Peter is sitting slumped in a room next to Leo. His son is sitting straight-backed, confrontational, while his dad is shrunken, drained of life and energy. When did he last yell at Leo? Several years ago? Peter’s dad used to fight, and Ramona at the Bearskin once told Peter that “fathers and violence are like fathers and drink—either the sons fight and drink even worse, or you don’t do it at all.” Once Peter tried to explain something similar to Leo: “I don’t believe in violence, Leo, because my dad used to hit me if I so much as spilled a bit of milk. That didn’t teach me not to spill milk, it just made me afraid of milk.” He doesn’t know if Leo understood. He doesn’t know what to say anymore. He’s called his son some terrible things this evening, but Leo doesn’t seem remotely bothered. He soaked up his parents’ scolding without blinking, and when the police ask the boy their questions his father shudders, shivering as if the windows were open. That’s the moment he realizes he’s losing his twelve-year-old son.

Leo used to pay hockey because his dad loved hockey. He never fell in love with it, but he joined the team because he liked the sense of belonging, the solidarity. Peter can see that he’s found the same things now, in a terrible place. When the police ask Leo what happened in the forest during the fight, Leo replies, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” When the police ask how his shoe and keys ended up there, the boy replies, “I was climbing trees, I might have dropped them.” The police ask if he saw anyone from the Pack fighting. “What pack?” the boy asks. The police show him a picture of Teemu Rinnius. Leo says, “I don’t know who that is. What did you say his name was?”

* * *

The boy is lost, Peter knows it. Because Peter is afraid of milk, and Leo isn’t afraid of anything.

* * *

Benji walks out of the back door of the Bearskin with the garbage, and it’s his hands that catch Ana. As he picks up both her and her father, she starts to cry. She breaks in all directions at the same time. Benji hugs her, she buries her face against his chest, and he pats her hair.

She says nothing about how used she is to carrying her dad. Benji says nothing about never having the chance to carry his.

“Why does everyone drink so much?” Ana sobs instead.

“Because it makes everything quiet,” Benji replies honestly.

“What?”

“All the crap you can’t stop thinking about.”

Ana slowly lets go of Benji and runs her fingers through her dad’s hair as his head bobs in time with his snoring. She says, so quietly that it’s almost a song, “It must be terrible to only be able to bear to feel things when you’re drunk.”

Benji picks the stocky hunter up from the ground, draping one of his arms around his own neck. “Better than nothing, I suppose . . .”

Then he half carries, half drags Ana’s dad home, while she walks alongside and eventually plucks up the courage to ask, “Do you hate Maya?”

“No,” Benji replies.

He doesn’t play stupid, he understands the question, and Ana falls in love with him for that. She clarifies: “I don’t mean, do you hate her for being raped. I mean . . . do you hate her for existing? If she hadn’t been there that night . . . you’d still have everything, your best friend, your team . . . your life was perfect. You had everything. And now—”

Benji replies in a neutral tone of voice, “I ought to hate Kevin if I was going to hate anyone.”

“So do you?”

“No.”

“Who do you hate, then?” Ana asks, but she knows.

Benji hates his own reflection. So does Ana. Because they should have been there. They should have stopped it. Things shouldn’t have gone completely to hell for their friends. It should always have been Ana and Benji. Because they aren’t the kind of people who get happy endings.

* * *

It’s hard to blame Ana, precisely for that reason. Everyone has moments when her skin’s longing for someone else’s touch becomes unbearable.

* * *

They’re at her home. Benji has just laid her dad on his bed and has helped her empty the kitchen of bottles, and it’s impossible to get angry with a sixteen-year-old girl for the fact that her feelings get too much for her brain to be able to deal with.

Benji touches her shoulder, very briefly, and says, almost inaudibly, “We mustn’t end up like our dads.”

He walks toward the door, and Ana runs after him, grabs his arms, and presses her body against his. Her tongue touches his lips, she takes his hand and leads it under her shirt. She doesn’t know what she’ll hate him for most afterward: the fact that he didn’t want her or that he was so gentle when he let her know.

