We will find Callum.

We will win this city.

We will not let them win.

My arms twine around Victor’s neck as he drives into me, hands cupping my ass, hips driving forward until he hits the end of me, and I cry out. He smells like that fancy peach soap from France that I jacked out of the glitzy Oak Park boutique, and his skin is vibrant and hot from the spray of the shower. I dig my nails into his muscles, absorbing his strength through my fingertips, stealing his essence like a dark witch with a pointed hat, a cottage in the woods, and nails tipped with poison.

Vic comes when I tell him to, whispering horrible things in his ear that cause him to shudder and grip me like he’s falling. This time, it’s my turn to catch him. And I do. And I’m okay with that.

I do not see Kali’s ghost.

I don’t think I ever will again.

No, I know that I won’t.

Because I’m done letting other people get in my head. I’m done consenting to the act of feeling inferior.

Fuck all of that.

I am queen of Havoc, and we are just getting started.

“Do you think the GMP took Cal with them when they left?” I ask Victor, sitting at a stool in the kitchen in the dark and waiting for the other boys to come back. It’s just after six in the evening, and they’re still not here.

Our crew—what’s left of it anyway—is crawling the city, sticking to shadows but keeping an eye on the comings and goings of the cops and the GMP.

Vic puts his palms on the counter and looks at me across the surface of it. Every once in a while, there’s a knock at one of the doors and a crew member waiting. Victor speaks to them in low, hushed tones, and then returns back to the counter.

So far, no further activity from the GMP.

They’d have to be stupid to come here right now, with all of those fucking cops outside. Not that a gang like the GMP cares about the police, but with the VGTF involved, that means FBI. That means media coverage.

In a day and age where corruption runs so rampant that it taints every aspect of daily life, attention is the true nightmare of the underground. Shine a light on something and see the people rise.

I take a bite of a burnt pancake, frowning at the taste of ash on my tongue. Victor is not nearly as good in the kitchen as Hael or Aaron. Shit, he’s almost as bad as I am.

“Tastes like shit, huh?” he asks, sighing as he flicks the stack of black pancakes with an inked finger. Clearly, he’s avoiding answering my question. Vic grabs the pack of cigarettes from the counter and lights one up, holding it between his lips as he watches me with a guarded look in his dark eyes. It’s like, as open as we were with each other upstairs, we’ve both buttoned-down and closed ourselves off.

This, this is a waiting game.

We need to see if the other boys come back from the station, and then we need to find Callum—before the feds do. Or the GMP. That is, if they don’t have him already.

“If the GMP took Callum,” I begin, watching as Vic pulls his borrowed phone close (this one’s from a member of our crew) and taps an app for a food delivery service. It reminds me of the night we spent together after he gave me a much-needed pep talk in that infamous closet of his. We’re so similar, me and Vic. I kept pretending like I don’t understand him and his motivations, but in reality, it’s just because I was too stubborn—or too afraid—to understand myself. “Then we’d know, right? I mean, they’d try to contact us somehow to hold that over our heads?”

Vic gives me a long, steady look that scares the shit out of me. And the reason it does that is because if I were to give somebody else that look, I’d be saying one thing and one thing only: I’m sorry.

I grit my teeth.

“It’s what you suggested before, when Aaron—”

“It’s what I thought happened to Aaron when Ophelia was just a conniving bitch with the Charter Crew as her pets. But the GMP …” Victor trails off and closes his eyes for a moment, swiping his hand over his face.

I just sit there and stare at him, and then I grab a cigarette from the same pack and gesture at him for a light. He flicks the flame on the lighter as he stares back at me, the orange glow highlighting the masculine lines of his face. Everything about Victor Channing screams primal, male, terrifying.

I keep my eyes on his until the cherry of my cigarette crackles with heat.

“I ordered pizza,” Vic tells me, and I can feel his eyes on me even when I look away.

We both pause at the sound of a key in a lock and exchange looks. If someone is here, and none of our crew bothered to inform us that someone was on the way …

That can mean only one thing: Havoc.

But which letter? Which motherfucking letter?

I stand up from the stool, heart pumping so furiously that if I were to nick my carotid the way we did Danny’s … this entire room would be bathed in blood.

The front door opens, and Oscar slips in, letting it swing shut behind him. It takes me a second to recognize that it’s him since he’s no longer wearing his suit. I imagine that, like with me and Vic, the cops took his clothes.

He reaches back and flicks the deadbolt. And then, when he turns his gray eyes over to me, I swear that his attention cuts through the shadows like a ghost on a haunt. Delving into me. Owning me. Possessing me.

My breath catches, and I have to lean back and curl my fingers around the edge of the countertop, just to stay standing upright.

“Shit, they give you the nth degree, too?” Vic asks, and Oscar turns his head very slowly to look at our boss. My husband. His longtime friend. So many fucking things. My eyes rake over Oscar’s body, taking in the long, lean lines of him, the myriad tattoos showing on his exposed arms, above the scooped neck of the white wifebeater he’s wearing. The sweats he’s got on—they look like they might be part of a Prescott gym uniform—sagging so low that I can see a band of ink between his lower belly and his waistband.

“They know a lot of things,” Oscar says, turning back to me and moving very, very slowly down the length of the living room toward the kitchen. As he goes, he grabs a half-empty pack of cigarettes and a light from the top of a shelf, flicking the wheel and firing up the end of one. By the time he gets to me, he’s pulling in a long drag and then exhaling pretty white smoke into the darkness surrounding me.

He taints it, too, Oscar does. He taints it fuckin’ filthy, and I love everything about that, about the way he poisons the air, the way his stare is venom and his heart ice, his trauma so deep it could make canyons in his soul. That’s what I like, all of it.

“But not enough to keep me,” Oscar finishes finally, tossing the pack of smokes onto the counter and then removing the cigarette from his sharp and dangerous mouth with two fingers. He stares down at me, and I feel like I can hear it, the pounding of his heart. His signature cinnamon smell grabs me by the throat, pun intended. “We have to make some moves—and quick.”

“Do you know where Callum is?” I ask, and Oscar goes very still, like a vampire who’s forgotten what it feels like to breathe. That’s a scary thing to witness, watching someone turn into a statue of ink and blood and bullshit.

“No,” Oscar breathes darkly, and Vic sighs, reaching out to take the smoke from Oscar’s fingers. As if this is one of Callum’s choreographed dances, Oscar’s hands find their way to my hips. In an instant, his breath is stirring my hair and my eyes are closing of their own accord. “The last I saw of him, he was outside the school, chasing someone.”