“Did you see what I did to your house?” I ask him and he nods, almost eagerly, like he thinks that admitting to this will please me. “Did it scare you?” He nods again, and I smile, standing up and moving back to stand next to Aaron again.

Oscar doesn’t ask me any questions, just steps forward and points his revolver at Eric again.

“No, please!” Eric screams, his voice shattering the still air.

Even though I’m expecting it, even though I want it, I still jump when Oscar pulls the trigger.

Two years earlier …

Oscar Montauk

It’s not as if I enjoy doing violent things. No, it’s that violent things are necessary. You can’t create order without a little chaos. You can’t stir Havoc without a little pain.

Bernadette is sitting at a café across the street, a black coffee in front of her, blond hair hanging around her face. She doesn’t want to go to school today.

Because of us.

I put my elbow on the table and rest my chin in my hand, watching her. She probably thinks that only happens now, her being under the eyes of Havoc. But that’s not the case at all. The five of us were as fucked-up as children as we are now. We’ve always watched Bernadette Blackbird.

At first, we thought of her as a lost, little bird, someone that needed protecting because they were too weak and too soft to defend themselves. Life proved to us that we couldn’t save her, no matter how hard we tried. We couldn’t save her from her abusive mother, or her pedophile stepfather.

All of that because we didn’t have the power.

We do now. And the reason we have that power is because of the violence.

“Anything new to report?” Hael asks, flopping into the chair across from me. When he looks at Bernadette, I can see it in his eyes. He’s in love with her, but in a different way than I am. The love I have for her hurts. It stings. I grit my teeth against the sensation while Hael isn’t looking, but by the time he turns back to me, the emotion is gone. I keep it locked away in a silver chest inside my heart, and I always make sure to toss away the key.

I smile.

“Nothing. She hasn’t touched her coffee or checked her phone.”

Hael nods and sighs. He doesn’t like this plan, but there isn’t much more we can do. We watch Bernadette, but Bernadette will not stop watching us. There’s no goddamn place for her here. Like I said, Havoc is violence. Violence is not fun. I just want Bernadette to leave.

She doesn’t seem to be going anywhere, unfortunately. And I really hate doing this under the guise of helping Kali Rose-Kennedy. She’s an opportunist and a silver-tongued liar with an inferiority complex; I’d never hurt Bernadette just to please her, regardless of her calling Havoc.

Above all, Havoc means two things: loyalty and family.

It doesn’t feel like we’re being very loyal to Bernadette right now.

“Shit, I hate this,” Hael says, chewing at his lip for a moment. He shakes his head again, but he does nothing to change her fate. None of us do. Hael knows he has a mother who lives inside her own head, a murderer for a father, and very poor prospects for the future if he doesn’t help Havoc build something better. We could all very easily get stuck living our parents’ lives on repeat—and we could doom Bernadette along with us.

“If it weren’t difficult, it wouldn’t be the right thing to do,” I say, shoving up from my seat and heading down the sidewalk toward Prescott High. If Bernadette doesn’t show up today, we’ll have to go and find her tomorrow, drag her from her cozy bed, make her fear the only people in the world she shouldn’t have to be afraid of.

I curse under my breath, exhaling sharply and then reaching down to fix the cufflinks on my jacket.

I tell myself not to look back at her, but I do anyway. Our eyes meet and something inside of me shifts and breaks; lava appears in those cracks, scalding and dangerous. Bernadette lifts her coffee to her lips and drinks, watching me like I said she would be, like always.

For two years, I regret that moment because that’s the moment I could’ve put a stop to it.

And I don’t mean by being nicer to Bernadette; I mean by becoming her worst nightmare.

Then she could have left, then she could have avoided all of this.

She could’ve missed me, shooting her would-be rapists in the head. It still had to be done—after all, they’d touched her in ways that only I or one of the other Havoc Boys should touch her—but I wouldn’t have ever told her about it. She wouldn’t have had to see.

Our eyes meet over the blood-stained floor, and I have to wonder why, after they all treated her so badly, she lets them touch her, kiss her, fuck her. Victor, especially. He’s the worst of all, the one who nailed her coffin shut by bringing her into Havoc. She should spit in his face, not suck his dick.

I lower the weapon.

“Bernie,” Aaron whispers, holding her in the way I wish I could. I watch him tuck her close, and my fingers twitch on the revolver. I would never hurt Aaron, but hell if I don’t want him to back off of her a bit. “Do you want to go home now?”

“I’ll go home,” she says, almost absentmindedly. She’s clearly still struggling with all of this, despite her bravado. Vic nods, like this is the acceptable answer, and sends Callum back to Aaron’s house with them.

My eyes drift back down to the pair of bodies. The world is a safer place today, even if the cost was high. I put the gun back in the holster under my jacket.

“Since you fucked-up with the video of Neil and Pen, you can clean this mess,” Victor tells me, and I just lift my gaze to stare at him. He stares right back, like I need a reminder that I messed that up, too.

“Yes, boss,” I tell him, grabbing the edge of one of the tarps and helping Hael roll up the bodies. Victor knows I won’t argue with his orders … not much anyway. Any well-functioning organization needs a leader, and we both know that’s not my thing.

Despite outward appearances, Victor has a much, much longer fuse than I do.

“Bernadette,” he calls out, just before she disappears out of view down the stairs. “Don’t go home anymore, okay? You and Heather stay with Aaron now.” She pauses for a long moment, and even from here, it’s impossible to miss how much she wants that to be true.

She takes out a wrinkled envelope from the pocket of her leather jacket, unfolds it against the side of the newel post at the top of the stairs, and then uses a tube of red lipstick to make a slash across it.

I don’t have to see the paper up close to know that it’s her list.

You’re welcome, Bernadette, I think, hiding my smile as I bend down and start the laborious task of scrubbing up blood.

November seventeenth, Now …

Bernadette Blackbird

I sit up, shrouded in darkness, my face covered by something. For a minute there, I start to panic, but then I remember that Cal gave me his hoodie in the Bronco on the way home.

“Pretend it’s me, holding you so tight you can’t breathe,” he’d whispered, and even though that statement should’ve come across as creepy, it didn’t. Not at all. Sitting up now, I push the hood of the sweatshirt back from my face and exhale sharply.