Stone

“Cruz won’t want that. I'm telling you,” Knox growls as he signals and merges onto the highway. “You should have left it in the woods.”

“The search dogs would have found it,” I say, rubbing the place in my leg where one of them bit me. He took me down, and it was a close call. I had a knife, but I didn’t want to hurt the beast. It wasn’t his fault he’s good at his damn job.

I got away. Barely.

Made it to the city where I could dial Knox for an extraction.

It was too bad I lost the caterer’s van before I could torch it, but Knox’s ride is a lot nicer; a vintage Porsche that’s probably had blood in it a few times over the years. At least I had the ring in my pocket when I left the van behind.

“He wants it.”

“He won’t even look at it.” Knox is wearing a crisp purple button-down and slacks, like he’s going to some swanky hot spot for happy hour after work instead of picking up his boss from a manhunt.

“He’ll look at it,” I say. “You’ll see.”

Cruz needs somebody in this fucking life to come through for him. That’s my job. With all my brothers. Make sure they get what they need. Sometimes that means vintage cars. Sometimes that means closure in the form of a bloodstained ring.

I pull it out and take another look. It’s fat and gold with some emblem of a fancy university imprinted on it. This is the ring I promised to bring him as I held his shaking, sobbing body, and now he gets it. It took a good twelve years, but I would have searched for that fucker for another twelve if I had to. I mean to keep each and every promise I made back when we were kids, back when we were being made to do things with men that no kid should ever be made to do.

Our success in hunting those scumbags down is part of why they hit back, framing Grayson for that murder. It was a smart move; even I can admit that. It distracts us from hunting them down. And no jury will pass up the opportunity to slam a cop killer for life. Even if the supposed cop killer is innocent.

But it won’t work.

Even if Grayson’s convicted, we’ll keep hunting them. We’ll just have all the more reason to make them sorry.

“You’re crazy if you think he’s gonna want to see it. The same ring he saw all that time in the…” He trails off at the word basement. He doesn’t like to say it, doesn’t like to think about it. He prefers fast cars and oblivion. Every guy in the crew needs something different.

What do you need? a soft voice in my head asks. A voice that sounds a lot like Brooke. But I ignore that voice. I don’t need anything.

“He gets the option,” I growl. “That’s the fucking point here. And someday we’re gonna get to all of them. They all die. Begging on their knees. I don’t care what it takes.”

Knox glares into the distance. With his knowledge, he could easily have a job at some tech company. Something that has a fitness center and stock options. He would fit in there, but he prefers to run with the crew. Most of us do. There’s too much outsiders don’t know. Too much we don’t know to ever really fit in out there.

Knox doesn’t like that I dumped the body back where it all started. He thinks it’s intense that I’m keeping the promises, but I don’t give a fuck. Those promises are all that keep me going.

The guys need their leader to follow through, even Knox. Especially him. I’m the stability they never got. I’m their personal fucking angel of vengeance.

“You sure the kid didn’t see anything?” he asks again. Maybe he smells the lie on me, I don’t know. It’s fucked up that I’m lying about this, but I have her handled. That’s what’s important. She’s a good girl. She follows the rules. She’ll do what it takes to protect the people she loves.

I guess that makes us alike in some perverse way.

“She won’t be a problem,” I say.

I feel Knox’s eyes on me. “A pillowcase in a caterer’s van?”

“Or maybe it was a potato sack. What the fuck do I know? She’s got nothing to say, and that’s all that matters.” I was vague about it when he first picked me up, giving him the story Brooke and I created together—that’s all she’ll be able to tell the cops, I assured him. I said I dumped her in the park. At least that part is true.

What I don’t tell him is how it felt to feed her. How hard it got me when I buckled her in. How it felt to hold her against me in that swirling water. How she asked me for that one small favor and my whole plan fell apart.

I think about what I promised her—that I’d kill the last people she called if she talks. And I think about how much it would hurt her if that happened. I’m not sure I would do it, which is screwed up. I’m all about keeping my promises. She’s already changing me.

I think about her face as she ate, how hard it got me, watching her pleasure. It stirred something dark in me, something I’d rather forget.

We don’t do connections with women—that’s a pact we all made early on. No girlfriends, no families, no children, no white picket fences. We’re too far gone for that, too ruined, too twisted. We’re brothers to the end—out for vengeance. Most of us guys, we hit the city streets when we need to get off. No girl ever comes back to the hotel—that’s another rule.

Sex is purely physical. Nothing to get worked up about.

Until I watched Brooke biting into that fucking burger, watched how her sad eyes lit up.

She was just so hungry. Hungry for food. Hungry for affection. You never really think about how rich kids might be hungry, too. In their fancy houses and their fancy clothes.

