Bulletproof Heartache

Chapter One: Ruby LaRue’s Last Song

The perfume of gin and cheap cologne clung to the air like a memory that wouldn’t leave. Smoke curled lazily from cigars, swirling in hypnotic shapes beneath the fading chandeliers of Club Paradiso, where time always seemed to teeter on the edge of something irreversible. The band played low, moody jazz — velvet saxophone, tender piano — as if mourning something no one wanted to name.

And then she appeared.

Ruby LaRue walked onto the stage as if she owned sin itself. Her scarlet dress fit her like danger, her curls perfectly imperfect, and eyes heavy with mascara — or maybe just sleepless nights. The crowd stilled. Conversations died. Even the bartender stopped pouring mid-glass.

She stepped up to the vintage microphone, running her crimson nails along its silver stem. The band behind her shifted, readying for the cue. A slow nod from Ruby, and the first haunting notes of My Heart Belongs to the Devil filled the club — smoky, bluesy, soaked in longing and wrath.

Her voice, husky and slow, cracked like fire under skin. It wasn't a song. It was a confession. A funeral dirge dressed as jazz.

She locked eyes with Victor “The Bull” Morano — the man in the front row nursing an aged scotch like it was holy water. He was thick-necked, his silk suit stretched across a chest hardened by power. A gold ring gleamed on his pinky, the same one he’d once pressed against her belly when she carried his child. Their child.

The child he let die.

Victor raised his glass with that smirk that had once melted her spine and now curdled her stomach. That serpent’s grin. His gaze danced between admiration and mockery, daring her to finish the song.

Ruby sang the last verse like it was goodbye.

“If the Devil’s hand feels warm tonight, Then tell him I was born to fight. My heart, though cracked, it still beats on, Until the devil’s love is gone.”

A moment of silence followed. Not applause. Not awe. Just anticipation.

Her hand moved subtly, sliding beneath the slit of her dress, fingers curling around the hidden .38 revolver, tucked against her thigh like a secret lover. Her heart beat once. Twice.

She saw Victor’s lips move. Ruby, no—

The gun roared.

BLAM.

Time shattered. A scream sliced the jazz. Glasses fell. Chairs crashed. The saxophonist dropped his instrument, frozen mid-note. Blood spread like spilled wine across Victor’s chest. He slumped sideways, eyes wide in betrayal, surprise — and maybe a flicker of understanding.

Ruby didn’t wait.

She pivoted on her heels, disappearing behind the velvet curtain as patrons scattered like roaches in sudden light. The bouncers shouted. A woman fainted.

She tore through the back alley. Rain beat the concrete, hard and fast, baptizing her in cold. Her stilettos clacked against the pavement. Hair matted. Gun still warm. She didn’t run.

She walked.

At the metal service door, she paused just long enough to press her lips to a napkin, staining it with crimson lipstick. She pinned it to the door with a single strip of masking tape and a note written in her finest cursive:

He killed my child. I killed him.

Chapter Two: Joe’s Tavern

The amber glow from the neon sign of Joe’s Tavern flickered like a heartbeat skipping notes. Ruby pushed through the door, the old bell above tinkling a warning. Inside, warmth met her like an old friend she didn’t trust anymore.

Joe stood behind the bar, wiping a glass that was already clean. His eyes — storm-gray and kind in all the wrong ways — widened when he saw her. The news had traveled fast. It always did in their world.

“Did you do it?” His voice was barely above a whisper.

Ruby nodded. Her heels left watermarks on the worn wooden floor as she moved. Rainwater dripped from her lashes like tears she no longer shed.

Joe set the glass down. “You should’ve waited.”

“I waited long enough.”

Their kiss came like lightning — fierce, reckless, and too late to stop. It was a collision of grief and fury, lips tasting of past sins. Joe pulled her close, breath hitching.

“We need to vanish,” he said against her ear. “Victor’s crew will paint this city in our blood.”

“They’ll try,” she replied, voice cold steel.

