Chapter 140: Chance Encounter
The garage was a cathedral dedicated to horsepower and polished chrome, smelling of motor oil, old vinyl, and the faint, sweet note of antifreeze. Morning light cut through high windows, illuminating dust motes dancing above a lineup of vehicles that ranged from practical pickups to automotive artwork.
A low, throbbing blues riff echoed from a grease-smudged radio sitting on a workbench.
Damien walked in first, his eyes scanning the shadows. Marco followed half a step behind, his usual cocky saunter replaced by a predator’s glide. This was an assessment. An unknown variable in Beth’s security equation needed quantifying.
Then they saw the boots.
Steel-toed, scarred black leather, shoved halfway under the elevated chassis of a flawless 1970 Chevrolet Chevelle SS. The car was a beast of gleaming dark green paint and sinister potential. From the rearview mirror, a pair of military dog tags hung, catching the light with a soft tink as they swayed.
Marco shot Damien a look, nodding toward the boots. Here we go.
He cleared his throat. “So, you’re the phantom.”
For a second, there was no sound but the wail of a guitar solo. Then a smooth, feminine voice, laced with amusement, floated out from beneath the two-ton piece of Detroit muscle.
“Phantom implies I’m hiding. I’m working.”
The voice did something to Marco’s spine. It was a familiar cadence, a specific, lazy melody he hadn’t heard in years but had never quite managed to delete from his mental hard drive.
A creeper slid out from under the car, followed by the rest of her. Rebecca “Revy” Black unfolded herself from the floor with a feline grace that shouldn’t have been possible in coveralls. She sat up, wiping her hands on a red shop rag. Her dark hair was piled in a messy knot, a few strands sticking to her temple. Grease smudged one sharp cheekbone. Her eyes, a piercing blue, found Marco’s first, and that lazy smile he remembered—the one that felt like a secret and a challenge all at once—spread across her face.
“Well,” she said, her gaze dragging over him from boots to brow. “Marco Romano. The universe has a shit sense of timing.”
Damien glanced between them, his brow furrowed. “You two know each other?”
“Sicily,” Marco said, the single word loaded with an entire history. “Four years ago. Maybe five.”
Revy stood, dropping the rag onto a tool cart. She was lean, all whipcord muscle and relaxed posture. The coveralls were unzipped to her sternum, revealing a faded grey t-shirt underneath. “Two days, seven bars, one regrettable karaoke performance of ‘Livin’ on a Prayer.’ You said you were in shipping.”
“I am,” Marco replied, a slow smirk pulling at his own mouth. It was reflex. “Lots of things get shipped. You said you were between jobs.”
“I was.” She shrugged, unbothered. “Then Beth called. Turns out ‘between jobs’ for someone with my skillset has a very short shelf life.”
The pieces clicked for Damien with an almost audible snap. The mysterious enforcer. Beth’s childhood friend. The military background. The utter lack of surprise on Revy’s face. He crossed his arms, a new kind of tension settling in his shoulders. This wasn’t a stranger. This was a wild card with a pre-existing rapport with his wife—and a complicated history with his best friend. “Beth hired you.”
“Beth re-hired me,” Revy corrected, leaning back against the Chevelle’s fender. “We had a… trial period. After the Polina email bullshit started. I’ve been handling her west-coast movements for eight months. You just didn’t know because you were playing mob boss back east, and Beth prefers her security to be invisible until it isn’t.”
The casual, accurate summary of their lives, delivered without a hint of deference, set Damien’s teeth on edge. “Invisible to me.”
“Her rule, not mine.” Revy’s eyes met his, and the amusement didn’t fade, but it solidified into something unyielding. “She said you’d worry. She said you’d try to insert your own people. She said telling you would feel like asking permission. So she didn’t.”
It was a direct, brutal paraphrase of his wife’s thought process. It was also one hundred percent accurate.
Marco let out a low whistle, breaking the stare-off. “So you’re ‘them.’ The devil’s secretary.”