She had been starving.

We’re winding through the dark, littered streets of poverty-stricken North Franklin City. The part we’re going toward, you can barely call it poverty-stricken—that would imply regular people actually live there, and regular people definitely don’t live where we’re going.

The part of Franklin City we live in is more like a post-apocalyptic war zone, all crumbling buildings and trashed streetlights.

We live in the Bradford Hotel, which looks like a boarded-up, bombed-out hull of an old-timey hotel. Unless you know what to look for—a tiny sliver of light seeping out from a gap in the metal covering on an upper window—one of us needs to get to that.

A break in the chain-link fence that surrounds it, just big enough for a car to nose through. Tracks in the rubble that surrounds the place, leading to an underground garage that used to be your basic hotel basement.

We don’t live under the radar so much as off the radar completely.

We head down and park next to Cruz’s Formula One turbo. One of the problems of illegally obtaining more money than you know what to do with while living entirely off the radar is that you can’t drive around in the fan-fucking-tastic cars you get to buy. Too flashy, too obvious. But you can still collect them. Making up for the toys we never got as kids, I guess you could say.

We head up the stairs through the trashed, abandoned lobby. Knox kicks aside a rotting crate.

We left this part of the ruined hotel ruined for the benefit of curious bums and thrill seekers. To make everyone believe this is just an abandoned hotel instead of the headquarters of our operation. To make people think we’re broke and not hoarding a few mil in a bunker underneath the building in addition to our offshore accounts.

We head through and on up into the place where we actually live. The only home our tribe has known since we broke out of that basement. I was fifteen, the oldest of them, when we killed them all and got away.

We enter a huge, airy room full of couches and computers. Ryland is kicked back on the sofa in the corner with his phone, earphones in, playing at something. Calder—the saint, we call him—is in the corner, eyes closed. Not asleep—meditating. And I can tell you, he’s not meditating for world peace or anything. He just sits there, cold as ice, blond hair falling around his shoulders. He’ll stay that way until he’s good and fucking ready to talk.

Even Nate is here, his dark brow furrowed, his brown eyes concerned. He always looks concerned, because he knows that what we do here is fucked up. Today is no exception.

There’s a glass on the center table, full of water. Someone’s drink.

I go over and drop the ring into the glass. It lands on the bottom with a soft clink. Blood spreads through the liquid in a slow crawl. A spider web of pain and vengeance.

Ryland yanks out his earbuds. “What the fuck?”

“It’s pizza day,” I say by way of explanation. Pizza day was a special day. A reward for good behavior. It made us sick to be rewarded for shit like that, but we couldn’t help looking forward to it. That’s what this is—a sick reward.

“Don’t think I’ll be drinking water anytime soon,” Knox says mildly. He still doesn’t approve. He’s more into the tech side of things. No one’s better than Knox. Even without the education we all missed, he’s a genius.

“It’s like a goddamn head on the mantel,” I say. A trophy.

Ryland makes a face. “Is that…?”

He remembers the ring. Ry likes to stay on the fringes of the group, taking off for days or even weeks on his bike, but he remembers the fucking ring. We all do, but it’s Cruz who saw it the most.

“Go get Cruz,” I tell him, ignoring his weak stomach. It’s okay. I have a strong enough stomach for all of us.

I hear footsteps, and I know Ryland is coming back with Cruz.

Cruz is a huge motherfucker, muscles like molten steel, black hair shaved close to his massive head. Our toughest fighter. Our smartest planner—he can look at a building and see exactly how to get in. Look at a group and know exactly how to take them down.

There are tats climbing up both his arms. Script that goes up around his neck. Any sane person would cross the street if they saw him coming, but I still see the kid from the basement.

That’s who this gift is for.

His curious look means Ryland hasn’t told him yet. That’s good. I’ve got a flair for the dramatic sometimes. At least that’s what Knox says, which is rich coming from him.

It’s important, what happened down in that basement. If we tried to go about our lives, to pretend we’re normal, it would be like it wasn’t important.

Like what happened down there didn’t matter.

“I made you a promise one night,” I say. “A promise about Madsen. What I’d do to him. What you’d get to have. You remember?”

He turns his gaze down to the glass. Tendrils of blood reach up from the ring. “Fuck,” he breathes. That’s Cruz, always cool, always tough. Even in this moment of goddamn closure, he’s the tough guy.

What happened down there matters.

Cruz steps closer to the table. A mix of emotions plays across his face—fascination and fear, hope and regret. “The ring. The fucking ring.”

“It’s so you know,” I say softly. So when you see him in your dreams, you can be sure it’s a dream—because he’s dead. He’s gone from this world, in hell where he belongs.

