“That’s…intense, man,” Seven said, throat tight with a laugh that didn’t reach his eyes.
“This is gonna be so fucking cool,” Avi crowed and hustled back to fuss over his vision.
Enzo exchanged a look with Atticus—the only two people who felt like actual adults in the room right now—while Felix, Zane, and Jericho hovered, saying nothing that encouraged Avi’s mania, yet not stepping in to stop it. Jericho offered practical tips about keeping the gears from gumming up. Asa barked a reminder about stabilizing the ramp so it didn’t collapse halfway down.
Enzo kept staring at the ramp. He tried to look away, but his gaze kept snagging on small, awful details: a strip of denimhooked on a serrated tooth, threads frayed like a torn flag, a dark smear on the concrete rim near the pit, a coil of rope lying beside a winch with the kind of deliberate placement that made his chest tighten. The air tasted faintly of iron and gasoline; it made his stomach flip.
A small commotion at the door announced August and Lucas’s arrival.
August’s smile split his face like a knife. “Oh, excellent. We didn’t miss it.”
“I wouldn’t start without you,” Avi said, grinning, like he’d been given permission to finish a thesis. “Not after you let me shatter that body.”
Lucas folded down beside Seven, keeping a careful distance from the man’s kicked-out legs. “How are you feeling?” he asked in a low voice.
“Like someone shot me in the face,” Seven muttered. The joke eased some tension; a crooked, exhausted grin softened his features. “My head’s pounding, and I think I cracked a tooth. Do I look as bad as I feel?”
Lucas’s mouth quirked. “Actually? You look kinda hot, like a movie hero.”
Enzo’s jaw tightened at the casual compliment. Before he could retort, August swooped in and pulled Lucas upright into his arms. “That’s enough of that,” August said, warm annoyance in his tone. “Have we reached the point in our relationship where you flirt with younger men right in front of me?”
Lucas rolled his eyes. “If I got mad every time some student hit on you, I’d need a Botox retainer to keep up with all the frown lines.”
“That’s different,” August countered, smug.
“How so?” Lucas prodded with a laugh.
August wrapped his arms around him from behind. “They flirt with me. I would never flirt with them, not when I have you.”
Seven laughed, then tried to sit up, groaning before falling back against Enzo. He felt bile rise at Seven’s discomfort. His hands moved before his brain did, steadying him. Atticus reached for Seven and helped him up so Enzo could stand, too. Seven sagged against him immediately, heavy and small at the same time.
August peered around at the contraption and snapped his fingers. “Explain,” he said to Avi. “Tell me everything. Don’t skip a thing.”
Something about August reminded Enzo of Gomez Addams. He was somehow both elegant and ghoulish in equal measure.
Avi bobbed with glee, his hands already twitching toward the controls. “Okay, so imagine a ramp with?—”
Enzo kept one hand on Seven’s chest, his arm fastened around his waist like an anchor. The rest of the world—gasoline fumes, the metallic gleam of that ramp, the quiet gurgle of something oily in the pit—receded into the background. All he heard were Seven’s shallow breaths, the soft intake of someone drugged with adrenaline and pain. It made him meaner somehow, and made him a little excited about the spectacle that was about to take place.
Avi outlined the gruesome mechanics with the pride of someone describing a masterpiece. The others listened, some with clinical interest, some with the detached curiosity of people used to making awful things happen and then washing their hands. The twins fussed at last-minute adjustments. Jericho inspected winches. Felix hovered over Zane protectively.
Outside, distant water lapped at the docks. The wind pushed a corrosive smell through the open shed and the sodium lamp above them flickered, throwing intermittent hard shadows.The scene felt like a snapshot someone would later say was prophetic. A calm before an engineered storm.
Enzo’s thumb moved across Seven’s temple, then down the cheek where the bandage rode. He could taste the chemical tang of the night on his tongue. He could hear the soft, slightly hoarse edge to Seven’s breath and the small, involuntary sounds that broke through when Atticus adjusted a bandage or when someone joked too loudly. Every laugh sounded brittle to Enzo’s ears.
Avi clapped his hands. “Ready to test?” he asked, eyes wild.
Jericho’s voice cut through in a flat line. “No more tests.”
A shadow of a grin crossed Avi’s face, then he saw Enzo’s hand tighten around Seven’s hair and, for once, the joke left him. He backed off just a little. Even in a room full of men who’d spent lifetimes hardening themselves, Enzo’s fierceness softened something, or maybe it just reminded them that they’d had people they loved put in jeopardy before as well.
The whole family was cracked. He had no idea why his mother put them on a pedestal. Not that he didn’t like them. He did. They were decent people, with their own harsh sense of justice. But there was no denying they were all a little unwell. Except Atticus, maybe. Atticus felt like the only stable thing in a house of spinning knives.
Avi bounced on his feet. “Let me show you.” He padded to the ramp and ran a hand down one of the teeth, careful, almost reverent. “We repurposed an intake line from the old plant. Nothing complicated. It’s symbolic as much as it’s…well…motivational.”
He tossed a look over his shoulder at the three men on the floor, currently being unmade by his brothers. They were filthy—salted with sweat and blood—their hands bound.Seasoned. Enzo flinched at his own morbid thought. They didn’t struggle. They lay there with the hollow, stunned expression of men whonever thought they’d have a last night that smelled of fish guts and rust.
“It feels weirdly poetic somehow. No?” Avi asked.
