Page 149 of The Ashes of Summer

"She'd be twelve now," Mason says. "If you hadn't taken her from me." He tosses the mallet lightly, catches it by the handle, holds it up—not threatening. Just showing him. Making sure Jackson understands exactly what this is.

"This is for her."

The sound when it connects with Jackson's knee is something I'll hear for the rest of my life.

Someone behind me makes a small involuntary noise. Two of the women near the back turn away. I keep my eyes forward—not on Jackson, not on Mason, somewhere in the middle distance—and I breathe through my nose and tell my body to stay where it is.

"This one's for Reyes."

The second impact. Jackson's scream tears out of him raw and animal and enormous, the sound of a body finally being handed everything it's owed.

"And this one—" Mason's voice cracks for the first time. Just slightly. Just enough. "This one's for Calder."

Jackson doesn't scream that time. What comes out of him is worse: a long ragged exhale that collapses into broken gasping, his whole body shuddering against the chains, sweat running down his face into the blood.

Then Harris steps forward.

He must have come through the door quietly with the rest of them. He looks older than he did yesterday, moving slowly, slightly hunched, his bruised face set with a dignity that closes my throat. He holds his hand out toward Mason without a word, and Mason passes him the mallet without hesitating.

Harris looks down at Jackson for a long moment.

Jackson looks back at him through that one narrow eye, and something flickers across his face—not guilt, nothing as clean as guilt, but maybe the recognition of what it means that this particular man is standing in this room at all.

"This," Harris says quietly, "is for hurting my Sarah."

He brings it down on Jackson's hand.

The crack is different from the others. Higher. More final. Several of the women flinch. Somebody vomits near the back of the room.

Adelaide doesn't move. She stands completely still with her arms at her sides now, watching, bearing witness the way only a person with very deep reserves of controlled rage can.

I press my tongue hard against the roof of my mouth and I do not look away.

Then Jacob looks at me. Just that. A look—patient, steady, asking without asking.

I nod once.

I cross the room and crouch down in front of the chair so our eyes are level. Up close he's barely conscious, his breathing shallow and wet, his one working eye struggling to hold focus. But when I settle in front of him something in him surfaces, and he looks at me.

Really looks. Not through me. Not at some version of a dead woman he wanted to carve me into.

At me.

"I want to put a bullet through your head," I tell him, and my voice comes out steadier than I expected it to. "I want to give you exactly what you gave my mama. No warning. No time to understand it. The world just stopping." I hold his gaze. "But you don't deserve that. You don't get the mercy of fast."

I stand up slowly.

"So instead I'm going to go and live my life. With my man. With my freedom. And you're going to stay down here and know that every person in this room is taking back what you stole from them, piece by piece, until there's nothing left of you at all."

I step back.

Adelaide appears at my side a moment later. She doesn't hug me. She just stands there, shoulder pressed against mine, solid and steady, and somehow that's exactly right.

And I wait for Jacob to step forward.

To take his turn. To do the thing I've always known he's capable of—that cold, meticulous violence he carries around like a second skin. Part of me thinks it would be a relief to watch. A clean ending.

He doesn't move.