“You are my son,” Marie whispers, and then she repeats it in French, “Tu es mon Fils.”

“Let me take you somewhere else,” Hael suggests, but this is an argument he’s had with his mother on the phone numerous times, begging her to stay somewhere else, at Aaron’s at the very least. It wouldn’t be entirely unheard of for the GMP to come for Hael’s mom. At this point, I think our tentative stalemate is the only thing that’s prevented them from moving on us. “We can find you somewhere better to stay, somewhere nicer than this shitbox.” There’s a long pause there where Hael holds his breath and his mother finally lifts her eyes up to look at his face. “Maman, please.”

Marie looks over at Martin and then back at her son.

“Je n'ai nulle part où aller,” she murmurs, and Hael makes a sound of frustration.

“She says there’s nowhere else for her to go,” he explains, cursing in French for a moment before sliding his hand over his face. He squeezes me even more tightly against him, and I put my palm over his heart, feeling it thunder inside his broad chest. “But Maman, there is. We have places for you to go. You don’t have to stay here; you don’t have to suffer like this.”

Tension stretches between Hael and his mother, and I look over to see Vic’s normally stoic face soften slightly as he turns away. We understand what it’s like to be betrayed by a mother. Shit, we all do. Every single one of us has been betrayed by close family.

Every single one.

The ties binding our hearts seem to tighten and knot, drawing our souls closer together even as we stand in that janky ass yard in the middle of the second worst neighborhood in Springfield. There used to be a high school here, too, almost twenty years past, but it’s long since been shut down, so … Prescott High it is for Four Corners residents.

“Okay,” Marie says after a moment, and Hael nearly startles in surprise.

“What?” he asks, blinking furiously for a moment. “Quoi?”

“I’ll go with you,” Marie reconfirms, lifting her chin. Her bruised and battered face speaks volumes; the tremble in her pale hands says even more. She’s afraid. But she’s more afraid of losing the last shred of her son’s respect than she is of Martin. “I will go.” She mumbles something else in French that I don’t quite hear.

Hael tugs me forward and then releases me so that he can take his mother in his arms, tucking her tiny body under his chin as I stand close and Martin starts to scream obscenities from behind us.

Shock of all shocks, we hear a knock on the door a moment later.

Our police detail has heard the commotion.

With a sigh, Hael exchanges a look with me and we lead Marie into the house. I’m the one to answer the door and explain the situation—but only after righting the coffee table and one of the chairs.

The officers decide to wait on the porch for us as Victor guards the back door, keeping Martin out while we pack up some things for Marie. While Hael helps his mom, I peek into his room and see that he managed to pack up most of his things before the move to Oak Valley, including all those superhero comics and graphic novels. There are boxes here and there at the apartment, stacked in the third spare bedroom, but I never quite put together what might be in them.

“Blackbird,” Hael says, drawing my attention around. I bite my lip in embarrassment at having been caught scouting out his room, but Hael just takes my head between his hands and kisses my mouth. “Thank you,” he breathes, but for what, I’m not sure. I hardly did a damn thing.

I decide to ask what he means by that and Hael pauses, pressing his forehead to mine.

“Marie,” he says, closing his eyes for a moment. “What she said to me in French … Je vais le quitter car je vois à quel point tu l'aimes. Quand je vous regarde tous les deux, je n'arrive plus à faire semblant. It means … she’s leaving because she sees how much I love you, that when she looks at us, she can’t bear to pretend anymore.”

He stands up and releases me, but my cheeks are blazing and I’m not quite sure what to say.

In the end, I say nothing, and we lead Marie out to the Camaro. For now, we take her to Aaron’s place. Since it’s a well-known fact that we aren’t living there and haven’t been for months, it’s fairly safe. Especially located as it is between Fuller and Prescott, half-normality and half-Havoc territory.

Hael gets his mother set up in the master bedroom as Aaron and I wait in the living room and the rest of the boys sweep the yard and the upstairs, just in case. You can never be too careful in a gang war.

“I miss this place,” Aaron tells me as we lean together, shoulder to shoulder.

“Me, too,” I say, but then I think about Marie living here and not being afraid and making pralines in the kitchen, and the feeling of missing the house doesn’t seem quite so strong anymore.

“She’s asleep,” Hael says as he comes out of the room, rubbing at his temple with two fingers. “We’ll leave some guys to watch over the house, but I’d feel better if she wasn’t alone.”

