“Not today,” Callum breathes against the side of my neck like he might kiss me, but stands up at the last second so he can nod at Hael instead. Cal grabs a handful of brightly colored Skittles from his pocket, spits his gum into the trash can, and then shoves the candy in his mouth. “You look happy today.”

“Well,” Hael crows, grinning so big his face looks like it might fall off. “I’m stilling riding the high of finding out that I’m not tied to Brittany fucking Burr for eighteen years.” He laughs again and then pauses when several junior girls waltz by, flipping their hair and letting their short skirts flutter in the breeze.

“Hey Harbin, we hear you narrowly escaped knocking-up a Fuller High bitch,” the first one calls, and I vaguely recognize her from Billie Charter’s circle. She’s in their crew, no doubt.

“Want to try with someone else?” one of her friends asks.

I move down the steps without even realizing I’m doing it. Hael manages to catch me around the waist and haul me back against him.

“Not right here, Blackbird. Just cool those engines for me, baby.” He holds me so close; I can feel his pelvis pressed right up against the tight leather pants stretched across my ass. It feels good, way too good for a newly married woman. Fuck me. I’m starting to wonder if Vic’s Girl and Havoc Girl are mutually exclusive. If so, then what do I do? “We’ll get ‘em, don’t you worry.” He strokes some hair behind my ear as the girls have the audacity to ‘boo’ at us from the edge of the sidewalk. “Just wait till it gets dark tonight, okay?”

Hael releases me and steps back. When I finally turn around, I see that Vic, Aaron, and Oscar have arrived.

“Let’s roll,” Victor says, eyes dark as he watches Mitch and Kali grind on each other against the hood of the Corvette. Wonder how hard it was to get the smell out of the trunk? Vic lights up a cigarette and we head down the steps as a unit.

“I was thinking,” Aaron starts as we move across the street toward our assorted vehicles. Usually, the boys like to park out back, in the spot where Hael and I first had sex in his car. But not today. We needed to be front and center so everyone could see the reality of the situation. Havoc is in charge and always will be. “This weekend, do you want to try to move your and Heather’s stuff out of your mom’s place?”

“The move is too soon,” Oscar says, wearing a black-on-black-on-black suit jacket, shirt, and tie. He looks like he’s on his way to a funeral and I don’t hate that. Not at all. “Hold off another two or three weeks. I know you’re excited about this fantasy of playing homemaker with Bernadette, but it’ll have to wait.”

“I swear to god, I only have so much patience in me, Oscar,” Aaron growls back, and Vic laughs. Of course, he does. He thinks this shit is funny. I’m afraid it’s going to tear us apart.

“Stop being a dick, Oscar,” he barks out, straddling his Harley and waiting for me to join him. “Let’s survive until the New Year and then worry about that shit; we can just buy Bernie and Heather new clothes until we get a chance to raid the duplex.” Aaron scowls at his boss, but I appreciate the concern. I know he’s being considerate in a way none of the others have thought of. Aaron knows I don’t care about my clothes; I care about Penelope’s shit, stuffed in boxes and hidden in the attic.

Victor kicks the engine to life and off we go, with the Bronco and Camaro close behind us. After a few blocks, the Bronco peels off, heading for Kara and Ashley’s school. We hook a left and Victor takes me to Heather’s school for the first time ever, waiting on the bike while I fetch my sister and get her situated in the Camaro.

Once the girls are dropped off at Jennifer Lowell’s place—safer than leaving them at Aaron’s at this point—we head for the garage. I’m pretty sure the guys don’t actually own this piece of property, not legally anyway, but I haven’t asked. That’s more Oscar’s problem than it is mine.

“Here ya go, boss,” a kid in a skeleton mask says, dropping some keys into Vic’s palm as soon as we climb off the bike. The boy then grabs a bicycle from the rack outside and takes off. It’s one of the few times I’ve seen a member of Havoc’s crew actually talk to one of us.

“What are those keys for?” I ask, but Vic just grins and gestures with his chin while the other boys pull into the driveway behind us. There’s a blacked-out SUV on the driveway, an Escalade actually. Probably stolen. Victor presses the button and unlocks the vehicle, using a rag to open the rear passenger door and revealing a half-dozen guns on the seats, along with a box of gloves. He snaps a pair on and then lifts one of the pistols up, pulling back the slide to cock it.

“The Charter Crew kept nearly a dozen of our guys locked up for the past ten days and just now let nine of them go.” Victor hands me the box of gloves, and I guess without even asking that I’m meant to put a pair on. Once I do, he hands me the gun. “Do you know how to shoot?” he asks, and I shrug.

“I’ve been to the shooting range a few times with the Thing,” I say, thinking of the way the step-thing looked me dead in the eye before pulling the trigger of his gun. He could hit the bullseye without even glancing at it. “If you piss me off too much, girl …” I shake the memory off. “Sure, yeah, I can shoot,” I correct, hefting the weapon in my hands. “What do you mean they let nine of them go?”

“One of our boys is dead,” Callum says, appearing behind me and reaching past me and Vic for the gloves. “They left him at Oscar’s place. Luckily, we found him before …” Cal pauses, like he’s reconsidering his words. “Anyone else did.”

Oscar’s entire past, his present, fuck, even his future … all mysteries to me. Where did he come from? Who is he? What does he want?

Oscar opens the door on the opposite side of the SUV, using a cloth to keep his fingerprints off the surface the way Vic did. He stares at me from the other side of the seat, yanking the gloves on like he’s performing live or something. I can’t look away. It’s an entire show, slowly dragging the black latex down each, individual finger, obscuring all that ink of his. He picks up one of the guns and examines it.

“These are fantastic,” he murmurs, nodding once before putting the pistol back on the seat. Aaron and Hael hang back slightly, smoking and talking low enough that we can’t quite hear what they’re saying. When I look back at them, I find them both staring at me.

“Why did they let any of our guys go?” I ask, truly curious. Victor glances my way and lets an evil smirk work its way across his lush mouth.

“There’s a reason I like to employ high school kids, and it’s not just because we have class together.” Vic tosses the gun on the seat and then removes his gloves, stepping away from the SUV. I’m not sure what we’re doing with it, but if there are six guns, and six of us … then it’s something awful, I’m sure. “If you kill ten high school kids, people start to pay attention. Authorities send in the big guns. It’s why the Charter Crew is such an annoying problem to deal with, too. Any other rival gang and we’d just fucking kill everyone.”

Victor Channing, the boy I’ve loved since I was eight years old, stands right there in the sunshine while I wear his wedding ring and tells me that under ‘normal circumstances’ Havoc would just murder their problems away.