Oz doesn’t listen to her as his questions have taken over like a steamroller. “Did you say you’re wearing a wire with the Riot? Have you lost your mind?”
“Yes,” she says plainly, “and yes. And before you think you’re going to run off and tell Eli what you know, you should keep in mind I’m being watched and have been approached by the Riot at this clubhouse, Cyrus’s cabin and my home. The only people I trust right now are in this room. If you tell on me, you’re signing a warrant for my death and that’ll sort of piss me off.”
She’s being lighthearted, but how the hell should we be handling this? She and I—we’re beyond anger and sadness and tears. Maybe she’s right. We have lost our minds.
Violet takes the bottle of water, opens it, then tosses the cap in Razor’s direction. “Your turn, and I’m going to be honest, you’re going to have to dig deep to beat my problems.”
I laugh. It’s bitter and short, but it happened. “I’ve got a long-lost brother.”
“Yeah, but in the end, that’ll be good news. You know, once you get past the whole my-father-slept-around-a-lot thing.”
True on that.
Razor rests his arms on the back of the chair. “Dad’s found someone willing to defect from the Riot to the Terror to testify against the Riot on how they killed my mom, and if we accept, it’s going to start a war. It’s my decision if we press forward or not. I already lived too many hours thinking I lost the two of you. I’m not sure I can stomach knowing my decisions were the ones that hurt people I love.”
All joking and lightheartedness crashes to the floor as if someone dropped a glass figurine. Razor, because of his mother’s death, is scarred eternally in ways none of us will ever understand.
“If you go forward with the defector, maybe Violet doesn’t have to wear the wire,” suggests Oz. “We bring the Riot down that way, because from what I’m hearing, we’re already in danger.”
She shakes her head. “I’m on a deadline and my time is almost up. The Riot has threatened me, my mom and my brother if I don’t see this through. My part is a go regardless.”
I pull a coin out of my pocket and begin to flip it over my knuckles. Doing this helps me think, helps me focus. “We want the Riot shut down for good, right?”
Agreement from all involved.
“The Riot’s a big club,” I say.
“But if the wire goes right,” Violet says, “we take down not only all the guys involved in our kidnapping, but we also get their top two guys.”
“With a huge amount of men behind them searching for retribution,” Oz says.
Violet slams her hand onto the table. “So we lie down and do nothing? I’m tired of this bullshit, Oz, and you have to be, too. I see how freaked out you are every time Emily steps on Kentucky soil. Her grandfather is Skull, the bastard who is the head of this. I can take him down. We need to show the Riot we aren’t scared and that each and every time they come at us, we will throw their asses in jail.”
“If what the defector told us is true,” Razor says, “then the guys involved in my mother’s death are big players. Big players who aren’t Skull and his son. If we wipe out their board, if we wipe out their decision-makers, the Riot could fold.”
“I think you’re talking fairy tales,” says Oz.
He’s probably right, but Oz wasn’t in a basement and I can’t allow Violet to live in fear anymore. “What other choice do we have? Our fathers spent over twenty years dealing with the Riot and in the end not a damned thing changed. We’re not kids anymore and this fight is on our doorstep now. I say we turn the tide and start causing problems for them. This is our time. I say we blow this shit up.”
“Me, too,” says Violet. “We do the wire, Razor gives the green light to use the defector and we bring down as many of them as we can.”
Razor rolls his neck, then massages the muscles there. “How do I keep Breanna safe? She’s a long way from Snowflake. Even better, how do we keep anyone safe? To say there won’t be fallout from what we do is naive.”
I understand how he feels. Understand the bitter taste of fear in his mouth, understand the nagging of the loss of control in his brain, but... “Do you want a phone call telling you Breanna’s been locked in the basement with the Riot? I’ve lived that basement and it’s going to haunt me forever. Not doing anything—it’s not the solution. It’s what our parents did and we need to be better.”
From under the table, Violet squeezes my knee and the irony isn’t lost on me. I went from being the boy who didn’t make the decisions to being the man leading the charge.
“At the end of all this,” Oz says, “Cyrus and Eli will say it wasn’t our decision to make. That we should have included them.”
“We will,” Violet says. “But after the wire. There’s the possibility that someone is a traitor at the clubhouse and I can’t risk anyone else knowing until that wire is done.”
Surprise prickles along the back of my neck. “You’re going to let the club in?”
She’s slow to nod, but she does. “Oz is right. There’s going to be backlash and we’re stronger together than we are separate. It’s time I start relying on my family.”
Stunned silence. All of us are. I take her hand and wonder how many rules I’d be breaking if I picked her up, propped her up against the wall and kissed her until we couldn’t breathe.
“Then let’s take a vote,” Oz says. “Let’s make this official.”
Violet gives a hesitant smile. “We aren’t a real board.”
“No, but we’re family and that’s what matters. Everyone for taking down the Riot?”
All hands in the air.
“Anyone opposed.”
Not a one of us.
“Then let’s take these bastards down.”
Violet
THE AIR I inhale feels very cold in my lungs, but my skin is hot and clammy. After a hundred abrupt U-turns to make sure we weren’t being followed, and the switching of cars and routes and a million other things, I’m in what would be the back bedroom of a white trailer in the middle of a trailer park in the south side of Louisville.
This room is a makeshift office for the police department. It contains two chairs and a desk pushed against the wall. Like the other rooms, it also contains fancy computers and electronics.
I widen a hole in my jeans with my finger and wonder if this was the best outfit to pick. The detective said to wear whatever I’d normally wear, so I pulled my favorite pair of jeans and a purple T-shirt out of the dryer, then put on my tennis shoes, my bracelets, Dad’s watch and his cross.
After I returned home from the party, I found another note from the Riot in my English notebook. It had a time for the meet and they selected a new meeting place. Guess they feel like their safe house is a loss now that the police are aware of its existence.
My skin crawls and I rub at my arms. I hate that these bastards were in my house, in my room...obviously in there while my mother and brother were sleeping. They were in my home.