My mouth twitches in bemusement.

“We have some ideas,” Cal tells me, all cryptic and shit. If I ask though, he’ll tell me. I know he will. The boys will never make the mistake of lying to me ever again. “What do you want me to do with her?”

I hand Cal the rest of my cigarette and my half-drunk cup of black coffee.

Without slippers, it’s cold as fuck out here, but I step off the porch and move halfway across the grass. We’re going to be the scandal of the neighborhood come the next neighborhood watch meeting. Aaron worked for years to keep this place classy, and the boys and I have dragged the southside over here to ruin it all.

“Why are you here? Why on earth would you ever think a pig-ass cop would come crawling at the feet of these boys?” I cock my head to one side as I study Pam’s blond hair. It used to be the same shade as my own, but she dyes it now. It’s a strange brassy-yellow color, overprocessed and dry. Maybe she couldn’t wiggle her way into one of her fancy friend’s hairstylists this month? Sometimes, when that happens, she remembers that she was the whore of Prescott High, heads over to the Winco on Olympic and buys a package of bleach for five bucks. “Go home. Get your shit together. Don’t wait around for Neil. Move somewhere tropical. You’re only thirty-four years old. Act like it.”

My mother stares back at me like I’ve stabbed her in the heart, scowling as fiercely as I’ve ever seen. That’s when I recognize it. She hates me. Really and truly and utterly hates me. Maybe she hated Penelope, too, blamed her for taking away her youth? Sure, she snagged the rich, older, married guy that would later become my dad, but was getting pregnant at sixteen really something she wanted?

Pretty sure all Pam ever wanted was to be free.

“Where is Neil?” she whispers one last time. Her 1994 Oldsmobile sits behind her, rusted out and looking like shit. It suits her, that car. Her clothes look ridiculous, like a doll dressed in the wrong outfit. I wonder if that’s how I’ll look next weekend, when I wear a designer dress to a fucking art gallery filled with millionaire and billionaire pedophiles.

“If I knew that, I certainly wouldn’t be telling you,” I inform her, thankful that Hael and Aaron are distracting the girls. If Heather saw our mom here, things would get a lot harder. I’m certain that if Pam sees the way I look at my little sister, she’ll know how important she is to me and try to take her.

I can’t let that happen.

“You know what,” Pam says, getting in my face in just such a way that Callum appears beside her, almost by magic. He stops just shy of touching her, but she can sense what almost just happened and moves back. “You brought this on yourself,” she hisses, backing up. “Remember that.”

Pamela climbs into her car and drives away in a cloud of exhaust.

I watch her go as Cal passes the coffee back to me; he’s already finished the cigarette.

“Do you think Ophelia would contact her?” I ask, because I’ve got a bad feeling about all of this. Havoc has a lot of balls up in the air. I remember once reading a quote from Nora Roberts, some reply to a reader who asked how she keeps it all together, her writing and her family. She said that some balls are made of glass and some of plastic; you have to decide which ones to drop and when.

I need to make sure I remember that.

“Maybe,” Cal agrees, looking from the street to my face. His blond hair, the bit that shows from beneath his hood, is gold in the morning sunlight. “But that’s okay. It won’t change anything.”

He steps toward me, pulling me into his arms. I love the way his smell—like talc and aftershave—sweeps over me and makes me dizzy. I’m drowning in his hoodie. When I nuzzle into it and accidentally spill coffee all down the front of him, he doesn’t seem to mind.

We’re twisted fate, me and Cal.

He recognizes that long before I ever do.

“Shall we?” he asks, holding out his hand. There’s a scar between his thumb and forefinger that reminds me of a heart. And I like that. I like that his ruined flesh can show me something pretty. I smile and offer my hand out, letting him lead me back inside.

“Oh, we’re holding hands now?” Victor asks, cigarette dangling out of his mouth as he sits at the dining room table and polishes a pair of men’s shoes. Barker Blacks, the same ones he wore to the wedding; they have metal skulls on top that suit Havoc’s aesthetic. Also, they’re expensive as fuck. They should go over well at the shitty gala. “How very sweet.”

“Sickeningly,” Oscar agrees, his long finger scrolling on his iPad. He doesn’t bother to look up at me, as if he didn’t don a mask and nut inside of me like everyone else here.

“What’s wrong with holding hands?” Cal asks innocently enough, but with a bit of an edge that finally drags Oscar’s attention up from his iPad and over to his friend’s face. They stare at each other for so long that I’m damn near certain they must be telepathically communicating. “It grounds me, Oscar. It makes me feel human. You should try it sometime.”

Oscar adjusts his silver gaze from Callum’s face to mine. The way he looks at me, it’s either a promise to kill me or fuck me. Since I’m pretty sure I’m in his good graces, I’m guessing it’s the latter.

“What did Pamela want?” he asks, and I sigh. I guess that’s it. We’re not going to talk about the orgy. We’ll just leave it in the dark and the shadows and the smoke like everything else.

“She thinks I stole her man,” I deadpan as Cal lifts my knuckles to his pink lips and brushes a kiss against them that has me shivering. The dark chuckle he lets out in response reminds me of last night, and heat rushes to my core, making me shift in discomfort.

“That makes perfect sense,” Vic agrees sarcastically, cursing as the cigarette drops hot ash onto his crotch. He flicks at it with his fingers as he pulls the smoke from his lips with the other hand. Aaron and Hael choose that moment to make their appearance, coming down the stairs together. The girls’ laughter can be heard echoing from the upstairs bedroom.

“Can you please not smoke in my house?” Aaron says, and I see that we’re already back to normal. Yesterday, he told me fuck it, and let us both chain-smoke right here at this table. But maybe it’s different when Victor does it?

It’s like … he never went missing. Like I wasn’t stabbed. Like Kali isn’t dead. Like they didn’t all share me last night and sleep in the same room.

I guess that’s just how it is when you’re in a motherfucking gang. This is our version of normal, recovering from knife wounds and broken legs and heartbreak.

Oh, and murder.

Or a lack of courage to commit it.

“What makes perfect sense?” Hael asks, turning on “I Like It” by, once again, Cardi B. I’m guessing he’s taking inspiration from last night’s playlist. He doesn’t like hip-hop anymore than I do. Shit, he’s a rock ‘n’ roll sort of guy. I snort when I remember him playing Pat Benatar’s “Hit Me With Your Best Shot”.

“Bernadette, stealing her mother’s husband,” Victor says, smashing his cigarette into the ashtray on the table and turning his attention over to me. As soon as our gazes meet, I can tell that he, at least, remembers everything from last night. “It’s what all little girls aspire to, the attentions of a pedophile.”