Los Angeles. August, 1979.

The Pit’s neon sign spat sparks and bled a sickly red over the wet pavement of Sunset Boulevard in the suffocating summer of 1979. Chrome bumpers rusted in gridlock while the heavy smog choked the setting sun into the color of a fresh bruise. The air tasted of cheap gin and unburnt exhaust, carrying the undeniable weight of cracked asphalt and bad decisions. Jax Vane pushed through the heavy oak doors with damp leather clinging to his shoulders, while Lady trailed like a ghost in his wake. She did not belong in such a dive. Her platinum hair was pulled tight into a ponytail, and her pale skin looked almost translucent under the dead halogens. She had intelligent hazel eyes hidden behind oversized, violet-lensed aviators.

Detective Dalton sat hunched at the scarred wooden bar, nursing a flat highball while his badge collected lint in his breast pocket. He unconsciously rubbed the thick, puckered burn scar crawling up his left forearm—a permanent souvenir from the war. He and Jax went back to the sweltering jungles of the Mekong Delta. Jax had dragged Dalton out of a burning Huey in '72, carrying the bleeding soldier through miles of hostile jungle and leaving the detective with a heavy life debt. The phantom smell of sulfur still seemed to hang between them whenever they shared a room. Dalton caught Jax’s eye in the smoky mirror and offered a slow, exhausted shake of his head to warn him off.

"Keep your head down, doll," Jax muttered. He steered Lady through the thick smoke.

"Company," Lady murmured, her eyes flicking toward the smoky mirror. "Two fresh sedans just rolled up. Running deep. That means at least four boys, maybe five."

"I hate those odds," Jax said, scanning the room until he found Warren wiping down the grease-stained Formica counter with a filthy rag. Jax leaned in close. "Warren, I need an exit before this place turns into a slaughterhouse."

Warren squinted through the haze. "Vane. You got nerve. Who is the dame?"

"Business."

Lady studied the mirror. She watched like a Vegas card sharp. Warren palmed the crisp fifty-dollar bill Jax slid across the sticky wood.

"Back hallway through the supply closet. Vane, don't break the ice machine this time."

The heavy oak doors splintered inward before they could move, framing three Syndicate enforcers in dripping polyester suits. A heavy-set brute barked orders through a wired jaw while Dalton kept his eyes locked on his glass, refusing to look up and acknowledge the war spilling into his jurisdiction. Jax pulled a Zippo and a bundle of magnesium strips he learned to make back in Da Nang, tossing the makeshift flashbang behind the bar near the overproof bourbon. White fire scorched the retinas of everyone in the room, shattering bottles and sending the mobsters screaming into temporary blindness while Jax and Lady slipped out the back.

They hit the alleyway splashing through oil-slicked mud, tearing the canvas tarp off the Midnight Drifter—a matte-black '69 Charger hiding a scavenged 440 Magnum block. Jax cranked the ignition and let the V8 scream, the exhaust shaking the brickwork as they tore out into the Los Angeles night.

The Charger reeked of raw gasoline and cracked leather, though Lady’s expensive perfume managed to cut through the fumes like a ghost of her past. Jax Vane was no hero. He was a wheelman and a fixer who owed blood money. He gripped the steering wheel until his knuckles went bone-white, feeling the cold comfort of the .38 snub resting against his ribs in the shoulder rig.

Lady navigated the Los Angeles grid without a map, relying on the spatial memory pounded into her during her time as a hostess at a mob-owned flesh market called The Xylos. They had broken her down with plastic surgery and psychological conditioning to make her a flawless product for corrupt men, but Jax had dug her out of a back-alley dumpster six months prior and put a gun in her hand. She reached a pale hand to the back of her neck, tracing the nearly invisible seam where the conditioning had begun. The constant, low-frequency hum of memory—a static that usually paralyzed her—suddenly sharpened into a weaponized focus. Instead of merely following Jax's lead, she reached over and gripped the dashboard, her fingertips digging into the vinyl as she made a calculated, independent choice to deviate from their established extraction route. She chose to steer them toward the industrial graveyard of the rail yards, weaponizing the very geometry of her trauma to ensure they weren't just running, but disappearing on her own terms.

