But this isn't that life. Malachi's got this, and my job is to hold the perimeter and keep my shit together. My phone is dead weight in my pocket.
Sloane's last text: Girls are staying in Candace's room. Ruby has 3 bottles of wine and a dangerous glint in her eyes. If we die, tell Maggie it was fun.
I'd answered: Don't die. I've got plans.
Then spent ten minutes staring at the word plans like it was a confession. I shouldn't be thinking about her in pajama shorts on Malachi's bed while her friend's father gets the truth beaten out of him ten feet away.
But my brain doesn't do compartmentalization when it comes to Sloane. She is in my head all the time, even now.
A dull, thick thump echoes from inside.
East mutters, "He deserves worse."
He's not wrong. I let my head fall back against the wall. The concrete's cool against my skull, but it doesn't touch the heat running under my skin.
"You're wearing a path," I say to Nash without opening my eyes.
His boots pause, then keep moving. "Walking keeps me from putting a bullet through the door and ending it early." Fair point.
Another sound filters through. It's more chair than fist this time. Malachi's voice, pitched low. Can't catch the words. Just the tone. Hungry.
This goes beyond Chuck. First Graves selling Darla. Now rumors of "auctions" threaded between them. Every road we're tracing keeps circling back to fathers and daughters. Somewhere on that map there's Sloane's father. I've got a name, an article, and two years of silence around it. He's the one door I haven't kicked in, the one subject that makes her go distant and sharp around the eyes. A heavier slam from inside. Chair, wall, or skull; could be any of the three.
East's shoulders roll, restless. "I swear to God, if that son of a bitch so much as says Candace's name like it belongs to him…"
"You'll have to get in line." Rougher than I mean.
Nash stops pacing. Looks at me. "You're thinking about Sloane." Always. "She flinched hard at Donovan," he adds matter-of-factly. "When Rider said he'd been spotted, you looked ready to tear the walls down. That wasn't just club business."
No use lying to a man built on reading tells. "She's running from something. Someone."
He nods once, quiet and solid. "Question is whether that someone is plugged into the same network as Graves and Moreland."
I don't answer. Because if her father's tied into this shit—if he's one more suit selling daughters to buy power—I'm going to have to decide which burns first: the society they built, or every firewall she's put around her past.
Another hit from inside. Then a pause so sharp it makes the hairs on my neck rise. Silence. Then the door slams open. Malachi steps out. He looks like hell. Knuckles split and swelling. Shirt damp with sweat down the spine. Eyes dark, wild around the edges but caged in the middle. His breathing is too steady for what he just did. We all straighten.
"That bad?" I ask.
He doesn't answer right away. His hand goes to the back of his neck, scrubbing hard as if he's trying to erase whatever Chuck just put there. Doesn't work. The grime's under the skin. When he finally speaks, his voice is low and guttural.
"He said Candace's mom is alive."
The hallway goes dead quiet. I blink. East goes still. Nash might as well be carved from stone. Candace's mom. The woman whose grave doesn't exist. The ghost Candace has been hating and mourning in equal measure her whole life. My brain stalls. Then starts slotting pieces.
"Alive how?" East asks, voice sharp.
Malachi's gaze cuts to him, then across all of us. "She's working with Donovan. Alice Brighton. Funding the auctions. Running recruitment. Donovan's just the muscle. She's the one behind it now."
Candace's mother was always a ghost story. No paper trail, no photographs, no belongings left behind. Just a name Candace grew up hating and missing in the same breath. A name everyone assumed belonged to a dead woman.
"She thinks her mom's dead," I say.
"I know," Malachi bites out, something fraying under the words. "But it gets worse."
Nash doesn't blink. "Tell us."
"They've got a whole system," Malachi says, eyes flat and dangerous. "A society. Winston, Trent… they're part of it. You wanna move up the ranks?" He looks at each of us in turn as if he expects someone to look away. "You have to sell your firstborn daughter."
