Chapter 4: The Wrecking Ball
The bang on the door wasn’t a knock. It was an assault. A furious, repetitive pounding that shook the frame and made the neon BLACK ACES sign on the wall buzz in protest.
Ashanti jolted awake in Logan’s bed, the ghost of his body heat still tangled in the sheets beside her. The room swam into focus—the crack in the ceiling plaster, the pile of his clothes on the floor. The pounding came again, more insistent.
“City! Open up!”
Not city. The voice was familiar, a whiskey-roughened bark. Henderson. The landlord.
Logan was already on his feet, a dark, silent shadow pulling on his sweats. His movements were liquid, tense. Ashanti scrambled up, her body aching in a dozen pleasant, deep ways from the night before. She snatched Logan’s shirt from the floor, the one she’d worn to his room, and pulled it on as she padded barefoot into the living room.
Jackie was a violet-haired lump on the couch, one fishnet-clad leg dangling over the side. “Turn off the alarm,” she moaned into a cushion.
James’s door opened. He stood there naked, scrubbing a hand over his face. A woman with smudged eyeliner peeked out from behind him, then retreated quickly. “The fuck is this?” James growled.
The pounding resumed. “I know you’re in there! Open this goddamn door!”
Ashanti took a breath, smoothed the shirt down over her thighs, and turned the lock.
Mr. Henderson stood in the dim hallway, a squat bull of a man in a stained polo shirt. His face was the color of raw hamburger. He didn’t wait for an invitation, just shouldered past her into the apartment, his nose wrinkling at the stale cocktail of weed, sex, and cheap incense.
“Right,” he said, clutching a clipboard to his chest like a shield. He didn’t look at any of them directly, his eyes scanning the mess—the takeout containers, the bills on the table, Jackie on the couch. “Building’s sold. New owners. They’re clearing the whole block for some… glass fucking thing.” He spat the words. “You got thirty days. Last month’s rent is still due, by the way. Consider this your notice.”
The words landed in the room like a thrown brick. Silence followed, thick and choking.
Jackie sat up slowly, her violet hair sticking out at angry angles. “Thirty days? To do what? Evolve wings and fly to a better neighborhood?”
“Not my problem,” Henderson said, finally making eye contact with Ashanti. He seemed to see her for the first time—the tall, disheveled woman in a man’s shirt, her white dreads a wild corona, her sharp amber eyes fixed on him with an intensity that made him take a half-step back. He thrust a crumpled piece of paper at her. “Official notice. Thirty days. Then the city changes the locks.”
He left quickly, his footsteps retreating down the hall. Ashanti stood holding the paper. The words blurred. Termination of Tenancy. Vacate Premises.
She slowly pushed the door shut. The click of the latch was deafening. She leaned her forehead against the cool wood, the eviction notice crumpling in her fist. Her heart was a frantic bird beating against her ribs. The safe behind the kitchen tile. The twelve hundred from Kaine. It was a drop in a bucket with a hole the size of a bulldozer.
A warm, solid presence materialized behind her. Logan. He didn’t speak. His hand came to rest on her shoulder, his thumb pressing into the knot of tension there. The weight of it, the simple certainty of his touch, kept her from sliding down the door.
James let out a long, low breath. “Well. Shit.”
He walked into the living room, stark naked and seemingly oblivious to it, and picked up the stack of bills from the coffee table. He flicked through them—the power, the water, the late rent notice. “This just went from ‘annoying’ to ‘extinction-level event’.”
The woman from his room slipped out, dressed in last night’s clothes, and scurried to the front door without a word. Ashanti moved away from Logan to let her out. The door opened and closed on the dismal hallway once more.
“Okay,” Ashanti said, her voice surprisingly steady. She walked to the kitchen, her bare feet sticky on the linoleum. “Okay. We need a number.”
“The number is ‘more than we have’,” James said, dropping onto the arm of the couch near Jackie’s feet.
Jackie lit a cigarette. The flame of her lighter trembled slightly. “I can’t just conjure a deposit, Ash. My charms only work on dicks, not debit cards.”
“Funny,” Ashanti said, her tone flat. She knelt, pried up the loose tile, and opened the small wall safe. The interior felt pathetically empty. She pulled out the stack of cash, the crisp hundreds from Kaine on top, and carried it to the coffee table. She sat on the floor and began to count, smoothing each bill with deliberate care.