"Traffic thickens near the interchange ahead, so take the Sepulveda off-ramp to cut our exposure time," Lady instructed, watching the red and gold streaks of the Hollywood Freeway blur past the windows.

Jax yanked the wheel and sent the heavy muscle car drifting onto the exit ramp, tires screaming against the pavement until they reached an abandoned drive-in theater. Vince leaned against a rusted station wagon under the dead marquee, flicking the ash of a clove cigarette onto the cracked concrete.

"You bring heat with you, Vane," Vince sneered, flashing cheap gold teeth in the dark. "The Syndicate put a bounty on your skull big enough to buy a small island."

"We need clean papers," Jax countered. "We need a ride out of town."

"That costs real money," Vince said. "I need the Solano Sunstone, that yellow diamond the size of a pigeon's egg Baroness Vandra is displaying tonight at her gala in the Hollywood Hills."

Lady stepped forward, her stilettos cracking sharp against the asphalt. "I know the layout of the estate and the security rotation, including the jagged-tooth tumbler on the wall safe hidden behind the study painting."

The Vandra Estate crowned the Hollywood Hills, mocking the smog-choked gridlock of the city sprawling far below its balconies. Jax walked through the grand ballroom in a stolen tuxedo, feeding lies about a phantom three-picture deal to a fading Baroness while her guests drowned in expensive champagne. Two armed private security guards flanked the archway, their eyes lazily scanning the drunken crowd. Jax handed off an empty coupe glass to a passing waiter and slipped behind a heavy velvet curtain the moment their sightlines crossed, tapping his cufflink twice to signal the breach.

Lady drifted through the shadowed hallways with her heels silent on the thick Persian rugs, picking the lock to the study with practiced ease. She had already bypassed the infrared tripwires in the east wing, crawling under antique furniture with her breathing perfectly synchronized to the sweep of the exterior searchlights. She pressed a stolen stethoscope to the cold steel of the hidden safe, listening to the heavy tumblers click and thud into place until the door swung open to reveal the massive, flawless yellow diamond. The stone rested on a velvet pedestal, catching the ambient moonlight. She scooped it into a padded leather pouch, swiftly relocked the empty safe to delay the inevitable alarm, and vanished back into the corridors just before the midnight patrol rounded the corner.

Dawn broke over the Vandra estate hours later. Detective Dalton stood before the empty wall safe. He stared at the clean, surgical precision of the entry—no blown hinges, no wasted movement—and recognized the quiet competence of the man he used to share a trench with. Dalton didn't pull out his notebook to document a crime. He knew the theft of the Solano Sunstone meant his old squadmate had just painted a massive target on his back. He buttoned his trench coat and walked out, intent on catching up to Jax before the Syndicate did.

Jax discreetly tapped the real Sunstone, now tucked deep into the liner of his trench coat, before reaching for the decoy.

Down under the Santa Monica Pier, the black ocean water smashed against rotting wood while Jax tossed a velvet bag to Vince. The air was thick with salt and a suffocating tension. Jax didn't blink, his hand hovering mere inches from the lapel of his coat where the .38 waited.

"Papers first, and the cash," Jax demanded.

Vince signaled into the shadows, bringing two men out with racked shotguns. The sharp, mechanical clack of the pumps echoed loudly off the wet pylons. Jax’s jaw tightened, letting the silence stretch into a clear warning.

"Change of plans, Vane, because I keep the rock and sell your corpses back to the Syndicate." Vince’s smile didn’t reach his eyes as he took a cowardly step back, letting the hired guns take the front line.

Jax grinned as the velvet bag in Vince's hands ruptured, hissing a thick cloud of military-grade tear gas from the rigged canister hidden inside. Vince shrieked and clawed at his burning eyes while Jax and Lady sprinted back to the Charger, peeling out onto the Pacific Coast Highway with the real diamond glowing amber against the dashboard instruments.