Revy’s smile widened. “You heard the nickname. Cute. I’m her right hand. I sweep the path so her shoes never get dirty. I make the problems that aren’t board-meeting material go away. I’m the last person someone sees if they’re stupid enough to get too close to her with bad intentions.” She pushed off the car and took two steps toward Damien, stopping just inside his personal space. She wasn’t tall enough to look down at him, but she didn’t look up either. “I don’t work for you. I work for her. My loyalty is to Beth and the Montgomery legacy. That clear?”
The garage air grew still. The radio played on.
Damien held her gaze, his own a glacier green. He saw no fear there. No bluff. He saw the same cool, strategic capacity he saw in Beth, but forged in a different fire. This was no hired gun. This was a friend. A protector. A sovereign power in her own right.
He nodded, once. “Clear.”
“Good.” Revy’s posture relaxed a fraction. She looked past him to Marco. “You’re here for the brisket, I assume. Dove outdid herself.”
“I’m here because he’s here,” Marco said, hooking a thumb at Damien. “But the brisket is a powerful motivator.”
“Always was.” She walked past them toward a deep sink, turning on the water and scrubbing the grease from her hands and arms with industrial soap. “Beth’s in the sunroom with Dove, going over the quarterlies. She said to send you in when you were done with the dick-measuring contest.”
Damien almost laughed. It was startled out of him. “She said that?”
“Word for word.” Revy shut off the water, grabbing a clean towel. “I may have cleaned up the language a little.”
She turned, leaning against the sink, towel dangling from one hand. The casual authority in the space was absolute. This was her domain as much as the stables were Dove’s or the executive suite was Beth’s.
Marco watched her, the memory of Sicily—hot nights, cold limoncello, and a connection that felt like a live wire—sparking in the haze between them. It had been an escape. A perfect, contained fragment of time with no past and no future. And now here she was, embedded in the most permanent, complicated reality he had.
“So,” he said, his voice quieter. “You drink a man under the table and break his heart, and this is where you end up?”
Revy’s laugh was a short, genuine sound. “I didn’t break your heart, Romano. I bruised your ego. And I ended up right where I belonged.” She tossed the towel onto the bench. “Go get your brisket. We’ll talk logistics later. The Kovacs might be handled, but Polina’s pride isn’t. She’ll squirm. And when she squirms, she’ll look for a soft spot.”
She moved past them again, this time heading for a small office nook tucked beside the tool crib. Dismissed.
Damien turned and walked out of the garage, into the bright, revealing sun. Marco lingered a second longer, watching Revy tap at a computer keyboard, her profile sharp and focused.
“Logistics,” he repeated.
She didn’t look up. “Logistics. Now shoo. I’ve got a carburetor to rebuild and a security rotation to adjust.”
Marco followed Damien out, the thick garage door closing behind them with a solid thump. The quiet of the ranch surrounded them, suddenly louder than the blues guitar had been.
“So,” Damien said, staring out at the rolling hills.
“So,” Marco echoed.
“You slept with Beth’s enforcer.”
“It was a weekend. A long time ago. And ‘slept with’ is a very tame way of putting it.”
Damien pinched the bridge of his nose. “This is going to be a problem.”
“It doesn’t have to be.” Marco shoved his hands in his pockets. “She’s good. I watched her move. She’s not just good, she’s elite. Beth is safe.”
“That’s not the problem I’m talking about.”
Marco knew exactly what he meant. The problem was the tangled knot of history and loyalty now sitting in Beth’s garage. The problem was the unknown variable suddenly having a name, a face, and a complicated connection to his own inner circle.
From the sunroom, they could see Beth through the glass walls. She was laughing at something Dove said, a spreadsheet forgotten on the table in front of her. She looked over, saw them, and waved, her expression bright and open.
She had known exactly what—who—they would find. She had orchestrated this entire revelation.
Marco watched Revy through the small office window. She was on the phone now, her expression all business, the lazy smile gone, replaced by a flat, deadly focus.
Two worlds, both built on protection and power, had just clicked into the same orbit.
And nobody knew yet if the gravity would hold them together or tear them apart.