Page 13 of Angel’s Doll

My hands flatten on my thighs under the table and stay there. She keeps sanding the story down to what Victor actually earned. I want to tell her fairness died on that phone call. I keep still. Barely. She didn’t come down here to be rescued from her own report.

Smoke says it so I don’t have to. He plants both fists on the table. “Why are you protecting him?”

“I’m not.” Level. “I spent years watching Victor bend facts until they earned him money or pity. Every lie in that house was a wall, and I lived inside all of them. I’m not taking his method out of the gate with me. You’ll get the truth from me even where the truth is kind to him.”

She holds Smoke’s stare without a flicker.

Smoke sits down.

She isn’t defending Victor. She’s defending the truth. The one thing she carried out of that building that he can’t repossess. I wanted her angry tonight. This is past angry.

“And this morning, when Victor figured out the project was dead, so did Durey. He came to get his money back,” says Bishop.

“But Victor’s not liquid. He went all in when he bought the land, no?” Cash says.

“The money Ian brought went to purchases and greasing whatever wheels needed to be greased,” Doll confirms. “Victor explained he needed time, you know, to sell the plots. That’s when Durey gave him a week and decided to take me as collateral.”

Bishop shakes his head, slow. Cash draws lines on the pad, fast.

“I think we’ve had it upside down. We made Hale the architect and his lender the wallet. Flip it. Durey designs the machine. Quinlan money feeds it. And Victor Hale is the front. Local, polished and ...” He looks up. “… replaceable.”

“Which answers a question I’ve been chewing,” Bishop says. “Why collateral and an apology instead of lawyers.”

He straightens off the table.

“It also means Friday didn’t end this. We killed the project, destroyed Victor financially but we haven’t reached the brains.”

“That would be the Quinlans?” Compass asks.

“We’ll know in the morning,” Cash says. “Glitch will be inside the shells by then. Right now I can’t tell you whether Ian’s running family business or borrowing the family’s shadow. We need to plan for both.”

Bishop nods. Chairs shift, Smoke is already muttering about gate rotations, and Bishop stops all of it with one look at her.

“You gave us more than we asked for, Doll. So we owe you. Whatever you need tonight, this club will hear it.”

“One thing,” she says. “In the studio over Victor’s garage. Under the bed there are two boxes, taped shut. That’s what I took from my parents’ house when I was twelve. In ten years I never let anyone touch them. My mother’s cookbook is in one, her handwriting all over the margins. My father’s records. Photographs from before. If someone can get me those boxes, Victor can keep the rest of it.” A breath. “He paid for the rest anyway.”

Nobody speaks. Cash closes the laptop without a sound.

Not a dollar, not a drop of blood. When Bishop asked, I was hoping for revenge, hers to license mine. She wants her mother’s handwriting back.

“You’ll have them,” I say, before Bishop can assign it, before anyone can put it to a vote. It isn’t club business. It’s mine.

She looks up at me. “Thank you.” Two words, the first ones all night that come out rough.

Bishop looks at me across the table.

“With a plan this time.”

Not a suggestion. There’s still a deferred sentence hanging off my patch, and we both carry the weight of it.

I nod. He can have his plan.

The boxes come home either way. What shape Victor’s in when I leave depends on Victor.

8

DOLL