Chapter 4
SYVANNAH
The bikes reach me before the sound fully registers, a vibration in the glass and floorboards that travels straight into my chest. By the time the engines finally crest into full roar, I’m already standing still in the hallway, my coffee cooling between my hands.
The windows tremble, sunlight slicing through the open garage doors in bright stripes across the compound.
I tell myself I’m watching for trouble, though the truth is simpler. I’m watching for him.
Tiny rolls in first, dust swirling around his boots when he stops.
Dagger pulls in beside him, and both their cuts are streaked with soot.
Even from here, I can tell something’s wrong.
Tiny’s shoulders are set too stiff, his movements too careful.
Capone’s waiting for them near the garage, and whatever he says makes Trigger curse loud enough to carry.
That’s all I need to know. It’s bad.
By the time the meeting breaks up, I’ve burned through the rest of my coffee and half my patience.
When Tiny disappears into the garage that isn’t attached to the clubhouse, I head toward him.
Peanut darts past me on the steps, her tail high like she owns the place.
Of course, she’s going to him. Everyone does.
The heat outside hits like a wall. Gasoline, sun-baked concrete, the faint sweetness of engine oil. Tiny stands by his bike, running a rag over the tank even though it’s already clean, his focus fixed on something beyond the metal, as if he’s trying to scrub something out of his own head.
“Hey,” I say, keeping my voice light even as my stomach already starts to twist.
He glances up, and a muscle in his jaw is working, telling me everything before he speaks. “Hey, yourself.”
“You okay?”
“Long morning.”
“That’s code for bad news.”
He doesn’t answer right away. Instead, he keeps wiping the same spot on the tank, the rag moving in slow circles that get nowhere. “We found what was left of the trucks.”
My breath tightens. “How bad?”
“Bad enough.” The words land flat, but the story is written in the dried blood under one of his nails and in the way his shoulders stay braced like the fight isn’t over yet.
“You need a hand?” I ask quietly.
His gaze softens for a second, then he looks away. “Go help Nadia. I’ll catch up.”
“Tiny…”
“I said I’ve got it.” His tone isn’t sharp, just controlled, the kind of control that comes from holding too much in.
So I back off. “Fine. But don’t disappear again.”
He gives me half a smile. “Didn’t plan on it.”
He disappears back into the garage, and I stand there for a while, staring at the space he left behind. The air still smells like motor oil and blood, like the ghosts that follow him in on every run.
I tell myself it’s none of my business, that I don’t need to know what they found out there, but the ache in my chest says otherwise. Tiny carries his scars like armor, and I carry mine like anchors. When he looks that wrecked, it makes mine heavier.
By the time I get to my next therapy session, the need to hold myself together feels like a lie I can’t keep telling.
Nadia honks twice from her car, snapping me out of it. “You’re gonna make us late, Van,” she calls through the open window, sunglasses pushed up on her head, patience worn thin but still kind.
By the time I slide into Nadia’s car, the effort to keep my spine straight feels fragile, as if it might splinter if I shift too quickly.
The air inside smells of coconut and something clean and hopeful, and I keep my eyes on the passing streets because if I let myself think about Tiny’s hands or the way he refused to meet my gaze, I might turn around and run.
“You don’t have to go,” Nadia says quietly at a red light, not looking at me but not pretending she doesn’t see the tremor in my fingers.
“I know,” I answer, pressing my palms to my thighs until the shaking eases. “That’s why I have to.”
She nods, doesn’t push. The rest of the ride is quiet, city noise muffled by the weight in my chest. By the time she pulls up outside the clinic, my hands are trembling hard enough that I have to sit on them. The burn in my throat is raw.
“Want me to come in?” she asks.
I shake my head. “If I don’t walk in alone, I won’t walk in at all.”
She gives me a small smile. “Then I’ll wait right here.”
I step out, shut the door behind me, and force my feet to move. Each step feels like walking into a storm I swore I’d never face again.
By the time I reach the door and see my reflection in the glass, I barely recognize the woman staring back. I square my shoulders, push inside, and tell myself it’s just another kind of battle.
The waiting room smells like lavender and lies. The kind of clean that tries too hard to cover up the fact that broken people sit here every week, bleeding invisible wounds into beige furniture.
I’m early, as I always am, because being early means less time sitting alone with my thoughts before someone asks me to dig them up.
"Syvannah?" Dr. Chen's voice is gentle, practiced. The kind of gentleness that means she's seen worse than me. Somehow, that doesn't help.
