Chapter 24 #2
Seven laughed, then tried to sit up, groaning before falling back against Enzo.
He felt bile rise at Seven’s discomfort.
His hands moved before his brain did, steadying him.
Atticus reached for Seven and helped him up so Enzo could stand, too.
Seven sagged against him immediately, heavy and small at the same time.
August peered around at the contraption and snapped his fingers. “Explain,” he said to Avi. “Tell me everything. Don’t skip a thing.”
Something about August reminded Enzo of Gomez Addams. He was somehow both elegant and ghoulish in equal measure.
Avi bobbed with glee, his hands already twitching toward the controls. “Okay, so imagine a ramp with—”
Enzo kept one hand on Seven’s chest, his arm fastened around his waist like an anchor.
The rest of the world—gasoline fumes, the metallic gleam of that ramp, the quiet gurgle of something oily in the pit—receded into the background.
All he heard were Seven’s shallow breaths, the soft intake of someone drugged with adrenaline and pain.
It made him meaner somehow, and made him a little excited about the spectacle that was about to take place.
Avi outlined the gruesome mechanics with the pride of someone describing a masterpiece.
The others listened, some with clinical interest, some with the detached curiosity of people used to making awful things happen and then washing their hands.
The twins fussed at last-minute adjustments.
Jericho inspected winches. Felix hovered over Zane protectively.
Outside, distant water lapped at the docks. The wind pushed a corrosive smell through the open shed and the sodium lamp above them flickered, throwing intermittent hard shadows. The scene felt like a snapshot someone would later say was prophetic. A calm before an engineered storm.
Enzo’s thumb moved across Seven’s temple, then down the cheek where the bandage rode.
He could taste the chemical tang of the night on his tongue.
He could hear the soft, slightly hoarse edge to Seven’s breath and the small, involuntary sounds that broke through when Atticus adjusted a bandage or when someone joked too loudly.
Every laugh sounded brittle to Enzo’s ears.
Avi clapped his hands. “Ready to test?” he asked, eyes wild.
Jericho’s voice cut through in a flat line. “No more tests.”
A shadow of a grin crossed Avi’s face, then he saw Enzo’s hand tighten around Seven’s hair and, for once, the joke left him.
He backed off just a little. Even in a room full of men who’d spent lifetimes hardening themselves, Enzo’s fierceness softened something, or maybe it just reminded them that they’d had people they loved put in jeopardy before as well.
The whole family was cracked. He had no idea why his mother put them on a pedestal.
Not that he didn’t like them. He did. They were decent people, with their own harsh sense of justice.
But there was no denying they were all a little unwell.
Except Atticus, maybe. Atticus felt like the only stable thing in a house of spinning knives.
Avi bounced on his feet. “Let me show you.” He padded to the ramp and ran a hand down one of the teeth, careful, almost reverent. “We repurposed an intake line from the old plant. Nothing complicated. It’s symbolic as much as it’s…well…motivational.”
He tossed a look over his shoulder at the three men on the floor, currently being unmade by his brothers.
They were filthy—salted with sweat and blood—their hands bound.
Seasoned. Enzo flinched at his own morbid thought.
They didn’t struggle. They lay there with the hollow, stunned expression of men who never thought they’d have a last night that smelled of fish guts and rust.
“It feels weirdly poetic somehow. No?” Avi asked.
Zane shook his head from where he stood by Ansel. “You can’t call it poetic when it’s just gruesome.”
Avi pursed his lips. “Okay, fine. Not poetic. Cathartic.”
Enzo wasn’t registering the words. He was seeing the pit again: black and slick, an oily eye watching from the bottom. He forced himself not to picture a body sliding into it.
When Seven turned in his arms, he forced his gaze downward.
He read an assent in Seven’s eyes that made his gut drop.
His pupils were blown wide, pain and something else flickering behind his gaze: a thrill, a grim satisfaction that made Enzo equal parts proud and terrified.
That look—hungry and hollow—wasn’t excitement exactly; it was relief.
“He’s right,” Ansel said suddenly. “They did the worst. They lied, sold, used people… Little kids. Babies. These men are disgusting. They tried to set up Seven’s mom.”
Elio nodded, earnest. “Those women and kids are still out there. I know you said the Mulvaneys would handle it, but these guys deserve everything this machine gives them.”
Enzo didn’t know how to feel when his baby brothers recited this case for vengeance, but disgust wasn’t it.
