After a long moment, he said, “You punched him.”
“Yeah,” I said slowly, not sure where this was going. “I mean, I should’ve done it harder.”
He gave a wet laugh that wasn’t a laugh at all. “I didn’t.”
Ah. Fuck.
I exhaled through my nose and shifted, resting my elbows on my knees, trying to appear as non-threatening as possible. “Robbie… you don’t have to?—”
“I know,” he cut in, voice thin. “But I need to.”
I nodded once and kept quiet. I liked Robbie; hewas kind and caring, and he held his own with the big men of Redcars.
He stared ahead at nothing, voice flat now. “There was a man… John Mitchell, lower down the pole than Lassiter and Kessler.”
“Uhm… finance guy, right? He was on my watch list.”
Robbie nodded sharply. “He took me when I was still a child, locked me away and kept me because I could remember everything—every name, every deal, every location. I was his ledger because I never forgot a thing.” He tapped his temple. “Eidetic memory. I was his living, breathing record of every crime he committed with others. And to keep the men he answered to sweet, hegaveme to evil men, as if I were nothing. Just handed me over, and hurt me when I stopped helping him, when I refused to remember.”
His hand went to his throat, fingers brushing over scars there, and even though I’d noticed them before, I’d never asked.I wish I had.
“They kept me chained up.” He swallowed hard, blinking rapidly. “And Kessler. He was happy to join in, but he enjoyed filming. Always watching and sometimes he used a blade, and he cut me, clinically, as if he wanted to know what was under my skin…”
Robbie shifted beside me, then with shakingfingers, lifted his shirt. I sucked in a breath. Scars. So many of them. Random slashes, puckered welts, and places where skin had healed in jagged, angry lines. But then he traced one of them with his fingertip, slow and deliberate, outlining a shape. It took me a second, but I saw it. AK. Burned or carved—I didn’t know—but it was there, stark against his pale skin.
“Kessler did that?” I whispered.
Robbie nodded and pointed at other marks, his hand trembling. “All of them,” he said, voice hollow. “Each one from someone who thought I was theirs to hurt. But that one?” His finger returned to theK. “He marked me like property, and he laughed while he did, then he got off on it and…” He stopped talking, his eyes closed.
My stomach churned. My fists clenched with nowhere to land, no outlet for the fury. How had Robbie survived this?
Robbie kept going, voice still distant, as though he were narrating a nightmare he hadn’t quite woken from. “He was the one who used to wear so much cologne. Even now, if I smell something similar, I freeze. I can’t… I just can’t.” He blinked, and another tear slid down his cheek.
“It’s okay,” I said, but the words felt thin because it was far from okay.
“I didn’t fight back because I didn’t have a choice.”
I couldn’t speak. My breath caught, rage and sorrow and helplessness all snarled together in my throat.
“I’m so fucking sorry,” I said. It sounded hollow, but it was the truth. “You didn’t deserve that. No one deserves that.”
“Mitchell is dead, Lassiter is dead…” He broke off, swallowing.
“I know.”
“They’re gone because Redcars made it happen.” He stared at me then. “Enzo, Jamie, Rio… they didn’t wait for justice. Theywerethe justice, and there’s just one person left who hurt me, and I’m telling you that Enzo won’t stop until he’s taken Kessler off the board.”
The weight of what Robbie had confessed—because that was what it was, a confession—sat between us. He hadn’t flinched from it and hadn’t justified or excused it. Just laid it out there. The three men here at Redcars had killed for what had happened, and would kill again.
I understood why.
I’d gotten used to Robbie’s soft voice, his kindness, his loyalty to the people who kept him safe.But now I saw the bones beneath that calm—saw what had been done to him. And suddenly, the idea of Enzo snapping someone’s neck for hurting him didn’t feel monstrous. It felt necessary.
Rage twisted in my chest, white-hot and acidic. Someone had chained Robbie. Hurt him. Used him. And the people who’d done that didn’t deserve trials or due process. Not when someone like Kessler—with his money, friends in high places, and an uncanny ability to twist the system—could walk free. He’d done unspeakable things, and there was every chance he’d keep doing them, shielded by power, protected by privilege. Justice wasn’t built to reach people as rich as him. But Redcars? They could. They deserved whatever Redcars gave them.
I wasn’t shocked. I wasn’t scared.
I was with them.