He pulled a duffel from beneath the bar. Always ready. Always afraid. He kissed her once more, then led her through the back.

Time to disappear.

Time to become someone else.

Chapter Three: Raven’s Cove

The ocean didn’t ask questions. It roared and whispered, carried secrets and erased footprints.

Ruby became Ruby Black. Joe became Jack Harris. They bought a crumbling bar on a forgotten strip of beach and named it Crimson Tide. The townsfolk never pried. Folks in Raven’s Cove had sins of their own.

Peace wrapped around them like a stolen blanket — scratchy, temporary, always at risk of being pulled away.

Then he walked in.

Marco Morano. Victor’s younger brother. A taller shadow. Snake-slick, with steel in his jaw and ruin in his eyes.

He looked around the bar, then at them.

“Victor was killed by his own man,” Ruby said, her voice sugar-laced poison.

Marco smiled. “Joe was Victor’s man.”

Ruby stepped forward, fearless. “Joe loved me. Victor destroyed me. What do you think love does to loyalty?”

Marco didn’t blink. “I think you just started a war.”

Chapter Four: The Marriage Pact

Marco returned. This time with an offer. A truce. A kingdom.

Victor, he said, hadn’t acted alone. There were others who wanted Ruby’s child dead. And together, they could find every last one.

“Marry me,” he whispered in her ear at the edge of the dock, waves crashing in the dark.

“Under one condition,” Ruby replied, voice wrapped in velvet and iron. “Joe is second-in-command. He stays.”

Marco agreed. A new empire was born — The Trinity Syndicate. Three minds. Three wounds. One cause.

Chapter Five: Sister, Betrayer

The wedding was all blood and pearls. Ruby wore black.

At the reception, Marco raised his glass. “To new beginnings… and buried pasts.”

Then he dropped the bomb.

“Your sister Sophia helped Victor.”

Ruby’s world cracked. Sophia, sweet Sophia, dragged into the mansion’s basement.

“He was going to kill you,” Sophia sobbed. “He said it was the only way to protect you. I didn’t know about the child.”

Joe stood in silence, then whispered, “She’s broken. Let her live. Like Ava — my twin. Victor killed her thinking she was me.”

Ruby turned away. Her mercy wasn’t forgiveness. It was a delay.

Chapter Six: Trinity’s First War

Downtown belonged to Alessandro “The Blade” Rossi — brutal, calculated.

Joe found Alessandro’s heart: his pacifist brother, Luca. Ruby turned Luca into bait. A staged betrayal. A faked execution.

Alessandro cracked.

The Trinity Syndicate moved.

Club Inferno — ash.

Casino Royal — a graveyard of bullets.

Ruby called Alessandro. “Join us. Or you’re next.”

Alessandro demanded Luca’s killer.

Joe took a blank bullet. Collapsed in a sea of blood packets. Ruby wept on cue.

Alessandro joined.

Chapter Seven: Blood Tides

Raven’s Cove glowed with new money and old violence. Ruby lay between Joe and Marco. She belonged to both. Or neither.

“We have it all,” Marco whispered.

“But I don’t sleep,” Ruby replied.

She didn’t dream of the empire. Only of a crib. A scream. Silence.

Chapter Eight: The Real Killer

A whisper: Angel Delgado.

The hitman. The shadow. The one who pulled the trigger.

Ruby flew to Mexico City. Alone. Dressed in mourning black. She found him in a courtyard, sipping mezcal. A ghost in daylight.

“Why?”

“Victor paid me. Then changed his mind. Too late.”

She aimed. Trembled.

“Do it,” Delgado said. “I deserve worse.”

She didn’t. She walked away.

Some ghosts weren’t worth becoming.

Chapter Nine: Bulletproof Heartache

She returned changed. Hollowed.

Joe met her at the cove. “Did you kill him?”

“No. I saw myself in him.”

Marco stared at her in silence. Then offered her his gun.

She didn’t take it.

