Brittany’s face is so tight, it looks like her skin might split open and a monster might come tumbling out. In the same breath, she looks like a little girl who’s just been told that Santa doesn’t exist and God isn’t real and the tooth fairy is really just a demon with too-sharp teeth.

“I bet you can tell, huh?” I start, not bothering to even try with empathy. Brittany Burr is a lucky woman today, and I decide it’s best to remind her of that. “With the baby, I mean. You saw his face and you probably figured it out because he looks nothing like Hael.”

“Babies don’t look like anyone or anything,” Brittany snaps back at me, her teeth gritting in anger. She looks so young and tired and haggard right now that I decide this is enough punishment for her. Being a young single mom is going to be tough—especially with her ultra-judgy family and friends around. We toyed with the idea of running Rich Pratt out of town or threatening him into maintaining distance from Brittany and the baby, but I decided that was more a punishment for the kid than anyone else.

I might be a monster, but I’m not going to rule like one.

“Anyway,” I continue, pushing up from the wall and heading back in the direction of the kitchen. Brittany tries at first to keep me back by extending her arm and placing her palm flat on the wall, but I simply grab her wrist and move her out of the way. She knows she can’t fight me and, luckily for her, she doesn’t even try. “My point is this: you are a very lucky girl, Brittany.”

“I’m going to call my father and tell him you’re here harassing me. And then I’m going to tell him everything I’ve ever heard about Havoc and—”

I cut her off by raising a single finger. With the other hand, I yank open her fridge and hunt around inside until I find a bottle of peach-flavored iced tea. Most of the time, these fruit teas taste like sugary juice. This one only has a hint of peach and a dash of honey, and I decide that even if I have to go to that posh supermarket in downtown Fuller that’s full of the whitest white people you ever did see, that I’ll go just to buy this.

“Do you remember your visit to the cabin?” I ask, looking back at her. It takes Brittany a full thirty seconds for that to register, or maybe it’s just that I continue prompting. “You know.” I gesture loosely at my arms and then point over my shoulder at my back, reminding her of the cuts and bruises, the burn marks, and all the new scars she probably has.

Her face pales, as if she already knows what it is that I’m going to say.

“You owe that beautiful trip to Havoc.”

Another pause. Brittany stumbles forward and just barely catches herself on the raised portion of the counter where a line of tall-backed stools sits. She drags herself into one, clutching the baby monitor to her chest while she stares at me like the devil I know I am.

“Did you not assume there was a reason Havoc would take on any request—no matter the content? That our prices mean nothing, that our rules are nothing. Brittany, the one currency you can carry is truth, and you spent all of it. You owed us in blood.”

“You did that,” she whispers, beginning to shake. Her hands tremble as her white-knuckled grip hugs the baby monitor even closer to her chest. “You and Hael. Hael …” She trails off and a slight sob comes out on the end. “All along … oh my god. Oh my god. Oh my fucking god.”

“You betrayed us, Brittany. You sent daddy Forrest to the school to drag my boys out in handcuffs, even though we’d fulfilled the end of our bargain. You were the one that failed to pay, and we were owed our pound of flesh.” I take a second iced tea out of the fridge before moving over to stand in front of her. The top makes a gentle popping sound as I twist it off and Brittany jumps like a startled deer. “So this is us, collecting on our debt. You are not to see Hael or speak to Hael. If you pass him in public, you will keep walking and you will think about how cheating on him royally fucked your life up in so many ways.”

I take a sip of my drink as Brittany squeezes her eyes shut, salty tears escaping to run down her cheeks.

“The reason you are lucky is this: Hael is a genuinely good and wonderful human being. Even though you would’ve deserved having us take bolt cutters to your pretty fingers”—Brittany makes a choking sound and I wonder if she isn’t putting together Vaughn’s accident with the words I just said—“Hael doesn’t like to see women suffer. Actually, he can’t stand it. So instead of physical pain, I’m leaving you with the emotional scar of knowing that you had him for a short while and you screwed that up.”

Of course, knowing Hael as I do now, and knowing that the two of us are inextricably entwined, that we both belong to Havoc first and foremost, I’m aware that Brittany never could’ve had Hael to begin with. If she hadn’t cheated on him, then he would’ve broken up with her when I called Havoc and became a Havoc Girl for real.

Still, Brittany broke her deal with us and so this is what she deserves, the loss of a beautiful and poignant possibility, one that would’ve changed her life for the better. Despite everything, I do honestly believe she was in love with Hael Harbin.

