CHAPTER 31
AVA - SCREAM INTO SILENCE
The text came in at 10:43 AM.
Jack
MC brawl again. Gas station. Civilian injuries. No fatalities.
That was all it said. No elaboration. No breakdown of charges or cleanup details. Just enough to make my stomach turn and my teeth grind.
Another incident.
Another scar on a town already stitched together with broken promises and duct tape.
I tossed my phone on the counter and stared at the corkboard behind the desk. Our wall of flyers and resources. Missing persons. Safety plans. Hotline numbers. Hope, tacked up like a band-aid on a bullet wound.
Three weeks until the anniversary. Sofia’s death still felt like a fresh bruise, a wound that hadn’t closed, and it colored everything. Remi’s birthday had been last week, and we’d promised each other this year would be different. No black-hole spiral. No pretending the date didn’t hang over us like a guillotine. We’d planned a quiet evening with cake, cheap wine, maybe even laughter. A night to prove we could make room for both memory and life.
But the world didn’t care about promises like that. Not here.
Remi walked in a few minutes later, jacket half-zipped, coffee in one hand, reading glasses in the other. Her hair was still damp from a rushed shower, and she looked like she hadn’t slept in days.
“You hear about the gas station?” she asked, eyes already narrowing.
I nodded.
She didn’t say anything else. Just dropped her bag by the couch and sighed.
“It’s never going to stop, is it?” I muttered.
Remi took a long sip. “Not while the system stays the same.”
“Or while the wrong people keep getting power.”
She hummed in agreement, pulling a file from the pile and opening it without really looking. “Violence and ignorance are easier than accountability. Always has been.”
I leaned against the desk. “It’s just... this whole place. It’s like everyone’s trying to survive the wreckage of something they won’t admit is broken.”
Remi didn’t look up. “Because if they admit it’s broken, they have to admit they let it get this way.”
The weight of it pressed against us both. Almost a year since Sofia, and some days it felt like nothing had shifted. We still buried women in silence. We still patched wounds with platitudes. We still walked into fire and called it duty.
“Maybe we should move somewhere... else... less broken?”
Remi lifted an eyebrow, deadpan. “What fun would that be?”
The phone rang.
I grabbed it.
“This is Ava.”
At first, I couldn’t hear anything. Just ragged breathing. Then...
“H-He’s coming... he’s... he’s outside the door... please...”
I straightened immediately, heart slamming against my ribs.
