Not me or any of my other beautifully tortured Havoc Boys—or my blood-drenched bride.

I’m going to give them all what they should’ve had all along: stability, security, trust, honesty, love. All of those things and more. More, more, more. Mine, mine, mine.

My mother holds the gun on Heather and orders her to stand up.

“If you upset me again—even one more time—I will shoot you in the leg. Do you understand what a gunshot feels like, Heather?” Heather is shaking her head and sobbing now, her bravery stripped away somewhere between my leaving to fight off the encroaching GMP soldiers and now. None of that matters to Ophelia. There’s only one person she ever cared about and that’s herself. She claimed to love me, in some, sick, twisted, perverted way. But it was never real. I know what real love feels and looks like. “A gunshot is like hot fire, like wicked teeth. It burns and it aches, and you’ll never be able to forget the bite.”

I’ve finally reached the fallen log, a big one, covered in a blanket of moss and more of those strange brown mushrooms. If I didn’t know any better, I might think we’d just stumbled into another world. A world of dark faeries and puckish demons.

“Now, come along.” Ophelia lowers the gun just as several men appear in the trees ahead of her. She seems a bit surprised that they’re there, but I’m not.

“Where’s Victor Channing?” one of them asks, but Ophelia just shakes her head and lets out a long, aristocratic sigh.

“I have no idea,” she drawls, gesturing randomly in the direction we started. We must be getting near the edge of Oak Valley Property, where that massive stone wall with its iron top sits, guarding the peasantry away from such a royal estate. If I were in a different situation, I’d scowl and spit. Instead, I watch. I wait. I cannot fuck this up.

Heather swipes blood from her lip and keeps her head down, letting out a small shout of surprise when one of the men grabs her by the arm.

“This is the little sister?” the same man asks while the other two scan the woods with shrewd, battle-hardened eyes.

“This is Bernadette Blackbird’s sister, yes,” Ophelia confirms, and even though she can’t see it, I can. I know what’s going to happen.

Without hesitation, the man lifts his gun to Heather’s head as she screams.

“What are you doing?” Ophelia bites out, alarm coloring her voice. “I need her.”

“And Maxwell needs retribution for James,” the man replies coolly, and those are the last words that ever leave his mouth.

Rising up from behind the tree, I take aim at the gunman’s head and fire. He drops like a boneless sack as Heather tears away from him and starts running. Good girl. Before the other two men can react, I’m shooting at them, too, and there’s blood running thick and hot across the mossy ground.

Ophelia, intelligent monster that she’s always been, snatches up one of the guns and takes off, ducking into the thicket of trees as I turn to go after Heather instead.

It doesn’t matter: I’ll catch Ophelia eventually anyway.

I dart after Heather, easily catching up to her as she stumbles and flees blindly through the trees. When I reach for her arm, she shrieks and spins at me with her fists and legs flailing, trying to fight, to escape, to be as brave as her sister.

“Shh, little girl,” I whisper, cupping the side of her face with a big hand. As soon as she sees me, her small body collapses, and I gather her into my arms, holding her close as she weeps. “It’s alright, Heather, I’ve got you. I’ve got you.”

I stroke her back in small circles, even as I start walking again.

There’s a lot of blood—some of it on Heather, most of it on me—but there isn’t much to be done about it right now. So I don’t try. I just pet and stroke and calm the child who, by my intense and indestructible bond to Bernadette, is now my daughter. God help her future dates. A small smile lights on my mouth, but it doesn’t last long. Too much urgent business to deal with.

“Can you do something for me?” I ask, adjusting her so that we can look at each other while I talk.

“What?” she asks, face and voice hard like a certain someone I’m all too familiar with. A lesser child would be limp like a rag doll, passed out or broken, crying or screaming. But not this one. Not my child.

“If I put you somewhere and tell you to be very, very quiet, to plug your ears and close your eyes, can you do that for me?”

It takes Heather a moment to answer, but she finally nods, and we continue on toward the edge of the woods, where I can faintly see sunlight trickling into the darkness of the forest. I find a tree with a deep, hollow base and a cluster of verdant ferns around its trunk, and I nestle in the girl to wait.

As I’m pulling away, she stops me by throwing her arms around my neck and giving me a squeeze.

“Thank you for saving me,” she whispers, and I give her a small kiss on the top of her head in return.

“You owe me no thanks for that,” I reply honestly, standing up and turning to go.

“Vic?” Heather calls out, and I pause, glancing over my shoulder with a brow quirked. I’m sure I look insane, dressed in a jacket and tie and covered in blood, but Heather doesn’t bat an eye at any of it. “I guess … I ship you and Bernie now.”

I have to blink a few times to truly process that.

“Or, well, I ship her and you and Aaron and … everybody, I guess.”

Well, fuck me, I did not see that one coming.

“You’ll always be safe with me,” I tell her, and I mean it. “I’ll be back soon.”

She nods and nestles into the ferns as I take off running, finding the stone wall and then moving along it until I reach the gate.

Ophelia thought she was being clever, sticking to the shadows, slipping off her shoes, trying for a quiet, desperate sulk to reach this very destination.

But when she gets there, I’m waiting for her.

“Hello Mother,” I say as she makes a run for the gate from the edge of the woods. The gate is still open, and even if I can hear sirens in the distance, it doesn’t matter. They’re not going to arrive in time to offer her help of any sort.

“Victor,” Ophelia breathes, turning and then immediately lifting her weapon to shoot at me.

But it’s what I suspected.

I move back into the woods as she fires, using the trunks for cover as I make my way closer and closer, weaving in and out of the trees until my mother is pulling the trigger and no more shots are coming out. She drops the gun and turns on her heel, running for the gate, fleeing in that red satin dress that’s a blight against the green and brown of the natural landscape.

It only takes me a second to catch up to her.

Kicking out with my right leg, I knock Ophelia to her knees in the gravel road just outside the school. It leads back up toward the paved road that passes by the front entrance and then curves back into town, straight into Oak Park.

But here, right now, it’s just me and my mother.

She struggles to find her feet, the red satin gown twisting around her ankles as she gets up and keeps running. I just kick her again and watch dispassionately as she falls over, her hands bruised and bleeding now, flecked with tiny bits of gravel.

Eventually, Ophelia gets the idea and turns over so that she can look up and see me lording over her. There’s no pleasure in this for me, towering over the woman who gave birth to me. But with the flood of my anger came the pain of those old memories, her inappropriate touches and kisses, her gifting of me to my ‘uncles’ at her fancy parties.