This brings everything together for us.

It might not be ending the way we’d wanted it to—with some brilliant coup against Maxwell and Ophelia—but it’s ending. It’s a reprieve of sorts. Five months left until we get Victor’s money. Just five months. We can do that, can’t we? Even if we have to flee the area temporarily—not an ideal situation but a possibility—we can last that long.

We can do this.

The boys check the hallway before ushering the girls into the elevator, and then we wait behind in the lobby while they file outside. We don’t need anyone to see us together, not today. It might be the day of the raid, but it’s also a day when Maxwell and Ophelia will be on campus and within striking distance.

After they leave, we wait an appropriate amount of time before following them at a distance, just to make sure they connect with their teachers and disappear into the hordes of identically-dressed children being shepherded down the hill toward the massive outdoor amphitheater where the graduation is taking place.

Frankly, I wouldn’t bother going to the ceremony at all if it weren’t for the raid. You don’t have to attend to get your diploma, you know. But we show up as we’re supposed to and I spot Trinity Jade glaring at me from the grassy area behind the stage, the way she always does.

Just as an extra fuck-you to her, I curl my arms around Victor’s neck and press our robed bodies together, taking his mouth the way a queen should always take her king’s. Possessively and without mercy. After a moment, I have to stop and pry myself away because I can feel the thick length of his erection digging at me when our bodies rub together.

“Oh, come on, your majesty,” he teases, taking my hand and giving my wedding ring a lick. “We can sneak off for a quickie, can’t we?” Only he knows that we can’t because we have no idea when the raid is going to happen exactly or how things might go beforehand. The situation today is too edgy, too up in the air.

So, instead of sneaking off to screw like rabbits the way I wish we could, we allow our teachers to guide us out from behind the stage to the sound of polite clapping, and take our seats in wooden folding chairs decorated with bows and ribbons and fresh flowers.

“It looks like a wedding, not a graduation,” Aaron murmurs, but he takes his seat beside me anyway, and we settle in for what’s likely going to be a boring and uneventful series of performances … until it just isn’t anymore.

No part of me thinks Sara Young will come with guns a’blazing into a school, so I’m guessing the raid is going to play out like one of the children’s onstage performances. Agents will come in, targets will be located, people will be arrested. Nobody expects a shootout—not even the boys. But we do, of course, have guns hidden in our cars, just in case.

Hot early summer sunshine falls across my face and I lift up a hand to shield my eyes as I glance back at the ascending seats behind us. They’re filled with women in designer gowns—I wish there were men in designer gowns, too, but Oak Valley is too stuffy and patriarchally repressed for anything as forward-thinking as that—and men in suits. It’s so … banal, so expected, reeking of untamed wealth and profane sophistication. Just looking at those people bothers me so much that I turn back around.

Since Oak River begins with preschool, we’re forced to sit here and suffer through several earnest but heartless performances from the youngest children. Ashley is a joy to watch, if only because she has big floppy chestnut curls that make me think about Aaron. After her song is over, she files down to the grass in front of us to sit on blankets with the other kids her age.

Havoc never rests, so even as we’re sitting there and watching all of this, I notice the boys’ eyes scanning the crowd, checking the shadows, listening and waiting and wondering. Oscar keeps his phone on his lap, scrolling through texts from our crew.

During a particularly painful performance from the first graders, I turn around once again to see if I can’t spot Ophelia and Maxwell in the crowd. It takes me a few minutes—especially since I’ve only ever seen Maxwell Barrasso in photos—but then I spy them near the back row.

Ophelia is the one who catches my attention first. Likely, because she bears such a striking resemblance to her son that my eyes can pick her out, even in the midst of a well-dressed bourgeois crowd.

She’s wearing a bright red dress, the color striking against her skin, but ominous, too. Like, who wears red satin to a graduation? Her dark hair is coiffed into a bun on the top of her hand, a few oil-dark strands framing her face on either side. Beside her, a man that can only be Maxwell Barrasso sits, legs crossed, hands resting on his knee. He’s got on a navy-blue suit that may or may not have pinstripes—I’m too far away to tell—that screams money and power. Add in the fancy watch, the large ring on his right hand, and the bespoke brogues on his feet and it isn’t difficult to imagine that he’s the head of a gang that makes Havoc look like small potatoes.

My gaze moves away from him, searching the crowd for more familiar faces. Hael’s mom is supposed to be here along with Cal’s grandma. The Peters—Oscar’s foster family—are also supposed to be in attendance, along with Alyssa, the little girl we saved. Nobody is here for Aaron, but it doesn’t matter because he has Kara and Ashley, me and Heather, and all the rest of the Havoc Boys.

As for myself … it’d be impossible to miss someone like Breonna Keating, the only person in that gala who isn’t wearing money like it’s going out of style. Instead, I spot her because she’s also the only figure there who’s wearing an old t-shirt under an unbuttoned suit jacket. Still, she looks professional and worldly and so much worthier of the space she takes up than anybody else in that crowd.

I’m surprised at myself for how happy I am to see that she’s actually come. I mean, when I texted her and asked, she enthusiastically agreed. I’m just so used to being disappointed by people—adults in particular—that I didn’t really let myself believe it.

With a smile fixed firmly in place, I turn back around just in time to catch the beginning of Heather and Kara’s play. It’s a short piece based on The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, complete with costumes and music. Kara and Heather are both stagehands, so they’re not actually in the performance which annoys the fuck out of me, but this school, like anywhere else, prioritizes people based on money and influence and power. Oil Tycoon Girl’s little sister is the lead, dressed in Dorothy’s gingham dress.

As their performance is coming to a close, Trinity Jade excuses herself and heads across the green, up the stairs, and into the bathroom. The boys watch her as she goes, and we exchange looks. As if a second performance is happening in the audience behind us, Ophelia also rises in a perfectly coordinated move to slip into the restroom.

“The fuck are they up to?” Vic wonders, and I can tell as his gaze scans the audience that he’s considering going up there to find out. Only, not two minutes later, Sara Young and John Constantine appear at the edge of the amphitheater, stealing two seats at the very end of the front row.

“This is certainly an unusual development,” Oscar murmurs, but then a few minutes later, Trinity and Ophelia emerge from the bathroom. Ophelia takes her seat while Trinity rejoins us; Heather and Kara file offstage with their class to sit in front of us.