“I say we retaliate hard-and-fast—in the way we do best.” I wet my lips, thinking about all the things I suffered at the hands of the ones I loved the most. “Havoc’s specialty is inflicting pain without leaving any marks. When you locked me in that closet”—and here Vic at least has the common decency to cringe—“you tore me apart in ways that hurt to the very core of my soul. And yet, there was no evidence of it. Nobody would ever know by looking at me who put the darkness in my gaze and the vengeance in my smile, right?”

“Little poet princess,” Vic grumbles, giving my neck a slight squeeze before he drops his hands to his sides. “Go on.”

“We do the same here and now. We retaliate but in ways that make it looks like we’re not doing anything at all. Starting with Mason Miller.” I exhale as I lay my palms flat against Vic’s chest, the diamond ring on my finger catching a stray bit of sunlight from the leaky skylight above my head. “Let me talk to Stacey’s girls. They deserve to know they’re under our protection—whether they agree to this plan or not.”

Vic nods, watching as my hands creep up his chest and curl around his shoulders.

“That works for me, provided you meet with them someplace secure.” His jaw works a bit as his dark eyes sweep me. “And for what it’s worth: I’m sorry, Bernadette.”

“Don’t do that to me,” I groan, trying to pull away and finding myself captured in his orbit, like always. He has but to snap his fingers and command my heart; I’m a soldier for him in so many ways. The only thing that makes that fact bearable is that I know the reverse is true: Victor Channing has always been mine.

“Don’t do what?” he asks, sliding an arm around my waist and bringing my body close. “Apologize? Why? Are you allergic to feelings, Mrs. Channing? If I fuck up, I say sorry. Anybody who lacks the ability to do that should get their head checked. Being wrong isn’t the end of the world; we all make mistakes.”

“And this apology is for what, exactly?” I ask as his eyes soften in just such a way that I feel my heart breaking all over again. He has no right to show me his vulnerable side and make me love him even more. No right.

“For handling the Trinity thing the way I did. In the end, all I did was hurt you and it didn’t matter a goddamn bit. You were right: I should’ve let my obsession for you guide the way. I always have.” He leans down, like he might kiss me, but pauses at the last second and turns his head away. The nearness of his mouth infuriates me, and I dig my nails into the back of his head, probably making his scalp bleed. He doesn’t seem to give two fucks either way. “For once, I thought maybe I could prove my love wasn’t selfish.” Vic glances back at me, and our noses brush. It’s like, he wants to keep talking, but the magnetic pull of his mouth to mine is making it hard to keep any distance. “I’m not too proud to admit my mistakes.”

He releases me and then, much to my surprise, gets down on his fucking knees.

I just stare at him, heart thundering in the quiet space of the old house, the smell of must and long-buried memories present in every breath that I take.

“What are you doing?” I ask as Vic looks up at me, a tattooed god prostrating himself for my benefit and mine alone. I’d bet you every dollar of that inheritance that he’s never done this for another woman. Shit, I bet he’s never done this for any of the other boys either.

“I know sometimes it seems like I know exactly what I’m doing at all times, but I don’t. Despite everything, I’m just eighteen years old and I’m figuring it out as I go.” Victor blinks up at me, settling back on his heels. “I’m not too proud to admit that.” He pauses again, like he’s waiting for something from me.

“Then let’s figure it out together,” I tell him, cupping the side of his face and loving the way his eyes close almost involuntarily, like my touch is a drug, one that he’d happily OD on like I’m sure a dozen former Prescott residents have before in this very house. It’s not a pretty metaphor, but there’s not a lot that’s pretty in our world. That is, unless, as Callum suggested, pain becomes pretty to those who have too much of it. “Don’t push me aside because your emotions are too intense, or you don’t know what to do, or you’re scared.”

Vic snorts and lowers his head. When he looks up, I can see it there in his face: that’s the truth of it. I terrify him in a way he’s never feared for anything before. I understand that emotion because I feel it, too, this almost inevitable descent into tragedy. Everything about us feels tragic, really, like one of those old fairy tales with a not so happy ending.

“The last time I was afraid like this, I was five years old. It was the day Ophelia and my father discussed who had to take care of me. The reason I was so fucking scared that day was because I was worried that it would be her, that she would take my hand and drag me away from my abusive, alcoholic father, and the nightmare of south Prescott. Because, despite all of those things, she was the worse of the two.” Victor’s lids drop over his dark eyes, like he’s carried away in thought. “I …” he starts, but then it’s like whatever he wants to say gets caught on his mouth on the way out, an ugly truth that bleeds. “Before that …”

My heart stutters and gets caught in my throat, and then I just know that I can’t stay standing anymore. I kneel down in front of him so that we’re facing each other, just two teenagers with old souls and a mountain of cards stacked against them.

But that’s the fun part, you know. Seeing the underdog pull through. That’s what I want, some proof that justice and vengeance both exist, that bad people can be punished, that good people can win—even if it’s a rare and distant sort of thing. Hope, right. The thing with feathers …

“She touched you, didn’t she?” I ask, because it’s the one thing I never expected from Vic’s past. He’s such a careful man; he hides his pain so well. He disguises it with his dominance. But he’s only just now becoming an adult, and he hasn’t left all of that childhood pain and trauma behind the way he thinks he does.

“Her …” he breathes, looking into my face with an earnest sort of expression that betrays all of that long-suffering fear. “Her friends. At the fancy parties …” He trails off and wets his lips, closing his eyes for a moment and scrubbing both hands down his face. He leaves them there for a long moment before dropping them to his lap and looking at me with an expression made of obsidian eyes and a mouth as sharp and dangerous as a knife. “This thing, this … perversion, it’s been running in Springfield for a long time. This isn’t new. None of it is.”

I sit there for a moment, fingers twitching in my lap. My head is filled with the white noise of rage. It’s something I’ve been dealing with for a long, long time. But, as Victor has warned me on multiple occasions, I need to control it and throw it at the right target at the right time.

“And then they took my baby …” he growls, and I close my eyes, my body breaking out in goose bumps. “They took my fucking baby from me.” A gasp slips from me as he wraps his arms around me and drags me into him. Somehow, I’m already anticipating the move, throwing my own arms around his neck and squeezing him like the fate of the universe depends on it.