“You sociopathic nightmare!” Mitch screams, now on speakerphone. Hael startles awake, his hand snaking underneath the cushion, likely to grab a weapon of some sort. He cracks one brown eye to watch Vic set the phone down on the coffee table. Victor leans forward, putting his elbows on his knees and clasping his hands together in front of him. “We’ve been fucking with you until now. You’ve just opened the floodgates, motherfucker.”

“What on earth are you talking about?” Victor asks, completely deadpan. His entire stance though, that speaks to violence. I take a bite of my eggs to hide the involuntary shiver that passes through me.

“You think I wouldn’t notice the goddamn corpse you put in my trunk? Are you nuts? You’re lucky I’ve got Kyler and Timmy on a short leash or you’d already be dead, motherfucker.”

“Try a different word. You’ve used motherfucker twice,” Vic says, and I hear the crash of something on the other end of the line. Mitch is clearly in a mood. Maybe he should’ve thought about what could happen when he decided to challenge Havoc? “And slow down. A corpse? What corpse? Should I notify the police?”

“You are going to bleed for this. I’m going to hold your girl down and fuck her until she begs me to end her life. You hear me, Victor?” Mitch is panting and cursing; I hear voices in the background but they’re too faint to make out.

Vic’s eyes narrow, and his face darkens into something truly terrifying. I hear Mitch’s words, but they pass over me like a light breeze. How many times have men threatened to rape me? More than I can count. I’m not afraid of Mitch Charter.

“If you speak about my girl like that again, I will drown your mother in her bathtub. Do you understand me?” Vic’s as calm as could be, his eyes on the phone, his shoulders tense. I have no doubt in my mind that he’s telling the truth.

“And if you think we’re done avenging Kali’s face, you’re seriously deluded. Tell Bernadette her stepdad says—”

Victor hangs up on Mitch and then promptly blocks him.

Wow. Dismissive. I love it.

“My stepdad says … what?” I ask, feeling my stomach hollow out. If Mitch is somehow working with the Thing, that won’t go well for us.

“Irrelevant,” Vic says, waving his hand at me. “We have to deal with the Charter Crew, and we have to deal with your stepdad. It’s all one in the same to me.” He stands up from the couch, and I find my eyes drawn down the muscular length of his body. He’s built like a dark god, and I’m here to worship on my knees. Shit, fuck, goddamn it …

I frown.

“Everyone get up and get dressed,” Oscar says, making Hael groan. Aaron is perched on the edge of the couch, finishing his breakfast. He takes my empty plate from me before heading into the kitchen. “We have a lot to get done this weekend.”

“Like moving more bodies?” I quip as Cal finishes his stretches and stands up, arching his arms above his head with a yawn.

“Better,” Oscar says, glancing over at me with a smile that’s as sharp as a garrote, wrapping around my neck and sucking the air from my lungs. “We’re going to look at a wedding venue.”

Sara Young is a pretty young blond who lives in a pretty yellow house on a pretty little street.

I stand at the end of her driveway, staring at the bright, red color of her front door. I’m not a fan of this plan, not at all. I don’t trust the cops. But … I do trust Havoc. Even though I shouldn’t. Even though their secrets are buried as deep as the bodies in the woods.

The video.

Vic’s confession about my price.

The truth about the incident with Kali.

Yet, here I am, walking up to Sara’s front door in a crisp linen summer dress that I watched Callum pinch from Nordstrom. He even had a tool tucked away in his backpack that he used to remove the security tag. Impressive.

I feel like a fraud in it.

Taking a deep breath, I lift the tattooed knuckles of my left hand up and knock softly.

It takes Sara a minute to show up. She answers the door with her hair wrapped in a towel … but her hand on her gun.

As soon as she sees me, she relaxes … and then spots the tattoos on my hand and tenses up again.

“Can I help you?” she asks, and I do my best to smile. The expression feels forced, like it’s stretching my lips in an unnatural way. I don’t even know what it means to smile anymore.

“Maybe. I’m Bernadette Blackbird, Neil’s stepdaughter.” I watch the information wash over her. The fingers on her gun relax and she pulls the towel from her hair. I wonder if Neil is supposed to be picking her up soon in the cruiser; she’s already dressed in her uniform.

“Bernadette,” she says, like the name is familiar enough. Sara’s face is so little, her features petite and delicate. I have a hard time believing she commands authority in cold-hard criminal types. “Yes, it’s nice to finally meet you.” Her eyes flick to my knuckles again, and I realize then that Oscar wasn’t exaggerating when he called her a save the world type. She’s one of those black-and-white, good-versus-evil hero types.

