“You want to lie a little better?”
“Nah, promise.” Xavier shrugs like it's nothing, like we're talking about the weather. “It was a gift from the Italians.”
My jaw clicks, heat crawling just beneath the skin of my neck. I run a hand across my face, forcing my breath to stay steady. “Explain gift.”
“They had to teach us a lesson,” Xavier continues, voice casual, but his eyes never leave mine. “They got a whiff of Marcus’s plan for the Raiders and uniting with the Cartel. Tommy was their message. Remind us that they can still get into our camp.” He takes one last drag before tossing the cigarette to the ground, crushing it under his boot.
I shake my head, a humorless breath slipping out of me. “You’re all so fucking disorganized it’s pathetic.”
“Watch your mouth.”
“Or fucking what?” I growl, looking down at the animal in front of me.
Xavier’s jaw ticks now, his turn to feel the itch under his skin. “Look, I am sorry about your girl.”
“Don’t be sorry.” I shrug, tossing the joint onto the alley floor. “She’s going to get even.”
“Is that a threat?”
I step in close, close enough to feel his breath hit my cheek, my voice like steel wrapped in velvet. “Look me in the eye, Xavier.”
He does. And for a beat, neither of us blink.
“Do I look like a man who makes threats?”
“No.”
“So,I promisemy girl is going to come and get what’s hers, and you are going to serve up Marcus on a silver fucking platter.”
“Or what?”
“Or.”I snarl. “I’ll be skinning you alive.”
20
JASMINE
I’ve never feltanything like this before—not even in the worst moments of my life. Not when my father left with nothing but a suitcase and a head full of lies, not when Willow vanished without a trace and left me in a silence too sharp to scream through, not even when I stood in the aftermath of what I did at thirteen, with blood drying on my hands and the weight of a secret I thought would crush me before morning.
But this… this is worse.
This is grief that doesn’t howl. It suffocates. I have been paralyzed in my bed for a fucking week.
It spreads through my body like poison, slow and burning, thickening in my chest until I can’t pull air into my lungs without feeling like I might choke on it. It is a scream stuck behind my teeth, aching to be released but so tangled with guilt and disbelief that I don’t know if it’ll ever come out. And maybe it shouldn’t. Maybe I don’t deserve to scream when Tommy can’t even breathe anymore.
I’ve been sitting in the center of my bed like a broken doll someone tossed there— knees pulled tight to my chest, arms wrapped around my legs, chin pressed into the cotton fabric of Landon’s t-shirt that still smells like his cologne and laundry detergent and the smoke of his cigarettes. I’m rocking slowly, without realizing it at first, like movement will stop the panic from setting in, as if swaying can somehow replace the things I’ve lost or rewind time back to when all of this hadn’t yet fallen apart.
I want to peel my skin off. I want to crawl out of my body, claw my way free of this unbearable grief that has made a home in my ribcage, wrapping itself around every bone and nerve ending. I feel like if I screamed loud enough I could shake the foundation of this entire fucking apartment, like I could rip the sky open and demand Tommy back from whatever cruel force took him.
But I don’t scream. I just sit there, vibrating with grief, caught somewhere between hyper aware and completely numb.
I don’t see him, but I feel the bed dip next to me and the familiar smell of the ocean. Landon sighs heavily the same sound he made two hours ago when he made me put on his shirt and asked if I wanted a waffle. I opted for some coffee that has turned ice cold on my nightstand, and when he tried to talk to me after that, all I gave him was silence. I don’t know what to say. There’s nothing to say.
Tommy’s dead, and I did everything to keep him alive, but none of that mattered.
I followed Marcus’s orders like a pawn. I got close to Brooke—not just close, butintimate. I let myself slip into her space, into her bed, into her trust, with every intention of breaking her heart the minute she became easy prey. I was ready to be the villainin her story if it meant keeping Tommy alive, ready to bear the weight of her heartbreak, of her hatred, if it meant he would be safe.
“Peach,” he whispers, his voice rough at the edges, fingertips ghosting over my exposed knee like he’s afraid I might flinch.