A choking sound comes from Cruz, the only sign of weakness I’ve ever heard from him since we grew up, since he got built. Since he put ink on his skin, a skeleton screaming in agony for every single man who ever touched him.

Knox goes to him, stands there next to him, a silent witness by his side. My throat is tight watching them. They’re so different, the way they look, one of them all starched and sleek, the other one rough and wild, but they fit together. I’m glad they have each other, that Cruz has this moment and that Knox is there with him. “It’s done,” Knox says, soft, his voice unsteady. “He can’t ever hurt anyone again.”

But what he means is, he can’t ever hurt you again.

Ryland comes up, too. He stands there with them, just off to the side. Always off to the side, that’s what he is. But he’s here, and that’s what matters. Nate comes over, too.

Even Calder is watching, no longer meditating. No longer apart from us.

I’m the leader. I’m supposed to be detached. Supposed to be strong. It’s an emotional scene, but I don’t feel like crying—and that’s a good thing. I tell myself that it’s good, anyway.

Cruz turns to me, his eyes burning. “Stone.”

There’s something in my chest. It’s not an emotion exactly. It’s more like something hard and impenetrable and heavy. He doesn’t look pleased.

Was Knox right? Maybe he would have preferred to forget. “If you don’t want the ring, I’ll throw it out the fucking window,” I say.

“I like the ring. I just never thought—”

It takes a minute for his words to penetrate, for the intensity of his voice to pierce the haze of doubt. “You never thought what?”

“All those nights in the basement, you swore we’d get out. That we’d hunt the fuckers down. You told me you’d bring me his ring, and I never believed it.” Cruz swallows hard. “I never let myself believe in it, even when we got out. It didn’t seem real.”

It feels like my body’s running an electrical current, sharp and hot. “Believe it, brother.”

We’re out, and we’ve been out. We’re not ever going back. Which is why the fact that Grayson might go to prison is such a blow. I’ve failed him, failed all of them in a way. But I’m going to fix it. And then I’ll make sure no one ever fucking finds us again.

Cruz comes at me—I don’t expect it, and because I’m not expecting the hug, it hurts. Cruz doesn’t know his own strength sometimes. I don’t flinch away. I clap him on the shoulder. “Fucking believe it.”

“Thank you,” he says after he pulls away, voice raw.

“Get the fuck out of here,” I tell him.

He gives me a small smile before looking at the ring one more time. The whole room pauses, giving him a moment while he studies the trophy of the man who hurt him.

The man who regretted it at the end.

Cruz leaves. I let out a breath.

“Melt it down,” I tell Knox.

“Fuck,” he says, but he doesn’t argue. He’s the youngest now that Grayson’s detained, so I make him do the shit work. He still makes a face while he picks up the glass and takes it out of the room.

“Good work,” says a deep voice from the corner. Calder. The saint has decided to speak today. His bright blond hair is long and straight; he’s dressed head-to-toe in black, kind of like a priest. If priests were fucking terrifying.

“Thanks.”

“Messy,” he adds. “Did anyone see?”

I bristle at the implication that I would be so sloppy, that I would let someone witness me doing that—even if it’s more or less what happened.

And I hate that she saw me like that. Beating on him in the parking lot. She saw me feral and angry and broken.

“No one,” I answer before leaving the room.

I want to be alone now, on the roof of the Bradford, looking out at the city, but Nate follows me.

Out of all the guys, he’s the only one who lives a regular life. The only one with regular morals. He doesn’t think killing is okay, even for someone as monstrous as Madsen.

Which makes it a surprise when he says, “You did a good thing.”

I look sideways at him, at his hard profile set against a dying sun. He’s wearing a worn work shirt and jeans. Work boots that are coated in mud. He spends his days healing sick animals in his vet practice outside the city. “That’s something, coming from you.”

“Cruz needed to see that ring. You could tell, looking at his expression. Even though he acts tough. I know how much it costs you, keeping those promises.”

A bark of a laugh comes out of me. “Doesn’t cost me a damn thing.”

“No?” he asks, damnably soft. “You don’t dream about the blood, then.”

I growl because he’s right. “Save the doctoring for the animals.”

“You don’t need my help. You don’t need anything, right? I get it. Except the truth is, you’re made of the same flesh and blood as all of us. You need help, too.”

I wave my hand, dismissing his words. My bones turned to stone over a decade ago. My blood to dark sludge. I’m like the abandoned hotel we stand on top of. Some of the pieces are still here, but most of me is gone. I only have one purpose now, and that’s making sure all the guys get their revenge.

“Who is going to fight for you?” Nate asks softly.

I don’t turn around as he leaves me on the roof. Alone, the way I like it. The way I need it to be.