I don’t hesitate. I bring my forehead down into his nose, over and over, my skull cracking against his bone. Blood soaks my hair, runs down my arms, but I don’t care. I only care that he feels pain, only care that he stops, only care that he doesn’t touch Miles again.
Victor roars, a sound that makes me want to curl up and die as he pulls me from the chair.
The crash makes pain ricochet down my back, knocking the breath out of me.
Then Victor, he overpowers me, wrapping his hands around my throat. Panic burns through my chest. I can’t breathe, can’t see straight, and I hear Miles scream somewhere behind me. My vision darkens at the edges, my skull pounding like a drum, but I bite, kick, shove with everything left in me.
A sickening crack echoes across the warehouse, and he collapses, limp. I cough and stumble backward, gasping, scraping myself from beneath him, blood slick against my skin. I can taste copper, feel bruises blooming across my ribs and face, but I’m alive. The pen—still clutched in my hand—is red and slick.
There is a hammer protruding from the back of the dead man’s skull.
Rico steps forward, hammer resting on his shoulder, eyes calculating. “Enough,” he says simply. “You can walk out of this, you just need to be smart about it. I will not let you kill me with a goddamn pen. You know I will kill you if you try.”
I whirl to him, chest heaving, looking between the wrecked body and splattered blood.
Miles stares at me, eyes wide.
“Rico—” Miles chokes out, voice raw, “you… don’t fucking do this.”
Rico shakes his head. “Shut up. I am done taking orders. I’m done with Victor. He was weak, cruel, and unstable. That’s why he’s dead now. But the throne—his empire—it’s mine because I earned it. Miles, you want your people alive, you leave. You take them, and you vanish. Go.”
I stare at him. “The money?” I ask. Every ounce of me wants to snatch back that contract back.
Rico throws a shoulder, and the hammer taps rhythmically against his palm. “The money is mine. The contracts, the accounts—everything Victor cooked—mine. You signed your father over as collateral or whatever twisted legal lie he used. That changes nothing. I’m not some poet burying lovers in the same grave. I’m not interested in stupid shit.”
Anger sears through me so sharp I can’t tell if I’m shaking from pain or fury. “You’ll keep it all,” I spit. “After what he did—after what you let him do—”
“Let him?” Rico’s voice is flat. He looks at the body and shrugs once, like swatting a fly. “Victor was a bad leader. He had to go.” He meets my gaze then, and for the first time I see an angle of a man who believes in his own logic. “I’ll take the money, the men, the business. I’ll set terms. You’ll take whatever’s left of your life and you’ll disappear. Out of Pointe. If Miles thinks he can come back and take what’s mine—he dies first, and everyone with him. That is the rule.”
My throat tightens. The warehouse is spinning slow. The pen feels ridiculous in my fist, a symbol I can’t burn. I look at Miles—at the way he has to force himself to breathe—and something inside me snaps like a brittle wire. All the rage, all the betrayal, all the nights I slept thinking my father kept me safe—everything collapses into one hot, clear thing.
The men I called monsters were the only ones willing and ready to die for me. And I’m willing to die for them too.
“Deal,” I say, dropping the pen and stick out my hand.
Rico takes my hand in his, keeping eye contact as he nods in agreement.
Chapter 35
Jamie
Six weeks have passed, though it feels more like six lifetimes.
The wounds we carried—the cuts, the bruises, the deeper ones etched into muscle and memory—are fading, slowly knitting into something survivable.
Chloe, Miles, and I move through the days like ghosts with better lighting, laughing sometimes, arguing, but always together at the end of the day. Together is the word that matters most now.
Chloe is quieter than she used to be, softer, but there’s fire behind her eyes. She tended to her own injuries for some time, and by now, they’re fading. Miles hovers near her when he can, the bruises on his ribs fading but the stiffness in his shoulders a permanent echo of the night in the warehouse. I see him flinch sometimes, just slightly, when a loud noise rattles the apartment. We let it pass, let the tension unravel in the safety of the little space we’ve claimed for ourselves.
The funeral for Chloe’s father was a delicate deception. Chloe insisted on attending—it was part ceremony, part catharsis—but we had to invent a story for our presence.
“We had a minor car accident,” she told her mother, her voice smooth, practiced. Her mother smiled, though there was a flicker of something in her gaze, a question Chloe didn’t answer. Maybe she believed it. Maybe she didn’t. It didn’t matter. What mattered was that her mother met us—really met us—all of us together, and didn’t recoil. She only raised an eyebrow, smiled faintly, and welcomed us in the quiet way parents do when they see their child safe, even if the truth is jagged and impossible.
This is the same with my own family. They still don’t get why I had to switch schools and move to the next town over just to finish out my degree.
I lied and said that I had been the one who injured the hockey kid with his motorcycle and therefore I needed to lay low for a bit.
My father gave me a wad of cash and told me to be safe.
