do it.” Victor's gaze follows me for a moment before he turns back to Mitch. “You think you can waltz into my brother's home and assault his mother and there won't be consequences? I sure hope you know what you're up to, Mitch.”
Mitch laughs, but the sound is strained. He's playing the nonchalant act, too, but he's not nearly as good at it as Vic is. In fact, that's Mitch in a nutshell, isn't it? A less good Vic. A watered-down Vic. A charlatan. A fucking copycat. Call him an inspiration, if you will, but Havoc was here first. We were here first.
Do it first or do it best, but when somebody does it first and best, well, you're fucked.
Good choice for the Charter Crew, to choose those clown masks, because that's all they are. Imitations. Shadows.
Havoc, they're OG.
And I'm one of them.
“You think we knocked this bitch out?” Mitch asks incredulously, pointing over at Hael's mother. “We found her like this.” A smirk lights his lips as I glance back to watch the interaction between him and Vic, sitting down to pull Hael's mother into my lap. “Looks like her ol' man was knocking her around a bit.”
“Fuck,” Hael growls, the pain in his voice like broken glass. It cuts me to hear it, deeper than I ever could've expected. Even after seeing the video, even after knowing they kept it from me. Shit, Bernadette, you're getting soft. Only … I don't feel soft. Instead, I feel the opposite, like something inside of me is solidifying, turning my heart to stone.
I turn my eyes back to Mitch and frown.
The Charter Crew, what a joke.
In this world of sinners and saints, there is only one authority.
Havoc.
“What goes on with our families is none of your business,” Vic says as Mitch circles him. Victor doesn't even bother to follow him with his eyes, so unconcerned by his rival that he'll show his back to him. Pretty gutsy, if you ask me.
The woman in my lap stirs, murmuring in French as she struggles to sit up. I try to soothe her, smoothing back her hair with my fingers, but she shoves me away, pushing herself into a sitting position, red hair disheveled, pretty face mottled with bruises. She looks around the mess we've made of her neighborhood before her eyes settle on Hael.
“Qu'est ce qu'il se passe?” she whispers, brown eyes widening. One of her hands comes up to tangle around a cross hanging at her throat. “Ils ont fini par venir pour moi c'est ça?” I have no idea what she's saying. There aren't exactly a lot of foreign language classes at Prescott High. We have an English as a Second Language class for Spanish-speakers, but that's about as close as we get to culture in South Prescott.
“Calme toi Maman. Ça va bien se passer,” Hael pleads, taking a step closer to her, and even though the situation sucks, and I'm royally pissed at the Havoc Boys, I have to admit that it's hot when he speaks French like that. When one of Mitch's guys pulls back the hammer on his revolver, Hael stops in his tracks, scowling and cursing under his breath. “Nique ta mère, Mitch,” he murmurs, but nobody but Hael knows what that means so the insult is lost in translation. “Let her go back in the house, and we'll deal with this like real men.”
“Real men?” Mitch asks as Kali watches me with dark eyes from across the street. I can only pray her ass gets hit by an oncoming train. If only the universe were so kind. “Real men don't play games in the dark. Where. Is. Danny? Either you take us to him now or else this shit gets real.”
“Wrong,” Vic snaps, flicking his cigarette aside and pointing at Mitch with a tattooed finger. He looks like a dark god right now, commanding an army of undead delinquents. It shouldn't make him more attractive to me, but it does. I both crave his commands and despise them, all at the same time. “Real men, as you've so eloquently put it, are as at home in the dark as they are in the daylight. If we want to play games with poor little Danny, who's to stop us? Besides, there's nothing for us to take you to. We fucked around with him and he ran off into the woods. Not our fault if he fell into a cougar's jaws.”
“Goddamn it, Victor,” Mitch snarls, but before he