“Bullshit,” Terrence laughs mockingly.
“No, seriously.” Her laugh comes with a macabre fascination.
“That circle is so closed off, they practically marry each other.”
She lowers her voice again, so soft I have to strain to hear her.
“I’m telling you, if the McKennas turn on you, it won’t end well. Tom is the sweetest, he has a good heart. That’s why they dumped him here, to pull himself together, because he’s weak, which makes their clan vulnerable. But Jay and his daughter Evelyn…”
She clicks her tongue. “They’ll do whatever it takes. And I meanev-uh-ry-thing. Nothing is off the table when it comes to protecting their clan.”
Terrence stays quiet for a moment.
“So, Tom’s the weakest link? That makes it far more interesting.”
My hands start shaking. Tom? The weak link? He’s the strongest person I’ve ever met. They have no idea. None!
I squeeze my eyes shut and press harder against the wall to stay silent.
“Dont underestimate them,” Stella says. “These people play by their own rules. They will destroy you.”
Her voice quivers. She’s only seen the tip of the iceberg, and maybe that was enough to scare her. She said it herself: the McKennas don’t let people in.
There’s something in the way she talks about them that gets to me. It grips me tighter than fear ever could.
What does it mean to be a McKenna? To belong somewhere so deeply that loyalty becomes self-evident. To stand your ground, even when that same ground is poison?
On second thought, that’s not loyalty. That’s devotion. And with the McKenna’s it’s bound by blood and secrets.
They sound like people who would kill for each other.
What would that feel like?
I need to know what that feels like.
Chapter twenty-nine
Tom
The taxi drops me in front of Calvin's villa, a strange mix of nostalgia and discomfort hitting me all at once. Years have passed, but it feels like time has frozen here. Everything looks exactly the same as I remember it.
A minimalist concrete bunker of a mansion—music studio and garage below, living quarters above. The blindingly white walls have been repainted and the gate is new, but that’s about it, nothing else has changed. It's Arcadia Lite; half the size, double the crazy. But hey, at least it’s my kind of crazy.
Two chunky dogs sprint to the gate, barking and baring their teeth. They don’t recognize me, my scent long gone from this place.
While I wait at the gate, I glance up and down the street.
Big houses, shiny fast cars in every driveway. Rich people. Old money, new money— doesn’t matter, it’s all the same fucking paper.
A sudden noise snaps my attention back to the house. Calvin’s in the doorway, wearing nothing but boxer briefs and a zebra-print robe that hangs loosely off his shoulders.
He looks like the unhinged party cousin from every ’90s sex comedy ever made.
Calvin calls the dogs back, then opens the gate with the remote.
I sling my bag over my shoulder and walk down the driveway.
God, I hadn’t realized how badly I needed to see a familiar face until now.