“You can’t stay,” I tell him, and it’s not just because I’m being selfish. It’s because Ophelia knows the truth now: it doesn’t matter which part of Havoc she gets ahold of. If she can capture a single one of us in her clawed fingers, then we have no choice but to serve her whims.

“Aww, missing me already?” Hael asks, giving my hair a tousle as Oscar comes down the stairs, Victor emerges from the direction of the laundry room/weed bathroom/and garage area, and Callum slips in from outside. “No, I’m not staying here, but I might call my aunt or something. She lives in New Orleans.” Hael pauses briefly and sighs, like this isn’t the outcome he wants but the outcome that might be necessary. “I think my mother should move back home. She’d be happier in Louisiana; she only ever came here for Martin.”

“If she’ll go, we’ll buy her a plane ticket,” Vic agrees, and then, with one, last look at the house, we leave out the front door and pile into the cars.

As we do, I text Sara Young and let her know what’s going on.

Just as I’d hoped, she agrees to send a car over here for at least a night or two which makes me feel better.

She isn’t so bad, after all, that doe-eyed VGTF agent.

In late May, Brittany Burr gives birth to a beautiful baby boy, eight pounds six ounces. I decide to pay her a visit just a few days later, when she’s resting at home and her father—the infamous Forrest Burr—is out of the house.

Hael knocks on the door to get her to open it, but it’s me who ends up pushing past to head inside.

“What …” Brittany starts, glancing back at Hael Harbin as he waves and gives a tight-lipped smile before yanking the front door closed without bothering to come in himself. I sweep down the hall as Brittany stumbles after me, growing more furious by the second. “What the fuck are you doing here?” she demands as I find the kitchen and start rummaging around for a vase, so I can put the flowers I bought her into it.

Conveniently, I find a lovely crystal vase in the cabinet above the kitchen sink

“I came here to congratulate you on your new arrival,” I say, spotting a baby monitor on the counter. Based on the image on the screen and the near perfect silence of the house, I take it to mean the kid is still asleep. “And to bring these flowers by.”

Brittany glares at me from dark brown eyes lined with purple circles underneath. Her face is drawn and tired and her pouty mouth is turned down in a vicious frown. Hael never came to the hospital to see her—which she knows. And maybe by now she’s already figured out that the kid isn’t his? That much, I’m not sure since most babies are born kind of looking the same anyway.

“Why are you inside my goddamn house and Hael isn’t?” Brittany tries again to get me to answer her, but I’m too busy fluffing flowers in the vase and stepping back to admire my handiwork. I cast her a knowing glance and her face flushes a funny purple-red color.

“Girl, you know why I’m here,” I say, but Brittany is still shaking her head at me, like she doesn’t want to believe it. But she knows. She fucking knows before I say a goddamn word.

“I want to see Hael,” she demands, turning on her heel and heading for the front door again. I cut her off and she comes up short, reaching out a hand to brace herself against the wall, her white nightgown fluttering around her thighs. I lift a brow up.

“That’s too damn bad, isn’t it?” I ask, and Brittany’s face scrunches up like she might start crying, right here in front of me which, really, would probably be one of those moments that would haunt her for the rest of her life. “Because you’re not going to see Hael today. In fact, you may never see Hael Harbin ever again.”

“He’s the … he’s the father of my baby,” Brittany sputters, pushing back limp blond hair from her face. I’d almost feel bad for her if she hadn’t cheated on Hael and then broken her bargain with Havoc. The thing is, there’s one gang you don’t mess with at Prescott High. And this girl? She messed with us. Big time.

“No, Brittany,” I start, letting my voice drop to a placating coo. “He isn’t. Look, I haven’t seen the baby but Rich Pratt and Hael Harbin … well, they look nothing alike. And your kid, he’s got Rich’s DNA.”

“You’re a liar; you tampered with the DNA results,” she blurts, which is the very lie we told her to get her help to begin with. But it doesn’t matter now. Because we at least have a backup plan for Maxwell, and we have a backup plan for Ophelia, and the VGTF is dropping the hammer on every pedophile in town. With the GMP being pulled apart limb from limb via Sara Young, we don’t need this girl’s help. At least, we don’t need her to think Hael is on her side in order to get it.

“Mm,” I say, leaning a shoulder against the wall and shrugging loosely with the other. “We really didn’t. I mean, we lied to you so that you’d keep feeding us information, but that’s about it.”