Then I correct, the tires bite, and the Ghost shoots out of the turn, perfectly aligned with the finish line. The Viper is still struggling to regain control somewhere behind me.
I cross the line, easing off the accelerator, letting the engine's roar settle back into a rumbling growl. The victory isn't a wave of euphoria. It’s a release. The unwinding of a spring that has been coiled too tight for too long. A fix.
I pull the car to a stop near where Leo is waiting, his face split by a triumphant grin. He yanks my door open.
"You're a goddamn artist!" he yells, his voice electric.
I just grunt, my heart rate already returning to normal. I watch as one of Leo’s friends collects the duffel bag. He brings it over, handing it to me through the open door. I don't even look inside. I just toss it onto the passenger seat.
"Let's go," I say.
Leo gets into his own beat-up Civic parked nearby, and I follow him out of the industrial park. We drive in silence to the shitty, two-bedroom apartment we share on the other side of the city—the one place our father's name means nothing.
I hand him the bag when we get inside. He unzips it, staring at the stacks of cash.
"This is it," he breathes. "This is enough. First and last for the new place. We can finally get out."
"I told you I'd handle it," I say, grabbing a bottle of water from the fridge.
He looks up at me, his eyes shining with a hero-worship that I have never earned and don't deserve. "You always do."
I lean against the counter, watching him. This is why I race. Every risk, every near-miss, it is all to build a wall around him. To buy him a life away from the poison of our family.
My hand finds the pack of cigarettes in my pocket. I shake one out, lighting it with a flick of a silver Zippo. The first drag is a harsh, familiar burn. A different kind of fix.
I think of the Ghost, my perfect machine, sitting outside. The way it responds to my every command, the absolute trust I have in it.
It’s a dangerous thing, to love a machine. To trust a Helios with the only thing in the world you can’t bear to lose.
Fifteen
Cassian
Thedeadboltslideshomewith a heavy, final thud.
The sound echoes in the sudden, absolute silence of my loft. It’s a good sound, a sound of ownership, of finality.
She’s here.
For a few seconds, I don’t move. I just stand with my back to the door, my entire body a screaming chorus of pain. My ribs are on fire, my right knee is a dull, throbbing ache, and the cut over my eye stings with every beat of my heart. The adrenaline thatheld me together is gone, leaving a raw, shaking exhaustion in its wake, but I don’t really feel any of it.
All I feel is her.
She’s a ghost of warmth and fear standing two feet away from me in the darkness. I can hear the soft, hitching sound of her breathing. I can smell her scent—clean, simple, like soap and night air—a fragile, living thing in my world of concrete, sweat, and steel. It’s the scent I’ve tried to imagine for years, staring at a faded photograph. Now it’s real and it’s in my home, and it’s so much more potent than I ever imagined.
I lost control.
The thought is a shard of ice in my gut. The kiss was not part of the plan. The plan was to show her the violence, to rub her face in the ugliness of my world and see if she would break, to see if the curious ghost would finally show some fear and run. I didn’t plan to be the one to break.
When I saw her standing there... something inside me snapped. The rage from the fight, the triumph, the years of watching from a distance—it all crested into a wave I couldn’t fight. The need to close that final gap, to make the ghost I've watched for so long solid in my arms, was absolute. I had to taste her.
The taste of her mingled with my own blood was the most grounding, terrifying thing I have ever experienced.
“Don’t move,” I rasp, my voice raw.
I push myself off the door and limp across the concrete floor. My hand finds the industrial metal switch on the wall, and I flick it.
A single track of low-wattage lights hums to life, casting a warm, golden glow over the main living space. It’s not bright. It’s just enough to chase away the absolute darkness.
