Victory at Prescott High (The Havoc Boys #5) - C.M. Stunich Page 0,210

pull her close and I tell her about Pam. Not all the worst parts because she isn’t quite ready for that. But I explain to her that Pam and Neil hurt Penelope, and that they’re both gone now. Both of her parents are gone.

She sits in silence for a long, long time.

“Are you mad that I waited so long to tell you?” I ask, and I wonder if she hadn’t already Googled their names and found out. We try to keep tabs on the girls’ internet activity, but like, fuck, it’s so easy for kids to find ways around that shit. She could’ve seen news stories or headlines from anywhere.

Those first few weeks after the raid, the boys kept her offline completely, until some of the buzz died down. But still … I wonder how much she really knows.

“I’m not mad,” she admits after a moment, sniffling as I hug her close and we look at Penelope’s final resting place together. “Because you were trying to keep me safe.” She looks over at me and I wonder if she knows how much I truly love her. I tell her all the time, but you can never say that sort of thing too much. I only wish I’d savored it each time Penelope said those three little words to me. I love you. “I still miss them,” she hazards after a moment. “Mom and Dad.”

“You can miss them if you want,” I tell her, giving her another squeeze. “There’s no rulebook for grief.”

So we sit there together, and she tells me all her best and favorite memories of Pam and Neil, and then she starts to cry again and I let her. I let her and I hold her, and then we say goodbye to Penelope and head home for movies and popcorn and hair-braiding that Aaron is getting better at but that Victor sucks at.

The girls attend Oak River Elementary; the boys and I build an empire; our love blossoms and amplifies and turns the entire world into a dream that I never, ever want to wake up from.

Five years later …

Vera and I stop by the same rachet ass coffee place that has no name, just a sign in the window that reads Coffee, and we take our drinks across the street to the newly created park funded by some of the inheritance money.

Shit, we meant what we said about staying here and improving the city. Already, Prescott High is thriving, lead by Breonna Keating and rife with fresh funding for structural improvements and iPads, new desks and staff members with proper degrees under their belts. There are grief counselors and tutors and after-school programs for teen mothers.

Because even if I quite literally saw my husband put bullets into the heads of five people last week during a meeting with an overzealous motorcycle club, we’re still community members, too. Really, we’re community members first and foremost: we just clean up the blood and the shit and the darkness that rolls in every now and again.

It isn’t in our nature to just sit back and relax, sip Prosecco out of fancy fluted glasses, and donate money here and there. No, we have to rule. We have to conquer. We need bloodshed and control.

And so, because there will always be an underground in every neighborhood, in every city, in every country, we hold the reins and guide the dark horse.

“Tattoo day?” Vera inquires after we finish our coffee and start walking again. I nod. Because it is. And it’s been too long. This is something that should’ve happened like, years ago.

“Tattoo day,” I confirm, glancing over at her. Her head is no longer shaved. Instead, she wears it in a glossy red wave down her back. Also, Vera only dates non-binary people and girls now. She says she’s done with men. We’ll see how long that lasts. I’d call her pansexual but really, she’s more of a pan-slut. Which, obviously, coming from me is a compliment. I don’t slut-shame.

“You sure you want to do it?” she asks me, glancing over and taking in my tatted knuckles. HAVOC stares back up at me when I follow her gaze, flexing and unflexing my fingers. In the past few years, I’ve added a few tattoos here and there. One says Penelope along the outside of my left thigh. One is a crown, inked into stark and mesmerizing detail on the back of my neck. There are others, too, more meaningless ones because not every