And those types … they are dangerous as fuck. Their morality is the most important thing to them. They only think they know what justice means. Sara Young here probably thinks pedophiles like Neil deserve life in prison … with three hot meals a day, unlimited access to HBO, and feather pillows in their cells. Because, like, that’s humane.

I frown, even though I know I’m supposed to be playing a part here. The thing is, Sara is even worse than I thought. She’s seen my tattoo; she already knows I’m a gangbanger. I may as well be wearing an orange jumpsuit in her mind.

“Sara Young,” she says, trying her best to smile. I mean, I’m still a teenage girl, so her conflicted inner sense of justice is struggling to make my presence make sense. “As glad as I am to have finally met you, may I ask what you’re doing at my house?”

“The …” Don’t say the Thing, not outright. “My stepdad’s driven us past your house and pointed it out once or twice.” I shrug my shoulders. It’s a lie, a pretty terrible one, if I’m being honest with myself, but it doesn’t matter. That part of this interaction is irrelevant, as Vic might say. “I know it’s weird for me to just show up on your doorstep, but I don’t have your number or anything and I thought …”

I try to remember what the old Bernadette used to believe. Oh, that’s right. People in positions of authority are there to help. Report bad things. Be honest. Ask for assistance when you need it. I mean, it’s laughable to me now, but I used to believe those things with my whole heart.

“I thought you might be able to help me,” I say, making sure I maintain eye contact with her. She has soft brown eyes, like those of a baby deer. Jesus Christ, what am I doing here? At best, I’m going to get Sara Young killed. At worst, she might end up hunting the Havoc Boys down as a part of some justice warrior plot.

Sara frowns, but only a little. Unlike me, it seems as if she’s used to smiling. She’s young—I’d peg her in her late twenties—but she has little marks on her face from smiling too much. Looking at her is like shoving an entire stick of cotton candy down a parched throat. I’m choking on sugar and sweetness; it’s basically poison to me.

I crack my knuckles in the awkward silence and her eyes find my HAVOC tattoo again.

Something shifts in her expression, a flood of hormones that I liken to … empathy?

Oh.

Oooooh.

She thinks I’m here because I want to leave the gang, I bet. I think about Ms. Keating and the soft sympathy in her face when she told me I had options, that she used to be in a gang herself once upon a time.

“Do you want to come in, Bernadette?” she asks me. “Neil should be here soon. The three of us could sit down before our shift—”

I cut her off by raising both hands and taking a step back. This time, I don’t have to fake the revulsion in my face at the mention of my stepfather.

“No, I … I don’t want him to know I was here,” I start, and Sara pauses a moment before nodding briefly. She’s probably making up some story in her mind, where I’m too afraid to talk to my ‘father’ or some shit. In reality, he’s the monster I hate most.

Sara combs her blond hair over her shoulder with her fingers as she waits for me to continue.

“How can I help, Bernadette?” she asks after a moment, when I just stand there in that stupid white dress, wondering if my cup’s going to overflow and I’m going to bleed all over it. I glance to the right, down the row of fifties bungalows with their American flags waving in the wind. There are no trees left in this neighborhood. Over the years, the homeowners have cut them down, one by one. I don’t think it was intentional, but the look of it is … austere, at best.

I turn back to Sara.

“Do you think it’d be okay if I came and talked to you sometime?” I ask, tilting my head to one side, hoping I look young and desperate enough for her to take pity on me. “I know we don’t know each other, but … I don’t have anyone I can trust.” I blink my green eyes and keep my face as neutral as I can.

“Are you in danger, Bernadette?” Sara asks me, stepping out onto the small front stoop of her home and looking up and down the street, like she can sense the Havoc Boys waiting around the corner for me.

“Yes,” I tell her, because that’s the truth. I am in danger. From her partner. From the Charter Crew. From my own strange, black, fractured little heart. “Would it be okay if I came over here sometime? I mean, if you can’t talk to a cop, who can you talk to?” I almost gag on the words, but I feel like I just pulled that off. Sara’s face softens and she nods, smiling at me in what I can only assume is a sincere way.

“Why don’t I give you my phone number? Text me, and we’ll set up a time to chat. Whatever it is that’s going on, Bernadette, it isn’t too late. It’s never too late. We can always fix what’s broken.” I almost laugh at that, but the sound would be so caustic, it’d burn Sara’s pretty face off. Is she kidding me? When glass shatters, it cannot be fixed. You can collect the pieces, but your hands will bleed after. There is no putting those little shards back together. They will forever remain dangerous fragments of a thing that used to be.