, already knowing the answer but hoping she would say something different.

Shel, who had exhaled so hard that her chin rested on her chest, gave an awkward nod.

Damn, Wolfe thought to himself. She’s in the life voluntarily. She gets no special treatment.

Big Man Grimm had a rule—well, he had a lot of rules, truthfully.

But one rule stated that those in the business willingly took their chances and didn’t get special treatment. People caught up by accident, he might make an exception for… but not for someone who had chosen to live this life. It had a certain ruthless fairness to it, even if Big Man Grimm wasn’t a good man by any stretch. His sense of honor was one of the many reasons Wolfe respected him though, even outside of their personal connection.

Wolfe put those thoughts to the side and focused on Shel again. “What do you do for the family?”

“I, um, look pretty enough, and can be made up enough, that, that—” Shel gave a half-hiccup, half-sob, then gathered herself. “They use me to run drugs to certain high-end clientele. I never get searched. No one ever doubted I belonged where I was going.”

Wolfe really looked at her, and suddenly, the fact that she was the out-of-place girl from the club hit him.

It was hard to see that through the bruises, tears, and snot, but Shel really did appear high class, even now. It wasn’t just her good looks. She had intelligent eyes and a face that, while young, still had enough cast of personality to show she was caring. An innocent feel to her, like he had thought to himself at the club.

Most of the Grimm family retainers radiated sleaze the way a teenager radiated body odor—In a borderline visible haze. You just couldn’t help but notice. Innocent looks had value in this business.

The more Wolfe thought about it, the less Shel getting involved in this life made sense. A girl with those looks always had options. Plus, there was no way the police would have run someone like her as a gang mole. It had to be something else.

“Why did you have the police on your phone?” Wolfe asked.

She hesitated again, but Wolfe just waited. After a minute, she dropped her head. “I was in contact with them.”

Damn again. I really am going to watch Pete put a bullet in her head. “Why?”

Shel raised her head, staring at Wolfe intensely with her green eyes. “It’s not what you think, I promise! It wasn’t to turn you guys in or give information or anything!”

Normally, Wolfe would laugh at such an obvious lie, but something in Shel’s demeanor told him she was sincere… but that just begged the question.

“Then I ask again… why?”

She hesitated once more, and again Wolfe just waited. He intentionally added a soft tapping of his foot on the concrete floor to his stoic demeanor. It was getting very late, and Wolfe was getting a bit old for all-nighters.

“I… I have a brother. I was calling the cops about him. Not the Grimm family. I have loyalty.”

“Then why not tell them that?” Wolfe asked with a drag on his cigarette.

“I… He carries a gun for the Cobras. I only found out after I joined the Grimm family. I thought he had joined you guys. I was going to call the police to get him arrested, try to get him off the street. I wanted to give him a chance to reform.”

With that, almost everything made sense to Wolfe, and he inhaled smoke before exhaling hard. Her dumb asshole brother joins a criminal gang, and naïve sister here thinks she can get him out. She joins the Grimm family to help him, finds out he’s in the wrong family. No choice—that she can imagine—but to pull him out via police. Although she was still being naïve, as the Cobras had a ton of people on the inside of jail as well.

Wolfe puffed again, staring at her. Before she can put that questionable plan into action, the new set drops. Some angel must have thought she had a noble soul and given her a deck—in front of everyone. She can’t tell the Grimm family about her brother as they would kill her as a mole regardless, working for the Cobras instead of the police. Terrible luck, but still, that was a lot of naïve decisions in a row—surprised she made it even this far. She should have stayed out and let her brother sink. A bullet in the back of the head is what you get for sticking your neck out in this world, especially when you have no idea what you’re doing.

And the Cobras were the worst of the worst of the gangs. They were new to the scene, and ultra-violent, as Wolfe had just seen for himself. Favored of Aeshma, the Infernal Lord of Wrath. Their leader, Jason Klaus, supposedly had a powerful deck almost entirely filled with cards for killing other deckbearers.

“Makes sense,” Wolfe said, dropping the second cigarette to the ground and stepping on it. “Which angel gave you cards, by the way?”

“Raphael, I think. The deck has a couple cards that mention him, anyway.”

Lovely, Wolfe thought to himself. The archangel of healing and helping the downtrodden. Not even an angel of justice or war or protection or death or… or anything else that would make her death even slightly fair.

Wolfe cast his eyes to the sky—in this case, the roof—and frowned. It felt like he was being tested, somehow.

“Can… Can you not tell them?” Shel asked. “I mean… I’m dead anyway. Can you at least not let them know about my brother?”

Wolfe hardened his heart—Loyalty and competence were how he had survived over twenty years running with the Grimm family. “It doesn’t work that way, sweetheart. Sorry. If I didn’t tell them about your brother and they somehow found out I knew… they would end me as well for being a traitor.”

She hung her head again, strawberry-blond hair covering her face, and whispered, “Please.”

Just then, the door to the warehouse creaked open.