Page 139 of The Ashes of Summer

One of Black's men fires and the round catches Vince high in the chest. The impact knocks him back and his foot misses the next step entirely, and for a fraction of a second he hangs there with his arms going, trying to find his balance.

Then gravity takes him.

His body slams off the metal staircase hard enough to rattle the whole structure and tumbles the rest of the way down, and he hits the concrete floor below with a crack that seems to go on echoing.

The warehouse falls so silent I can hear the shell casing spin across the concrete before it finally settles.

Vince never gets back up.

My attention comes back to the woman still fighting Constance's grip, and she's crying now. Actually crying. Straining toward the stairs, trying to crawl toward what's left of him.

Constance hauls her upright by the hair. "This one tried to fucking shoot me!"

The words cut through the silence. Then she looks down over the rail toward Summer.

"Do we save her?"

Summer doesn't move. Doesn't speak. She just stares up at the woman on the walkway, and I watch every trace of color drain out of her face.

The warehouse disappears around her. The women. The bodies. The blood. All of it. Because whatever she's looking at isn't a stranger.

"Oh my God."

Her voice breaks apart completely. She takes a step forward, eyes fixed on the woman struggling in Constance's grip. Then another.

And I understand, a half-second before she says it, exactly why she's looking at her like that.

"That's Brenda."

Chapter 42

The Promise I Kept

Summer

Igenuinely think I'm seeing things.

The warehouse is chaos around me. Women crying. Some screaming. Others standing frozen between the rows of stained mattresses, staring at the bodies scattered across the concrete like they still can't make any of it real. Gunpowder hangs sharp in the air over the sweat and the blood and the damp, and underneath all of it there's something else I don't want to put a name to.

And somehow, above all of it, up on the maisonette walkway with Constance's fist twisted into her hair⁠—

is Brenda.

Something cold slides through my chest.

Because of course she's here. Of course she fucking is.

Every single interaction I ever had with that woman rearranges itself in my head, all at once, into something uglier.

The dresses laid out neatly across the bed. The heels lined up beneath them. The makeup spread carefully over the vanity, brushes in a row, lipsticks stood on end like little scalpels. The lingerie waiting for me every time she came into that room.

That calm, unbothered voice.

Needs paint. And red.

At the time I told myself she was another woman surviving around Jackson. Another thing he owned, trapped in a life she hadn't chosen, doing what she had to do to stay breathing.

I was so sure of it that I used to feel sorry for her.