My throat gets so dry that I can hardly imagine speaking another word.

I let Vic band an arm around me and pull me close, putting his lips against the top of my head.

“What do you need, wife?” he asks, and I can tell his heart is broken. For me, I’ll bet. Because I always hurt for him, too. I have since we were kids and I saw his mom stop by the school once—just once in all our years of elementary, junior, and high school combined—and dig her nails into his skin so hard that he bled.

I recognized that pain in him, when he was eight, and I was eight, and our eyes met across the dusty surface of a playground that’s already been forgotten in time.

“Do we have any girls in the county jail right now?” I ask absently.

“No,” Vic begins cautiously, his thumb brushing across my knuckles and making me shiver. “But we could find one. I bet one of Stacey’s girls would know who to contact. What do you want to do?”

I stay where I am for a moment.

I haven’t fully processed it yet.

I’m not sure that I can, not right now. Not after yesterday.

“Find out for me. And then I’ll give Pam a choice. Admit to what she did or …” I pause, working my jaw in anger for a moment. My fingers curl around Victor’s. “I guess she might find herself hanging from her sheets one morning.”

I try to pull away, but Vic tightens his hand on mine. I see Oscar stiffen at the table, like this is a dance we just danced, as if he recognizes all the moves.

“Ophelia called while you were upstairs,” Vic tells me, his mouth turning down into a frown. He wants to pursue, nail down my emotions, probably nail me … But he can’t do any of those things, so he settles for letting that feeling travel down his fingers and into my arm. “Sara Young wasn’t wrong: the GMP is coming for us.”

I stare back at him, and then shake my head.

“But. There’s a but in there somewhere.” I see Oscar watching us, but I’m having trouble meeting his eyes, so I keep my attention on Vic. Another cramp hits me like a punch to the gut, and I grimace. Victor pulls me close and parks his hands on my hips. I know what he’s thinking, a bunch of bullshit like they killed my baby or whatever alpha-hole crap goes through that thick skull of his. He keeps it carefully tucked away, but it won’t last, that feigned indifference. Eventually, we’ll be stripped down and trembling in front of one another, souls bared, hearts naked.

“She wants us to renegotiate with Trinity. If we speed up that process, and guarantee Maxwell a cut of the money, he’ll keep his men back for the time being.” Vic leans down to put his mouth near my ear. “But guess what? I saved you the trouble of deciding what to do.”

“Yeah?” I ask, rubbing my thumb across my wedding ring. I can’t look at him right now, reeking of sin and sex, looking like a goddamn demon made of carnal torture and ink. My body hurts too much to feel like this; it isn’t fair.

“Well, they already tried to have us executed, didn’t they?” Vic smiles at me, all white teeth and bullshit, just the way I like him. His purple-dark hair is smoothed back, his eyes the color of an empty grave, freshly dug and awaiting a body to fall into its shadowy hands. “And it didn’t work out so well for them. I told Ophelia to fuck off.”

I let out a sharp exhale when something catches my eye.

It’s the pamphlet for Oak River Elementary.

It’s almost time for my phone call with Heather.

“What’s going to happen to Prescott High?” I ask, looking back at Vic. I wonder where Aaron, Hael, and Cal are? After nearly losing Aaron, and coming close to the same with Cal, I’m not letting any of them get more than a hundred feet from me at any given time.

“Indefinitely closed,” Oscar says, his voice just this side of genteel. You’d almost think he was having feelings in that crazy head of his.

“What’s the district’s plan?” I ask, glancing back at Vic. “For you to get your inheritance, you need to graduate. So, what’s the deal?”

“I had an idea,” Vic says, reaching out and taking the Oak River Elementary pamphlet. He flips it over to the ad for Oak Valley Prep on the opposite side. I lift my gaze up to meet his. “We need a school; I’m allowed to withdraw money from my trust for education.”

I just stare back at him like he’s a crazy person.

“You’re fucking kidding me, right?” I say as he chuckles and pulls away, still shaking his head. “You’re not saying what I think you’re saying, are you? Our rachet asses at Oak Valley Prep? I’d probably spontaneously combust if I tried to step onto that campus as a student.”

“Desperate times call for desperate motherfucking measures,” Vic says, opening a wooden box on the peninsula and pulling out a cigar. He offers it up to me and I take it in two fingers, staring at it before looking up at him. “You know how men back in the fifties would smoke a cigar when their baby was born?” Vic asks, and I just stare back him. He frowns, and I can tell he’s upset, probably more so than I am. “Just humor me and have a smoke.”

“And Oak Valley Prep?” I reiterate, because the very idea of attending that school skeeves me out on so many levels.

“Hey, think about it,” Vic says, clenching the cigar between his teeth and grinning at me. “If we enroll, it’ll be that much easier to kill Trinity Jade.” He lights up, taking a few puffs on his cigar before handing me the lighter.

I stare down at it in my hand for a minute, but I can’t deny him that logic.

He has a point.

The safe house is right in the dirtiest, ugliest part of South Prescott. This block is, like, the southside of the southside. The air tastes like desperation and despair, and the wind brings with it the acrid scent of piss and unwashed bodies. Junkies line the stoops, slumped over and broken. The cops don’t ever come here. Or, if they do, it’s not to help anyone.

I grind my teeth slightly, my arm banded across my middle, holding a fresh hot water bottle in place. Having a miscarriage in the middle of the gang war is … impossible. Nantucket, Bernadette. You could’ve had Nantucket. Hah. But really, you can take the girl out of Prescott, but you can’t take the thirsty ho out of the girl.

I never would’ve survived there.

All of this shit, this adrenaline, these dangerous boys that smell like spice and passion, how was I supposed to walk away from this? It’s quite literally in my blood. Violence is in my blood. The need to win against an enemy that I can see, smell, and touch. More often than not, our worst enemies are intangible.

Self-doubt. Fear. Ignorance.

Aaron opens the passenger side door, holding out his recently broken hand. It’s a little early for his cast to be off, but I can understand why he took it off. Vulnerability hurts, especially if it means you might not be able to help the ones you love the most.

I take his outstretched fingers and let him help me down from the Bronco. Our bodies fall together, and I look up into his green-gold eyes, flecks of color swirling like dancers as cold winter sunshine falls across his face. The air is so crisp that even though I just got out of the warm car, my lips feel frozen and dry as they part in wonder.

How it’s possible for Aaron to look like an angel when he wears the ink of the devil, I will never be able to understand.