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“But you’ll still go, won’t you?”
“Already told you, if you’re with me, then I’m yours. You either trust me or you don’t. But it’s my goal to remain in the club.”
I extend the bylaws and the folder I stole from her. Doing this could buy me a ticket out of the club, it’s putting Breanna in danger, but... “I trust you.”
Her face crumples as her shoulders roll forward. “This is so different from my life.”
“But it doesn’t make it wrong. The party is what you make of it. Stuff goes on that may not be your thing, but it doesn’t mean you won’t have a great time hanging with Emily or Rebecca. Don’t let your fears create walls or define you.”
Breanna accepts the folder and I’m not sure I like the way she studies me. “Have you tried living up to that advice?”
A punch straight to my heart, and the fucked-up thing? I don’t know why her words hurt. “This place doesn’t scare me.”
“I’m not sure about that. I think your demons haunt you wherever you go.”
My mother’s ghost haunts me like a second layer of skin. I strive for numb within the chaos of my emotions, but the emotions win every time. Breanna’s right, it doesn’t matter where I’m at—home, the clubhouse, Olivia’s, even my bike—my mother’s death claws at me like an evil spirit bound to rip through my skin so it can gain possession.
“You really do trust me,” Breanna says in a quiet voice.
“Yeah.”
Breanna opens the folder and I lose her the moment she spots the crossword code. Her eyes narrow and dart and her expression completely smooths out. She lays the bylaws next to the code and her eyes dance between the two pages. Her fingers flitter in the air as if she’s writing on a chalkboard. If I didn’t know better, I’d guess she’s in a trance.
It’s because of those demons she mentioned that I’m permitting her to have a crack at the code again. If she has a chance of finding my answers, then I have a shot at doing w
hat the club is desperate for me to do—to let go of Mom and finally trust them.
“It’s a cipher,” she says to herself. “A cipher. So how does the key go into the lock?”
Her fingers skim over the bylaws and she flinches, reminiscent of the day she solved the puzzle in class. My muscles tighten and nausea spins through my gut. What if this has nothing to do with Mom? What if this is old or new bullshit between the Terror and the Riot and I’m dragging Breanna into a world that will make her a target?
The need to protect her bulldozes through my veins. I can’t lose her. Losing Breanna is not an option. My hand flicks out to seize the paper. “I change my mind—”
She’s faster than me and is on her feet and across the room. Breanna grabs a pencil and stabs holes into the code—taking out the letters and numbers that are supposed to contain the answers. It’s like her mind has fractured.
“What are you doing?” I demand.
She ignores me, tearing at the letters and numbers in such methodical movements that I’m not sure she’s aware of anything beyond her thoughts.
“Breanna!” I shout, but she rips out the last number and then slides the paper she mutilated over the bylaws. My world stills, but Breanna tears another piece of paper from the folder and begins to write.
A slow pulse forms in my brain. Letters poke out through the bylaws and the first word is a name. All the years of twisting comes to a head—it’s my mother’s name. It’s Layla.
The first code, the one that caused me to forbid Breanna to continue, said to consider this our warning shot.
“Razor,” Breanna says as if she’s attempting to talk me off a ledge. “Look at me.”
I can’t. I can focus only on my mother’s name. In the detective’s file, that code was the first and the one containing my mother’s name was the second. The first code a warning—the second one...
“Razor,” she says again. “You don’t know for sure what it means.”
Yeah, I really fucking do know. Anger reverberates between my muscles and bones. The Riot killed my mother and everyone in this club fucking knew. Everyone but me.
I round for the door, feeling like a freight train. My fists ball at my sides. The answers are coming, even if it means beating the hell out of someone.
Breanna’s voice calls behind me, but it’s like she’s on the opposite end of a long tunnel. She sure as shit is shouting, but there’s a vibration in my brain driving me now. The storm within me has been building for years and I’m seconds away from destructive landfall.
Oz bolts from the kitchen, clutching my biceps, shouting, but I don’t hear any words. Just a loud buzz, just my brain cracking in half. He’s pulling on my arm, but I’m a bull going for the target. My hand slams into the screen door and I’m on the front porch.
