She gives a wet, bitter laugh. “I grabbed his gun and shot his dick off.”
My eyes widen. “You what?”
A ghost of a smirk twitches across her face. “Yeah. Pretty sure he won’t be using it again. Ever.” She laughs, but it’s sharp and trembling. Then it crumbles. “I don’t know what I’m going to do,” she whispers.
“You don’t have to figure that out tonight. Just shower, okay? We’ll deal with the rest later. The Outsiders take care of their own.” I squeeze her hand gently. “And you’re one of us.”
She looks up at me, eyes soft. “Us, huh? About time you admitted it.”
I smile faintly. “Yeah. No point in pretending anymore.”
She turns toward the water, and I back out, leaving the door cracked in case she needs me.
Outside, East is pacing. Malachi leans against the wall, tension simmering beneath the surface, a volcano waiting to erupt. His eyes flick to mine, searching. And I know. This isn’t over. Not by a long shot.
Thebaremptiedoutearlier than usual. Too quiet. Too tense. Malachi shut it down before the clock demanded it, locking the door with more force than necessary. The air felt too heavy for small talk. Whatever plan the guys were murmuring about in the corner didn’t make it to me, just pieces. East took Darla to his place so she’d have a safe spot to crash while the rest of us tried to make sense of what the hell we’d uncovered.
Ruby hadn’t said much, just lit a cigarette with shaking fingers and paced as if one wrong word might set her off. Her father and Darla’s moved in the same rotten circles, but the mayor? Selling his own blood as property? There was rage under her silence; an inferno she hadn’t figured out how to aim yet.
Now it’s just Malachi and me.
We’re in our room, but it doesn’t feel like a sanctuary. Not tonight. The walls feel thinner. My back presses into the headboard, knees pulled tight to my chest. Malachi’s in the chair across from me, hunched forward, elbows on his thighs, braced in a way that makes it seem he’s trying to hold himself together with sheer tension.
The silence between us crackles. His fingers flex, then still. Then finally, he breathes. Long and slow. The kind of breath you take before you bleed.
“I think all of this ties back to Donovan,” he says, voice low, weighted. “Been trying to piece it together for years.”
I don’t speak. Just wait. He doesn’t look at me when he continues.
“My dad was hooked on the drugs Donovan flooded this town with. Every day, he got worse. One night, I came home and found Matt, my older brother, dead. And my mom... my mom screaming under him while he beat her. I was too late to save her, but it didn’t stop me from…”
His words break. He doesn’t need to finish. I already know.
My throat constricts, nails digging into my thigh through the blanket. The edges of the room blur, the air bending and warping until everything feels submerged.
“I killed him,” he says, finally meeting my eyes. “I didn’t have a choice. Jared and Amelia? They were just kids. I had to get them out.”
I swallow the lump rising in my throat. “Where are they now?”
Malachi leans back, eyes going distant. Haunted. “Jared... he couldn’t stay clean. He hated what the drugs did to people, but they still owned him. He tried to break free more times than I can count, but the pull was stronger. One night he called me rambling, terrified. Said they already had Amelia. That he was next. I didn’t know who they were.”
His jaw tics.
“He told me where he was. I rode faster than I ever have in my life. But by the time I got there... he was gone. And Cornelius. He was on the ground, bleeding out.”
I don’t move. Can’t.
His words hang in the air, thick and choking, smoke without fire, impossible to wave away. I try to blink, but my eyes burn. He’s still talking, or maybe he stopped. I can’t tell. My heart’s beating too loud. Too slow. Too broken.
I want to say something. Anything. But all I can do is stare at him, seeing something I hadn’t seen before. Maybe I am.
All this time I thought I had him figured out; just another hard man in a harder world. A cold-eyed brute who only knew how to fight and take. But now…
Now I see the cracks.
I see a boy kneeling over his mother’s bloodied body. A boy who became a killer to save what little family he had left. A boy who lost everything and still tried to hold on to hope with blood on his hands.
Here I am, clinging to my own pain, treating it as armor, when his should have drowned him. He didn’t turn to stone. I did.