“You lost Hael to me through your own, ugly actions, and now here you are, covered in fresh scars and with the daunting task of starting all over again with a new baby daddy.” The edge of my lip quirks up in an almost-smile. A devil’s smile. The smile of tricksters and mischief-makers and Havoc wreakers. “You’re also not fully off the hook just yet.”

Brittany lets out another hiccupping sob, eyelids still firmly squeezed shut, arms still clutching the monitor to her chest.

I take the card from the bouquet of flowers, the one that says We’ll be in touch with soft, feminine letters, letters that I wrote while thinking of Penelope and trying to imitate her inimitable handwriting. This I lay on the counter in front of Brittany.

Slowly, nervously, she parts her lids, flinching as I draw my arm back, as if I’d actually hit her inside this house or say anything that could ever be used against me in a court of law. Not that it really matters because Oscar hacked into the Burr’s security system and stopped it from recording temporarily.

Still, it never hurts to be too careful.

“If we call and ask you questions, you answer them.” I level my gaze on Brittany’s and the threat is clear: you belong to us now. Just like Vaughn. Just like Vera. Another person in the swirl of planets and stars that is the city of Springfield. Eventually, every part of this solar system will belong to us. “Don’t make the mistake of upsetting us again. If anything changes with the graduation day plan, we expect to hear it from you first.”

I leave the card where it is and start in the direction of the door, just as the baby begins to cry, his strong voice crackling over the monitor as Brittany stumbles to catch up with me. She follows me all the way to the front door and out, looking past me down the lawn toward where Hael waits in the Camaro.

When I glance back and see her face cracking and shattering into a million pieces, I know that we’ve done the right thing here. Well, it’s certainly a wrong type of thing, but it’s correct for us.

“Hael,” Brittany says, but her voice is soft enough that the sound barely carries to me, let alone to my lover sitting in the Camaro and tapping his palms against the wheel in time to some classic rock song that I can barely hear. I pause briefly, watching tears stream down Brittany’s face before she slams the door and I’m left alone in the sunshine on the Burr’s front lawn.

“Good riddance,” I say, saluting the house with two fingers before I turn back to the Camaro, open the door, and climb inside.

“It’s done?” Hael asks, maintaining his stare out the windshield. I nod my head, leaning over so that I can press a purple-tinted kiss to his cheek. Today’s lip color is called Big Fat Mistake. Sorry, Britt, but you done fucked-up.

“It’s done,” I say, feeling this strange sense of coming full circle from the day Hael and I sat outside a coffee shop and worried about DNA results together. He exhales sharply and then reaches over to curl his fingers through mine. We exchange a look, and his face softens to something caught between shame and affection.

“I’m sorry I’m such a screw-up,” he says, looking me over like he doesn’t deserve me. But he does. They all do, these awful Havoc Boys. We’re just made for each other in a way that’s impossible to explain, a craving that hurts even as it nourishes, that makes me bleed even as I purr with pleasure. Nothing worth having is easy or painless, that much I know for sure. “Seems like I’m always the one bringing the drama.”

“Brittany came in handy,” I tell him honestly. Without her, we wouldn’t know about the graduation day raid. That alone is worth the trouble, although if I could go back in time and keep that bitch from ever touching my lover, I’d do it.

“I suppose she did,” Hael admits, but he still looks troubled, like he thinks he might not be worth all this bullshit. He is. But the only way I can convince him of that is with my actions. Leaning over, I flick my tongue against the corner of his mouth, and he shivers. “Fuck, Blackbird. That mouth of yours … you could sell sand to the desert.”

I smirk at him and press another kiss to his lips before falling back into my seat.

I once read this quote from Scarlett Force in one of her infamous Emma Jean articles, and it’s stuck with me for years. “Loving one person sucks. Like, it’s hard as fuck. You’re always trying to balance the people in your life and wondering if you’re good enough. How could all this love be directed my way? It seems surreal sometimes, but whenever that happens, I just close my eyes and count my fucking blessings. Never look a gift horse in the mouth.”

“What’s on the agenda for today?” I ask as Hael carefully drives out of Brittany’s posh neighborhood, waving briefly at Forrest Burr as he heads past us in his Hummer. I wonder what, if anything, Brittany will tell him? Doesn’t matter. She doesn’t have anything she can use against us but hearsay. Wonder how it’ll go over in the same conversation that Brittany admits to having another possible baby daddy? Thus far, her father hasn’t heard anything but that Hael is the dad.