They burned rubber heading south until the border swallowed them whole, crossing into a jurisdiction where a crumpled twenty-dollar bill tucked in a passport still meant something. They hid in the back booth of a Tijuana cantina called El Gato Negro, breathing in the scent of roasted chilies and stale urine. Jax nursed a tepid beer and watched the grease-stained paper bag holding the Sunstone, while Lady picked at the label of a tequila bottle with her manicured nails.

The heavy cantina doors crashed open, sucking the sweat from the room and replacing it with the sharp tang of gun oil. Prism stood blocking the Mexican sun. The Syndicate’s top cleaner didn't start his career on the streets of Los Angeles. He started in the Phoenix Program, crawling through the damp hell of the A Shau Valley slitting throats for intelligence officers. A Viet Cong wire garrote had crushed his larynx in '71, and a white phosphorus grenade burned the humanity out of his eyes a year later. Every breath he took sounded like gravel being crushed under a heavy boot—a wet, rattling wheeze that paralyzed his targets with fear before he ever raised a weapon. Now he hid the dead space behind custom mirrored aviators, forcing his targets to watch their own terrified reflections right before the end. He wore a pristine white suit that defied the dirt, with thick ballistic nylon woven tight beneath the silk.

"Found you," Prism rasped through the ruined cartilage of his throat, stepping inside.

Jax kicked the heavy pine table over for cover and drew the Colt Commander, hammering two rounds center mass. The slugs stopped dead against the hitman's Kevlar vest. Prism kept walking with terrifying, silent grace, drawing a polished bowie knife that caught the sunlight in a deadly arc. Jax spat, knowing any more bullets would be wasted. He snatched the nearby bottle of mescal, hurling it at Prism’s chest. The bottle ruptured, drenching the pristine white suit in liquor. Jax flicked his Zippo, igniting the jacket in a blue flare of flame, forcing Prism to pause and stamp out the fire, breaking his silent, terrifying momentum for a vital second.

Lady vaulted the bar to flank him, but Prism pivoted in silence and brought the heavy steel blade down. Blood soaked through her woven poncho as she screamed and clutched the deep gash in her shoulder, her knees buckling against the floorboards. Prism stepped over her, raising the mirrored steel to finish the job.

The back door of the cantina kicked open with the heavy thud of a detective's boot. Dalton stood in the doorway, the Los Angeles smog still clinging to his trench coat and a battered 12-gauge pump resting against his hip. He had tracked the scent of his old squadmate all the way from the Vandra estate, following the blood and the burnt rubber straight into the Mexican dirt.

"You always were sloppy with your brass, Vane," Dalton said, racking the slide.

The mechanical clack cut through the silence. It echoed in the small room.

Dalton fired. The heavy buckshot slammed into Prism’s ballistic vest. The sheer kinetic force of the 12-gauge shattered the assassin's ribs, lifting him off his feet and throwing him backward over a splintered table.

Jax didn't hesitate. He vaulted the shattered furniture, kicking the bowie knife away before driving the barrel of his .38 snub hard under Prism's jaw. He bypassed the thick nylon vest entirely, sinking the cold steel directly into meat and bone.

"Lights out."

The gunshot deafened the small room, painting the pristine white suit in a dark, spreading red. Jax waved the gun smoke away, his breathing heavy as he looked up at the detective standing in the doorway. Dalton lowered the shotgun. His eyes moved from the dead Syndicate cleaner to the bleeding woman on the floor, and finally settled on the grease-stained paper bag resting on the pine boards.

"You crossing me out, Dalton?" Jax asked, his hand still on the .38.

Dalton reached into his coat, pulling a crumpled pack of cigarettes. He lit one, the match flaring bright before he tossed it onto the blood-soaked floor.

"That was for the Huey, Jax. We're square."

Dalton turned his back on the million-dollar stone and walked out into the blinding Tijuana heat, leaving the ghosts of the Delta to bury their own dead.

Jax hauled Lady to her feet. He tore strips from his shirt to bind the wound.

"Grab the rock and let's go," Jax said, pulling her toward the waiting muscle car. "We can make Cabo by morning."

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