Logan leaned in the doorway to his room, arms crossed, watching. His silence was a physical pressure in the room.
“Twelve-twenty from last night,” Ashanti said, setting Kaine’s money aside. She counted the rest—smaller bills, fives and twenties, the profits from the pharmacy backroom, from a few other regulars. “Three hundred from my… side gigs this week. James?”
James grimaced. “The Aces are sitting on inventory. Cash is tight. Maybe two hundred liquid. And we owe Griff for the last batch.”
“I’ve got maybe eighty,” Jackie offered, blowing a smoke ring. “Tim the accountant paid in therapy, not cash. Said my trauma was ‘currency enough’.” She made a gagging sound.
Ashanti did the math in her head. It was a sickening sum. Not even close. The first and last month’s rent on a new place, any place that would take them, would be astronomical. Deposits. Moving costs. It was impossible.
“We could…” James started, then stopped. He ran a hand over his close-cropped hair. “We could move the operation. Faster. Bigger clients.”
“That brings bigger eyes,” Logan said, his first words of the morning. They were gravel, rough from sleep.
“You have a better idea, brother?” James shot back.
Logan’s jaw tightened. He didn’t.
Ashanti stared at the money. The clean, new hundred-dollar bills from Kaine seemed to mock the grubby twenties. She thought of him—the tailored suit, the amber eyes, the effortless power. The way his money felt in her hand. A different kind of power.
“I might have a line,” she said quietly. The room went still. “A client. High-end. He… liked me. Said same time next week.”
Jackie’s golden eyes narrowed. “The panther? From Logan’s text?” She whistled. “Babe, that’s playing with live wires. Those shifter types are territorial. And connected.”
“I know what he is,” Ashanti said, sharper than she intended. She looked at Logan. His expression was unreadable, but a muscle ticked in his jaw. “It’s money. A lot of it. And we need a lot of it.”
“It’s a stopgap,” James said pragmatically. “Not a solution. Even if he pays double, it’s one payday. We need a river, not a raindrop.”
The truth of it settled over them, colder than the morning draft from the window. Ashanti looked around the terrible, familiar room—the burned couch, the grimy curtains, the sign on the wall. This was their territory. Their den. The only stable ground in a city that wanted to chew them up.
Her tattoos, the intricate tribal patterns winding up her arms, seemed to itch. A faint, dormant warmth stirred beneath her skin. Her magic, her birthright, was a locked box inside her. She’d sworn never to pry it open, not for profit, not after what happened with the coven. Using it for personal gain was what had started the whole schism. It was a line she’d drawn in blood.
But the line was about to be bulldozed.
“I’ll handle the money,” she said finally, gathering the bills. Her voice had gone hard, pragmatic. “You two,” she looked at James and Logan, “figure out if the Aces have any pull with property. Any backdoors. Jackie, put the word out on your channels. We need a lead, anything off-book.”
Jackie stubbed out her cigarette. “I know a guy who knows a guy who runs a flop house for supernaturals. It’s supposedly a firetrap, but it’s something.”
“We’re not living in a firetrap,” James said.
“We might not have a choice!” Ashanti snapped. The pressure in her chest was expanding. She stood up, the money clutched in her hand. “We have thirty days. We either find a miracle, make a miracle, or we’re on the street. Separately. Is that what we want?”
The question hung there. The unspoken truth was that without this crumbling apartment as an anchor, the fragile ecosystem of their found family would collapse. Logan would retreat into the gang’s violence. Jackie would float to the highest bidder. James would scheme alone. Ashanti would be back to just the pharmacy, just the back alley, just the empty transactions.
Logan pushed off the doorframe. He walked to the coffee table, picked up the crumpled eviction notice, and smoothed it out. He stared at it, his dark eyes scanning the legal jargon he probably couldn’t fully read. Then he looked at Ashanti. “No,” he said, the single word final. “We don’t want that.”
He was agreeing. They were staying together. It was the only plan that mattered.
Ashanti nodded, the tightness in her throat easing just a fraction. “Okay. Then we get to work.”
She turned and walked back to her room to get dressed. As she passed the kitchen, she let her fingers brush the loose tile hiding the safe. The money wasn’t enough. But maybe the client was. Maybe Kaine was more than a payday. Maybe he was a door.
And maybe, whispered a treacherous, lonely part of her she thought she’d buried, her magic was the key.
Outside, the city woke up with its usual indifferent roar. Inside the apartment, the war for home had just begun.