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I squeezed my eyes shut, a wave of dizzying vertigo making me thrust a hand out to the railing myself, to find my balance.
“Ava Jade?”
“Just…just give me a minute,” I said, speaking for the first time, my voice a hoarse, cracking whisper.
I cleared my throat, blinking as a wave of nausea hit me so hard I had to fight not to double over and vomit on Vick’s shoes.
“Take all the time you need,” Vick crooned, and I flinched back as he moved close, a hand outstretched. I smacked it away, standing straight.
“Don’t touch me.”
He lifted his hands, eyes going round. “All right.”
His close standard-issue sport’s jacket reflected the light and I squinted to see him better. He looked a little rougher around the edges than I remembered in the daylight. Scruffier. More gaunt in the face. His hands thick and callused. Different than each time I’d seen him before. Once at night and once in the shadows of the trail just off campus at Briar Hall.
It somehow made him seem more human. Relatable. Like he was just a regular guy who might’ve seen some shit—been through some shit—himself. And I remembered he said the reason he wanted to bag the Saints so bad was personal. Did they take someone from him like they’d taken Becca’s mom?
Like the Kings took my dad?
I sighed.
“You’re doing the right thing,” he said in a low voice. “The Crows and their father are monsters. Murderers.”
My skin bristled.
“The world will be a better place without them.”
“You’re wrong.”
The words were out of my mouth before I could trap them and shove them back down my aching throat.
I shook my head, my chest hot and swelling with each breath as they became heavier.
Officer Vick narrowed his eyes at me. “I am?” he challenged, a muscle in his jaw straining.
“The Crows are fucking idiots. Total assholes. And I can’t say a single kind thing about their father except that he loves his sons more than anything in this world, but no. I don’t think the world would be a better place without them.”
I remembered the feel of my blade as it slit across the throat of Frank the butcher. The man who broke one daughter’s arm and starved the other. The Crows found justice for the broken and oppressed people of Thorn Valley. Without them, those little girls would’ve continued to suffer. How many other pieces of trash had they cleaned from these streets?
How many lives had they saved?
Just as many as they’d taken?
More?
It didn’t matter, I realized with a start.
I fell back a step.
I didn’t have to do this.
They’d betrayed me. They didn’t care for me the same way I had begun to care for them, but that didn’t mean they deserved this. I could just leave. Disappear like I should’ve done from the start. Leave them to their nest of cruelty and vengeance. To their father.
I could still try to take Diesel down, but it would hurt them and I…
Despite everything, that was the last fucking thing I wanted to do.
Physically, I wanted to crush them. Drive over them with a fucking tank. But this?