He felt a sour kind of calm, the kind that happens once a decision you didn’t ask for has already been made.
Part of him wanted the men to die screaming, but another part felt like hearing the rationale from his baby brothers just proved that Enzo had converted them into something monstrous.
Ansel and Elio hadn’t been raised in the dark the way the older Contis were. Their understanding of violence was raw and new; they fought the bad guys with keyboards and terabytes. Hearing them justify what was about to happen made Enzo both uneasy and proud.
“Shouldn’t they suffer for their crimes?” Ansel asked, then nodded like he was answering his own question. “They should be punished. They should know fear.”
“Your brothers are sharp,” Asa said, voice flat. “They understand there’s a thin line between justice and revenge.”
A heavy hush dropped over the plant. Even the wind seemed to lean in.
One of the captives shifted, and the sound was a small, horrible thing—leather against concrete—dragging across Enzo’s nerves.
The men’s eyes, once sharp with entitlement, now ratcheted between panic and pleading, like animals being shuttled into a kill zone.
“I don’t want to rush anyone, but we have to pick up the kids soon,” Lucas said.
“Us, too,” everyone except Seven and Enzo’s brothers echoed.
Seven nuzzled Enzo’s neck, lips dragging over his pulse point, like he was considering taking things further even with an audience. Enzo’s pulse jumped.
“You okay?” he whispered against his shoulder, fingers curling into Enzo’s shirt. He smelled of iron and sweat and the faint medicinal sting of antiseptic. Enzo could feel every shaky breath, every tremor, like it was his own.
Enzo leaned down until their foreheads touched. “I’m fine,” he lied, because the truth would’ve made him sound unhinged. “You’re okay. That’s what matters.”
Seven looked up, the corner of his mouth curving into that wry smile that had undone Enzo from the beginning. “Does it bother you that I’ll probably have a scar?”
“No.” Enzo’s laugh cracked. “It’s—” He exhaled hard. “I’ll take a thousand scars over the alternative. You were a little too pretty, anyway. Now, you’ll look just menacing enough to give you an edge in court.”
He tried to sound teasing, but his chest ached with everything that could have gone differently. He’d seen that bullet miss by a hair. The thought made his stomach twist.
Avi looked at Seven. “They went after your mom and mangled your pretty face. You want to do the honors?”
Enzo’s fists clenched. It was hard—almost impossible—to reconcile the man in his arms with the predator the others saw.
This was his Seven. The one who teased him into late-night takeout runs, who kissed him quietly, who was soft even when he tried to pretend otherwise.
The world didn’t get that version. Only Enzo did.
All Enzo wanted was to go home. To lock the doors. To bury himself in their bed with Seven alive and warm and safe.
Almost like he sensed Enzo’s trepidation, Seven shook his head. “No, they’re all yours.”
“We ready?” Asa asked.
No. They weren’t. Enzo wanted time to line all this up in neat moral boxes and label it justified, but the Mulvaneys didn’t wait for permission.
Seven was beat up, but his gaze was steady and calm.
There was a quiet hunger in it, and something in Enzo’s chest gave way.
He kissed Seven’s temple, a quick, hot press of lips.
“Okay,” he said finally, voice rough with restraint. “Let’s just do this and get it over with. I want to get my brothers home, and I want to take Seven to a real hospital.”
Avi saluted, grinning. “Yes, sir. Clean. Courteous. Educational.”
Seven turned in his arms, back warm against Enzo’s chest, watching the procession.
They moved like a unit. Efficient. Practiced.
A pack that had seen every shade of cruelty and learned how to choreograph around it.
Enzo didn’t watch the details; he couldn’t.
He dropped back onto a stack of thick wooden pallets, Seven draped across his knee, his hand resting softly over the curve of Seven’s ribs just to feel him breathe.
His brothers floated closer, wide-eyed, transfixed by the mechanical ballet unfolding in front of them.
The captives’ ropes were cut, and they were brought forward one by one, their faces sliding from confusion to terror in an instant.
They pleaded, of course. Grant stammered excuses, swore he’d been forced, swore he’d never meant to hurt anyone.
The words fell on deaf ears. Avi almost laughed himself sick. “Even if that were true,” he said, “nobody cares. Nobody here even has the capacity to give a shit.”
It wasn’t true, but nobody would waste their tears on these men either. They seemed to understand that nobody was coming to save them. After that, the laughter died.