“All you had to do was care about me,” I tell her as she crab-walks backward, her dark hair falling out of her careful chignon and tangling around her face. I keep walking, just walking. Not running. Not menacing. Not threatening. My prey tries to drag itself away, and I just follow. I just talk. “The only thing you had to do to prevent this moment from happening was love your son more than yourself.”

“Vic, please,” Ophelia pleads, her voice so strained and different from the aristocratic drawl she’s always had, this lazy insouciance, this wicked entitlement. She’s said before that she knew I would kill her if given the chance. Well, chance meet circumstance. She really fucking crossed a line by touching Heather. “I’ve always loved you. You know that, right? I tried to show you—”

“No.” I gnash my teeth at her, and then I crouch down in front of her, meeting her stare dead-on. There’s fear in those eyes, a desperate sort of terror that she deserves but that I can’t bear to look at any longer than necessary. “You did not love me. You did not show me. You used me. You treated me like an accessory and a toy. I was for your pleasure, and the pleasure of your friends. Mother, you kidnapped Aaron. You tried to kill Bernadette. You won’t stop taking and taking and taking.”

“If you do this, you’ll never forgive yourself,” she says, watching as I reach toward her, for her. To end this. To finally fucking goddamn end this.

“If I don’t do this, I’ll never forgive myself,” I correct. “Because I’m a monster, and the only way I know how to deal with other monsters is to dance in shadows.”

And then it happens, and it’s over, and I’m back in the woods, scooping Heather into my arms.

That’s when the phone call from Hael comes in; that’s when I hear the howling.

Aaron Fadler

Ten minutes earlier …

There are seven men, including Maxwell Barrasso, on the other side of this standoff. This shouldn’t be so goddamn hard.

I end up on the upper part of the road, closer to the crossroads, with Oscar beside me. Callum slips back around the trunk of the car, shaking with adrenaline and panting hard. He stopped Maxwell from hurting Heather, but now we’re in the middle of a shoot-out and our fucking leader has just disappeared into the woods.

“We either have time or we have ammo,” Oscar remarks, reloading his weapon and taking aim at the men sheltering between the two black Maybach sedans.

“And that means, what, exactly?” Cal asks, shoving up to his feet and taking a position beside Oscar. I steady my hands, considering if I’m actually going to take the shot or not. We’ve already blown out the tires on the cars—and our enemies have retaliated in kind.

“Either we run out of ammunition or else the VGTF shows up,” Oscar muses, and I can tell that even if waiting for the feds would be the easiest option for us, it’s not the one he wants. He wants to make someone bleed.

“You mean … either they run out of ammunition,” Cal corrects, and I can taste it in his words, too. He also craves the violence. Not me. I’d so much rather just take the girls home and bundle them in blankets, hold them close, and only kill if needed to keep them safe.

Standing where I’m standing, with Hael and Bernadette all the way on the other side of the Camaro, I feel like killing is exactly what I have to do. When one of Maxwell’s men leans out, aiming in the opposite direction and likely—and falsely—assuming that he’s protected by the second car, I aim for the wide breadth of his back.

Deep breath.

Tense on the trigger.

A shot rips through the man’s body and he slumps forward and then sideways, bleeding out into the grass. This is going to be an interesting scene to explain to the feds, but it is what it is at this point. They gave us no choice; they took our child.

Not just once either.

They stole Heather … they beat the baby out of my Bernadette.

I scoot out from behind the car, even as Oscar makes a sound of protest, and the movement draws another one of Maxwell’s men out to take down what he assumes is an easy target. Oscar is able to shoot him through the forehead before anything happens to me, and I duck back behind the Eldorado’s tire.

“A little warning next time, Fadler,” he murmurs, but there’s a dark smile on his lips that wasn’t there before.

“Watch my back?” Cal asks, and then before either of us can answer, he takes off across the green. Gunshots ring out in his wake, but he’s able to disappear into the woods without being hit. That’s the thing, right? Fighting Havoc means fighting shadows. We’re not usually about big-ass firefights.

“That fucker.” Oscar’s grumbling under his breath, waiting for his next opportunity to take a shot. From the opposite end of the road, Hael and Bernie are doing the same. I both hate and love that, seeing her in the trenches with us. It’s where she was always meant to be, but also … I’d rather she were safe. Nantucket, Nantucket, Nantucket.

What is Nantucket anyway? Some snooty seaside town with good scallops? A bunch of cute buildings and rich assholes and whaling and fishing and lighthouses? That would never have suited Bernadette. This does. I put away my overprotective streak so that I can concentrate.

Callum reemerges from the trees, once again drawing fire from Maxwell’s men, and ending up on Bernie and Hael’s side instead of ours. Smart.

“Go,” Oscar tells me, his silver eyes sliding my way. “Join them.”

I wet my lips briefly, and then I take off in the opposite direction. While the men are more focused on Callum, I clear most of the ground between me and the trees before they start shooting at me.

Panting for breath and carrying my gun in both hands, I move through the woods down the incline, waiting for Oscar to open fire on one of the black sedans. As soon as he does, I run as fast as I can until I’m sliding in the dirt behind the Camaro.

“Oh, a party up in here,” Hael says with a big grin, firing his weapon several times before ducking back down behind his poor motherfucking car. I already wrecked it once which I had to apologize like a thousand times for, but now this? Both the Eldorado and the Camaro are going to need a ton of work. Again. Poor Hael.

“I’m glad you’re here,” Bernie tells me, and I can’t fight the smile that rises unbidden to my lips. Taking my place beside her, I get ready to unload on Maxwell and his men, if only to give Oscar time to join us. It’s better when we’re together. Always better.

Only, it seems that Maxwell has a different idea in mind. He and his men take off, even with the threat of our bullets at their backs, and they charge the Eldorado where Oscar is now stationed by himself.

Cal and I are hopping over the Camaro at the same time, in a move that probably looks choreographed. It’s not that—even as much as Bernie might tease us about it sometimes—it’s just that we’ve known each other for years, grew in pain and poverty together, and now we’re just … this. Dogs of war, crying Havoc, and gnashing teeth.

We move so quickly up the hill that Callum opts to grab onto one of the men rather than shoot him, knocking him down to the ground with Cal on his back. In a ruthless move, Cal whips his pistol out and fires once into the back of the downed man’s head before scrambling up after the others.