I park the bike, kill the engine, and let the silence crash down. My leg comes over the bike slow, every muscle in my body screamin' from diggin' and draggin' corpses.
Savannah’s smile drops the second she really sees me.
I know what she's lookin' at. The dirt caked into every crease of my jeans—dark red Montana clay that looks too much like dried blood even though it’s not. There’s dust in my hair, on my face, streaking across my cut. My boots are covered in it. My fingernails black crescents.
She doesn't move toward me, just stands there, fifteen feet between us, her hand on the railing. "Legion." Her voice cracks. "What's wrong?"
I open my mouth. Close it. Blow out a breath and try again. But the words won't come out. How the fuck do I explain this? The death, the blood, the end.
Because that’s what this is. The fuckin’ end. Of everything. Me, me and her, the club, everyone still alive in the club. Families ruined today. June’s a widow. Orphans, and women, and the whole fuckin’ future of everything went up in ashes this morning.
No. Angels and ashes don’t belong together. So I say, "There's this book. It's… red, I think." Like the blood all over the floor this morning. "Leather. I don't remember much about what it looked like, just… there's abook, Savannah. Your mama. She…"
I inhale. Exhale.
I have no idea how to explain this.
"Pictures," I finally manage. "Of me. Do you know what I'm talkin' about? Do you know where it is?"
I don't even know how to describe the look on Savannah's face. It's intense concentration wrapped around somethin' else—disbelief maybe, or acceptance, or both things wound together so tight you can't tell where one ends and the other begins. Her mouth opens slightly like she's gonna say somethin', then it closes. Her eyes search mine with this desperate, hungry need to understand what I'm askin' and why I'm askin' it now, covered in grave dirt and the residue of violence I can't wash off no matter how hard I scrub.
She knew.
She knows about this book. Has looked at it. Studied it probably. I can see the questions all over her face—questions about what Eleanor did, questions about what I let her do,questions about why I never mentioned it, why I never explained, why I kept silent about one more goddamn thing in a life already buried under secrets.
And she never once asked me about it.
Never brought it up. Never demanded answers. Never used it as a weapon the way she could've—the way anyone else would've.
That realization hits me harder than Brick's bullet would've if I'd been slower this mornin'. Harder than the knowledge that I just murdered the club president in cold blood and buried him in Montana clay that'll hold his bones forever.
She doesn't say nothin'. Just… extends her hand. Small. Delicate. Palm up. Offerin' herself as a guide through whatever fresh hell this day is about to become.
I walk forward and take it, and she leads me inside the mansion I lived in for weeks without ever really seein' it—without ever really believin' I belonged in a place this clean, this expensive, this far removed from the world I was born into.
We go up the stairs, her bare feet silent on the hardwood, my boots leaving evidence of evil with every step.
I follow her into her bedroom and for one horrible moment, I wonder if the book has been on some shelf in this room the whole time. Wonder if I walked past it dozens of times when I was livin' here, recoverin' from the infection that nearly killed me, driftin' through this house like a ghost who couldn't quite figure out how to haunt properly. Wonder if she kept it out in the open, displayed like a trophy, or a warning, or a confession she wanted me to find, but couldn't bring herself to speak aloud.
But it's not.
She takes me into her closet—this massive walk-in space bigger than Mercy's entire bedroom at the trailer—and in the back, behind rows and rows of prairie dresses in soft colors thatmake her look like some kind of virgin sacrifice, even though we both know better, there's a panel.
It slides open on her command, revealin' an elevator.
An elevator. In a closet. In a bedroom.
Of course there's a fuckin' elevator. Of course the Ashbys have secret passages, and hidden rooms, and layers upon layers of privacy built into their fortress. Of course Savannah grew up in a house where you could disappear into the walls, where you could hide from cameras, and expectations, and your own mother's obsessive need to document every breath you took.
Of course there is.
The elevator requires a key in the form of a code—numbers Savannah punches in without hesitation. We get in. The doors close. We descend.
The ride down feels longer than it probably is, and I'm acutely aware of how small this space is. How Savannah's pressed against my side even though there's room to stand apart. How she's still holdin' my hand like she's afraid if she lets go, I'll disappear into the same abyss that swallowed Brick, and Roach, and Ledger, and all the others who thought they could survive by choosin' the wrong side today.
We exit.
And I step out into a shrine of photographs.
