Am I not both? Am I not myself, the version she wants to save, and a manlikemyself? I am a gang member. I am both honest and counterfeit in the same breath. The two are constantly fighting for which version takes up the room.
We rush the warehouse. Chains snick as they cut, a padlock clattering to the floor with the satisfaction of a nail being driven home. Crates topple. Gasoline puddles like oil-slick skin along stacked wood. Fire takes what it wants.
It’s quick and effortless, until some kid bursts out from the front.
He’s barely eighteen, maybe younger.
Still, he has a gun gripped white-knuckle tight, voice cracking as he shouts.
Baker’s faster.
One shot.
Red bursts over the wall like paint slapped across canvas. The kid folds in half mid-stride, as if someone cut the strings holding him up.
Another one bolts from the back door.
I catch him. My knife slides between ribs, twist, pull. His breath leaves in a wet gasp against my throat. The heat of him spills down my forearm as he clings for a second, then dies against me.
When it’s all over, the place is burning, and Fisher claps me on the shoulder on the way out—approval, pride, whatever he thinks passes for camaraderie—and I nod like it means something.
But even before his hand falls away, I’m already moving.
I tell myself I’m heading home.
I tell my feet to turn toward my own damn door.
They don’t.
I go to Rhea’s.
Even though I tell myself, over and over, a dozen times, that I shouldn’t.
The problem is, I don’t know which outcome I’m chasing:
Whether I want her to see the blood on my hands and finally be afraid of me,
or to pull me inside and patch me back together again.
Ifeel like the goddess of crows.
Like I could sneeze and my borrowed, tiny soldiers would attack Mark at my command.
That’s how much everything has changed in the blink of an eye.
Talon swings the passenger door open with a smirk and I climb into the black, unforgettable monstrosity of a car he won in a bet.
And just like that, the birds follow.
“I imagined it for the past five years,” I say once I’m seated and Nathaniel, Cassian, and Talon are in. “Seeing his face as I crumbled his perfect little life. Can’t believe we’re actually doing it.”
My heart drums so loud my ribs ache.
“Better believe it, babe,” Talon says, voice syrup and danger. “A thing like this won’t happen twice.”
“I know,” I whisper. “This is once-in-a-lifetime.”
“Last time I offered you revenge on him, you weren’t this sure,” Cassian says.
