1
VALENTINA
The bike diesin the driveway at midnight.
I kill the engine but my hands won't let go. They're locked around the handlebars, white-knuckled, shaking so violently the chrome vibrates beneath my palms. My lungs pull air in jagged gasps that stop halfway down. Everything inside me is screaming.
The memory is there now—complete, vivid, unavoidable. Marcus's hand at my throat. The pipe cold in my palm. The swing. The crack. His body dropping. Blood spreading dark and thick across concrete.
I killed him.
The thought loops, relentless. I killed Xavier's brother. I took a life and forgot about it, buried it so deep in my psyche that it took Talia's whisper to unlock it.Because of you, I finally get to avenge my twin.Those words, spoken with such certainty, such knowledge, broke open something I'd kept sealed for months.
And now I can't stop seeing it. Can't stop feeling the weight of the pipe in my hand, the resistance when it connected, the sickening give of skull beneath metal.
The porch light snaps on. Motion sensor. The front door slams open and Zay fills the frame—barefoot, shirtless, phone pressed to his ear. His eyes find me and something breaks across his face. Relief. Anger. Fear. All of it at once.
"She's here," he says into the phone, voice rough. Then louder, sharper: "Where the fuck have you been?"
I swing off the bike. My legs buckle the second my feet hit pavement. I catch the seat before I hit concrete completely, knees slamming down hard enough to send pain shooting up my thighs. The physical pain is almost a relief—something real, immediate, that isn't the memory of what I did.
He's already moving—four long strides across the driveway, hands reaching for my elbows to pull me up.
"Val—"
"Don't." The word rips out of me, raw and desperate. "Don't touch me."
He freezes, hands hovering an inch from my skin. His eyes scan my face, my hands, searching for visible damage. Looking for blood or bruises or signs of a fight. He won't find any. The damage is all inside.
"Six hours," he says, and his voice is shaking now too. "Six hours. No call, no text, nothing. Asher's been driving the perimeter like a madman. I thought—" His voice cracks. "I thought they took you. I thought you were dead."
"I needed air." The lie tastes like ash and copper. Like blood.
"Bullshit." His voice drops, dangerous and low. "You went to see them. The Vipers."
Not a question. A statement. Because of course he knows. Zay always knows.
I don't answer. Can't answer. Because what do I say? That I went to get Talia back and she stayed? That she whispered the truth in my ear and unlocked memories I wish had stayed buried forever? That I'm standing in this driveway at three in the morning trying not to fall apart because I just remembered killing someone?
That I'm a killer?
"Valentina." Zay's voice cuts through the spiral. "Look at me."
I can't. If I look at him, he'll see it. He'll see what I did written on my face, in my eyes, in the way I can't stop my hands from shaking. He'll know I'm a monster.
Another wave of nausea hits. My stomach lurches violently. I turn, barely make it to the grass before I'm retching, heaving up nothing because there's nothing left inside me. I haven't eaten since—when? Yesterday morning? The day before?
Zay's hand hovers near my back, not quite touching but present. "Easy. Just breathe."
I can't breathe. Every inhale brings more images. Marcus backing me into the alley. His hand on my throat—not squeezing but threatening, making it clear he could if he wanted to. His voice in my ear saying things that made my skin crawl, things about what he wanted to do to me, what Xavier couldn't stop him from doing.
Then the pipe. Cold metal. Heavy. My fingers closing around it because there was nothing else, no other weapon, no other way out.
The swing. Desperate. Terrified. Purely reactive.
The sound. Oh God, the sound. Wet and final. The kind of sound you can't unhear.
His eyes widening. Surprise. Then nothing. Just empty.