Benji doesn’t push her away; he could have thrown a grown man across the kitchen, but he barely touches her as he slips away. The look in his eyes isn’t angry, it’s sympathetic, and, oh, how she’s going to hate him for that. That he didn’t even let her feel that she was being rejected, only that he felt sorry for her.

“Sorry. But you don’t want . . . this isn’t what you want, Ana . . . ,” Benji whispers.

He closes the front door silently behind him when he leaves. Ana sits on the floor, racked with tears. She calls Maya. Her friend answers on the tenth ring.

“Aaaaana? What the hell? Go to hell your stupid wine is finished just so you know! You didn’t come! You said you were coming to the island, and you didn’t come!”

Ana drops everything when she realizes that Maya is drunk. She ends the call and rushes out of the house.

* * *

It’s incredibly hard to blame her for what is about to happen. But also very, very easy.

* * *

Politics is difficult to understand. Perhaps no one does, not completely. We rarely know why a society’s bureaucracy works the way it does, because it’s impossible to charge anyone with corruption when everything could just as easily be blamed on incompetence. A telephone call is made to a police station, a police officer and a woman from an official body go into another room. Kira is furious and up for a fight, but when the police officer comes back, she is informed that Leo is free to go home. “Considering the boy’s age.” Kira yells that that’s precisely what she’s been shouting for more than an hour, but then she realizes that that’s exactly what they want. They’re going to make out that it was her, the lawyer, who managed to persuade them. But she can hear that it isn’t true. Someone made a phone call.

When Kira, Peter, and Leo leave the police station, Peter sees a car he recognizes. He tells Kira to go on ahead of him with Leo. Kira tries to understand what that means but plays dumb. Peter waits until his wife and son are out of sight before he walks over to the black car. He taps on the window, and the man dressed in a black suit opens the door.

“Hello, Peter. What a surprise to bump into you,” the politician says.

Peter is taken aback that someone could lie so naturally. “My son has been questioned by the police about a load of hooligans fighting, but suddenly they ran out of questions. You wouldn’t happen to know anything about that, I suppose?” Peter snaps.

He can’t hide his feelings, not the anger or the worry or his shortcomings as a parent. Richard Theo silently despises him for that. “Of course not,” he says amiably.

“Let me guess: you’ve got a lot of friends?” Peter demands angrily.

Richard Theo wipes his saliva from the sleeve of his jacket. “You’ve got friends, too, Peter. You’ll soon be told the time and location of the press conference at which the factory’s new owner will be presented. There’ll be politicians there, representatives of the local business community, important people from around the district. As your friend, I’d appreciate it if you were there, too.”

“And that’s where I have to speak out against the Pack?”

Richard Theo pretends to be horrified. “You’re going to speak out against violence, Peter. Violence that your own son seems to be getting dragged into!”

Peter feels as though he’s suffocating. “Why are you so keen to take on the Pack?”

Theo replies, “Because

they rule with the help of violence. A democracy can’t allow that. Anyone who becomes powerful because they’ve physically fought their way to the top needs to be opposed. You can always be absolutely certain of one thing when it comes to power, Peter: no one who gets their hands on it ever lets go of it voluntarily.”

Peter hates the sound of his own voice when he asks, “And what do I gain from that?”

“You? You get control of the club. You get to spend the sponsor’s money how you like. They’ll even let you handpick a board member!”

“A board member?”

“Whoever you like.”

Peter glances down at his shoes. Then after a while he whispers, “Okay.”

He will soon be standing there at that press conference. Saying everything that needs to be said. No way back. It’s him against the Pack now.

* * *

Richard Theo drives away without feeling evil, merely pragmatic. A man like Teemu Rinnius can affect the way people vote in elections. Theo needs to give him something in exchange. The only thing Teemu cares about is his standing area in the rink. Richard Theo can’t give that back to him unless it’s been taken away from him first.

* * *