Page 26 of Iggy

The gift had started small, like all ruin did. A few thousand cleaned through a restaurant investor. A short-term option play during a fuel shortage. A crypto swing that turned ugly until it didn’t. She had taken dirty money, club money, blood-earned money, and made it multiply until even Tank had stopped asking where the extra came from.

The club needed a roof. The club got a roof. The club needed lawyers. The club got the best. A sister’s kid needed surgery. Paid. A cousin got pinched in Tulsa. Bail posted before breakfast.

Money made people quiet. Success made them grateful. Gratitude made them look away.

Then she got good. Then she got proud. Then she got hungry.

The laptop clicked again. Down another four percent.

“No,” she said, not loud, not soft, just flat enough to scare herself. “No, you do not get to do that.”

She clicked into the chart, dragged it wider, checked the order book, checked the halt notices, checked the wire headlines moving beside the candles.

Biotech name. Thin float. Three upgrades in two weeks, then a rumor, then a leak, then a televised analyst with perfect teeth saying the regulatory timeline might be “less certain than bulls assumed.” Less certain. Bulls assumed. Words that cost two million dollars before the sentence finished airing.

Her other phone buzzed. Not the clean phone. The club phone.

She stared at it as if it were alive.

The cracked black case vibrated in a slow crawl across the desk, showing Tank’s name in white letters. Not a question. Not a courtesy. Tank never called from inside the clubhouse unless he wanted privacy, and privacy meant a problem with teeth.

Neela let it ring once, twice, three times, counting each buzz against the numbers on the laptop. If she answered too fast, he would hear it. If she let it go too long, he would come to the door.

There were only bad choices now, and the worst part was how familiar that felt. Leadership was supposed to be bad choices made with a steady hand. This was different. This was a bad choice she had made alone and hidden under the club’s mattress.

She answered and pressed the phone tight to her ear.

“What?”

“Door’s locked,” Tank said.

Neela looked at the door. The lock suddenly seemed flimsy, childish, a bathroom latch pretending it could hold back consequence.

“I’m on a call.”

“With who?”

Halpern’s hold music piped thinly from the clean phone lying faceup beside the laptop, some cheerful string arrangement designed for people who had never been in danger of being killed by their own family. Neela covered that phone with her palm.

“Business.”

“Everything is business with you lately.” Tank’s voice lowered. “Open up.”

Her throat tightened. Tank had been with the club since before it had a name worth fearing. He had seen her pull a knife out of her own thigh and ride forty miles with duct tape under her jeans. He had seen her break a man’s nose with a pool cue and laugh when the blood hit her boots.

Tank believed panic was something that happened to other people. If he saw her now, hunched over a laptop like a child caught stealing, he would know before she said one word.

“Give me ten minutes,” she said.

“You got five.”

The call ended. A second later, knuckles tapped twice against the office door. Not hard. That made it worse.

Neela lowered the club phone slowly and looked back at the screen.

Red. Red. Red.

The hold music cut off so abruptly she flinched.