She was done with death — for now.

Chapter Ten: Queen of Shadows

On the shore, the wind howled. Behind her — the Syndicate. Ahead — the world.

Ruby LaRue had been singer, lover, killer, fugitive. Now?

Now she ruled.

Her next song would be louder than bullets. A war cry no devil could silence.

She was the queen of shadows.

And her story had just begun.

Chapter Eleven: The Judas Hour

Peace never stays long where blood once spilled. As Ruby’s empire grew, so did the enemies hiding in plain sight. A body turned up in the harbor — one of their own, throat slit, the Trinity symbol carved into his chest.

Marco investigated. Joe brooded. Ruby watched.

One night, Joe staggered into her arms, bleeding from a stab wound.

"It was Sophia," he gasped. "She betrayed us."

Ruby's vision tunneled. Not again.

Sophia was cornered in the chapel.

"He has Ava," she whispered. "She’s alive."

Joe froze. Ava, his twin sister, long thought dead. Victor hadn’t killed her. He’d sold her.

To The Serpent Circle — a rival cartel, long buried, now rising again.

Chapter Twelve: The Serpent Circle

Ruby called an emergency council. The Serpent Circle operated in the shadows of Havana, run by Don Esteban Delgado — Angel’s twin.

Revenge had come full circle.

They needed an insider.

Ruby sent Sophia to broker a deal. She was bait. A traitor turned double agent.

Joe, still healing, trained their new army. Marco unearthed allies: forgotten dons, disgruntled ex-cops, and one legendary ghost — Franco DeVille, once Victor’s mentor.

Raven’s Cove became a fortress. The Syndicate prepared for war.

Chapter Thirteen: Havana Heat

Ruby arrived in Cuba cloaked in shadows and silk. Esteban was charming, cold, and cruel. His compound shimmered with luxury and hidden knives.

Ava was there. Pale. Alive.

But Ava wasn’t a victim. She was Esteban’s queen.

"You left me," Ava hissed to Joe, when he finally came.

Ruby watched them both and understood. Ava wasn’t coming home. But she might help burn it all down.

The deal was struck.

Esteban would die. Ava would rule. And the Serpent Circle would answer to the Queen of Shadows.

Chapter Fourteen: The Fire Sermon

War lit the sky like a god’s wrath. Explosions. Screams. Betrayals mid-battle.

Joe fought with fury. Marco held the lines. Ruby found Esteban in his vault, counting blood money.

He smiled. "Your baby wasn’t the only one Victor ordered dead. There were others."

She shot him in the kneecaps.

"Your voice," he gasped. "Your song brought them all to ruin."

She placed a grenade on his lap.

"Let’s end this on a high note."

Boom.

Chapter Fifteen: Ava's Requiem

Ava crowned herself with Esteban’s blood. But her love for Joe burned bitter.

She spared them.

"Go. Rule your world. Mine begins here."

Sophia stayed behind too — to repent, to rebuild.

As Ruby, Joe, and Marco returned to Raven’s Cove, the war behind them felt like prophecy fulfilled. But peace was a mirage.

Chapter Sixteen: Red Tide

Ruby walked the beach alone, waves licking her feet, wind whispering secrets.

Marco approached. “We lost too much.”

Ruby nodded. “But we’re still here.”

Joe joined them, three shadows cast long by the rising sun.

A new threat would come. It always did. But they were ready.

The Queen of Shadows, the Soldier of Pain, and the King Without Mercy.

The Trinity would hold.

Until the final bullet.

Epilogue: Her Last Song

Years later, in a hidden jazz club in Vienna, a woman sang a lullaby. Her voice trembled, soft with age, powerful with memory.

An old man at the bar cried silently. A younger one held his hand.

Ruby LaRue — no longer a killer, no longer a queen — just a woman who had survived.

When she finished, the world was silent.

Then came the applause. Thunderous. Eternal.

Because some heartaches, once survived, become bulletproof.

End.