I follow her into the office. Same chair. Same box of tissues on the side table that I pretend not to see. Same print on the wall of a beach at sunset, because apparently trauma patients need reminding that peaceful places exist.
"How was your week?" she asks, settling into her chair with her notebook.
"Fine," I lie.
She doesn't write that down. She just waits.
The silence stretches until it becomes its own kind of pressure. I pick at the loose thread on my jeans, watching it unravel. Metaphor. Everything's a fucking metaphor in therapy.
"I taught three classes at the studio," I offer, because progress means participation. "Nadia says the new girls are responding well."
"That's wonderful." Dr. Chen's smile is warm. "How does it feel, helping them?"
"Like I'm lying," I admit before I can stop myself. "Like I'm standing there telling them they're safe, that their bodies are theirs, that they can heal, and the whole time I'm thinking, I'm a fraud. I can barely keep myself together."
"But you are keeping yourself together."
"Barely."
"Barely is still breathing," she says quietly. "And breathing counts."
The thread comes loose in my hand. I stare at it, this tiny piece of fabric that used to hold something together and doesn't anymore.
"I want to talk about that night," Dr. Chen says. Not a question. Never a question. Just a gentle inevitability, like watching a storm roll in and knowing you can't outrun it.
My throat closes. "Do we have to?"
"We don't have to do anything, Syvannah. But the memory's been sitting in your body for months. It's not going anywhere until we look at it."
Look at it. Like it's a painting. Like it's something I can observe from a distance instead of something that lives under my skin, in my lungs, behind every heartbeat.
I close my eyes. "Where do you want me to start?"
"Wherever feels safe."
Nowhere feels safe. But I start anyway.
“I was walking home from work.”
That's how it always starts in my nightmares. Such an ordinary thing. The kind of thing you do a thousand times without thinking. Key in the ignition. Drive home. Park. Walk to your door.
Except I never made it to my door.
"It was late," I hear myself say. My voice sounds far away, like it's coming from the bottom of a well. "My shift at the diner ran long. I remember being tired. My feet hurt. I just wanted to get inside and take a shower."
"What happened when you got to your apartment?"
The room tilts. Not the therapy room, but the parking lot. My hands go numb first, then my legs. The beige walls of Dr. Chen's office bleed into cracked asphalt. I can smell it. The parking lot, exhaust fumes, and the chemical-sweet reek of the cloth that covered my mouth.
I'm back there, and I can't breathe.
The parking lot light is flickering. It always fucking flickers, casting strobing shadows across the cracked asphalt. My keys are already in my hand, and pepper spray on the keychain that I thought would keep me safe.
I don't see him until it's too late. The hand comes from behind, covering my mouth. Chemical-soaked cloth pressed against my nose and mouth. I try to scream, but the sound dies in my throat as my lungs fill with something sweet and wrong.
My keys clatter to the ground. The pepper spray is useless. The world goes sideways, then black.
When I wake up, I'm not alone. Two other women are huddled in the corner of a motel room that smells like mildew and fear.
The blonde one, Nadia, I'll learn later, has a split lip and blood crusted in her hair. But her eyes are sharp, alert, calculating. She's already looking for exits, for weapons, for a way out.
The younger one, Exleigh, won't stop shaking. Her hands are wrapped around her knees, rocking slightly, lips moving in silent prayer or maybe just counting. Something to hold onto when everything else has been taken.
"Where…" I try to speak, but my mouth is so dry that the words stick.
Nadia's head snaps toward me. She presses a finger to her lips, urgent, terrified. "Don't," she whispers. "Don't make noise. He hears everything."
"Who?"
Exleigh's rocking stops. Her eyes, glassy and unfocused, drift to the door like she can see through it. "The man who takes the fight out of you," she whispers. "The one who teaches you how to disappear."
As if summoning him, footsteps creak on the floorboards outside the locked door. Heavy. Deliberate. Taking their time.
The door opens slowly, its hinges creaking, as Josiah steps inside with the unhurried calm of a man who knows no one is coming to save us.
He's not what I expected. Not some monster with visible evil written on his face. He's ordinary. Middle-aged. Thinning hair combed over a sunburned scalp. He wears khakis and a polo shirt, the uniform of suburban dads everywhere.
That's what makes it worse. He looks like someone's uncle. Someone's coworker. The guy who volunteers at church on Sundays and complains about his lawn at neighborhood barbecues.