20. Xander #2
Danny’s face is the face of a boy who has just learned something that has rearranged his understanding of the world. “Daisy talked. Last night. To the feds. About everything.”
Gideon: “Tell us.”
“Lucian is the money behind Reece. The whole operation—the drugs, the fights, the distribution network—Lucian Anderson has been financing it. That’s how he met Veronica. That’s why Valentina is involved. Reece isn’t an independent dealer—he’s an employee. Lucian’s employee.”
The ground shifts. Not metaphorically. I feel my balance change, my center of gravity relocating, the disorientation of a boy learning that his father’s evil is bigger and more organized than he ever imagined.
“My father… is Reece’s boss.”
“More than that. Lucian’s been running financial crimes for years—money laundering, shell companies, tax fraud.
The drug operation is one arm of a larger business.
And the marriage to Veronica was strategic—she brought connections he needed.
The whole thing is a network, X. Not a cartel.
Not some movie villain shit. Just a rich man using his money and his name to build an empire on other people’s suffering. ”
Danny continues: “And Penny’s arrest? That’s Lucian’s play.
Daisy said the plan was always to use Penny as leverage against you.
Control Penny, control Xander. And if Xander can’t be controlled—discredit the girl.
Arrest her. Destroy her reputation. Make sure nobody believes her when the real charges start coming and it will just make you crash out, running back to Reece. ”
Arthur, who has been listening with the focus of a lawyer hearing information that changes a case: “This is what I needed. Daisy’s testimony, combined with X’s body cam footage, combined with Alice’s security cameras—this isn’t a false arrest case anymore.
This is a federal case. Gideon—your contacts at the DEA. I need them today.”
Gideon nods. Phone already out. “On it.”
Arthur turns back toward the station. Then stops. Reaches into his briefcase. Pulls out a small plastic evidence bag. “Almost forgot.” He hands it to me. “I filed the release request for your personal effects from the arrest. This was in the inventory.”
I look at the bag. Inside: teal and yellow threads.
Faded. Frayed. Eleven years old. The friendship bracelet the police cut from my wrist the night Lucian got me arrested.
The one I begged them to keep intact. The one that’s been sitting in an evidence locker while I’ve been staring at the pale strip of skin where it used to live.
My hands shake. I open the bag. Take the bracelet out.
The threads are worn thin. The colors that used to be vivid—teal like the ocean, yellow like the sun—are muted now.
But they’re here. In my hand. After everything—after the arrest and the treehouse and the closet and the hospital and the cage and every terrible thing—they’re here.
Iz watches me hold it. His face softening.
“Put it on,” Iz says. Quiet. “She’d want you to.”
I can’t tie it myself. The threads are too thin, my hands too big. Iz steps forward. Takes the bracelet. Wraps it around my wrist. Ties it—careful, precise, the knot tight enough to hold and loose enough to be comfortable.
The teal and yellow against my skin. The weight of it—barely anything, physically. Everything, symbolically. The promise Penny made me when we were seven, returned to me by a lawyer in a parking lot while the girl who made the promise is in a cell fifty feet away.
“We’re getting her out,” I say. Looking at the bracelet. At Iz. At Danny and Gideon and the station where Penny is waiting. “Today. Right now. Whatever it takes.”
Arthur works. Gideon works. The machinery of adults doing what adults do—making calls, filing motions, producing evidence, the methodical dismantling of a false case built by a corrupt man and his manufactured family.
Penny will be out by morning. Arthur’s word.
The security footage from the MacHale house is airtight—continuous, timestamped, showing Penny at home during the hours Reece claims she was at his residence.
The body cam footage from the gym—Reece’s threats, his admission about Penny and Daisy—is the hammer that will drive the final nail.
But morning is twelve hours away. And I cannot sit in a house across the hall from an empty bedroom.
I go to the gym. My gym. The one in Newburyport. Marco lets me in after hours because Marco understands that some boys need to hit things to survive and denying them the bag is the same as denying them oxygen.
I hit. And hit. And hit. The tears mixing with the sweat, running down my face, dripping onto the mat.
The bag absorbs it all—Reece’s face, Lucian’s face, Valentina’s tears that weren’t tears, Veronica’s screaming that wasn’t fear.
Every person who has hurt Penny, who has hurt me, who has used our pain as their currency—I put them on the bag and I hit until my knuckles split and the leather is spotted with my blood.
A door opens. I don’t stop. The boys materialize—the instinct of a group that knows when one of its members is in the dark and shows up without being asked.
Kaiden. Danny. Ryan. Iz.
I take a headphone out. “Sup.”
Kaiden leans on the wall. “Came to check on you.”
“Any news?”
Iz: “Dad says tomorrow morning. The motion is filed. The evidence is submitted. The judge will review overnight.”
I slam the bag. “That’s not fast enough!”
“You think I want her in there, X?” Iz’s voice is sharp.
Raw. That edge of a boy who has been managing his emotions all day and has reached the limit.
“I’m scared too. I’m fucking terrified. She’s in a cell right now thinking about pills because the craving doesn’t care about context.
It doesn’t care that she’s innocent. It just knows she’s in pain and it’s offering the only solution it has.
And I can’t be there. I can’t hold her hand or breathe with her or do any of the things that help because there’s a wall between us and the wall is the system and the system is broken. ”
The room absorbs Iz’s fear. The weight of hearing the strongest person in the group admit he’s scared.
Danny: “Daisy’s testimony is locked in. The feds have it. Between that and X’s footage and the security cameras—Lucian’s whole operation is about to collapse.”
Ryan, quiet: “What about Ally? If Lucian goes down, the people connected to him—the people Roman O’Toole does business with—does that help her?”
Kaiden: “One crisis at a time, Ry. But yes. When the network falls, everybody connected falls with it. Including the man Ally’s being sold to.”
I sit on the mat. The boys arrange around me. The formation. The particular geometry of five boys who have been doing this since they were twelve—sitting in the wreckage, planning the rebuild.
“This is my fault,” I say. Staring at the bracelet on my wrist. “If I’d come to you guys earlier—months ago—we could have stopped this before Penny ever touched a pill. Before Daisy got in deeper. Before any of it.”
Danny shrugs. “Yeah. It kinda is.”
Kaiden: “Dude.”
Danny: “What? He said no more lies. The truth is: if X had told us about Reece the first week, we’d have had the dads involved by week two and Penny would never have been in that treehouse. That’s a fact.”
The fact sits in the room. I don’t argue it. I can’t. Because Danny is right and being right is the most Danny Rorke thing in the world and fighting it would be dishonest and we’re done with dishonesty.
“Yeah. I know. I own that. I should have asked for help instead of trying to carry it alone. But I’m here now.”
Kaiden: “You’re here now. And we’re back.”
“Damn right we are.”
The boys drift. Iz first—“Mom needs me. I’ll check with Dad on updates.” He hugs me. Long. The Iz hug. “She’s coming home, X. I promise.”
Ryan next. Quiet. “Ally’s having a rough day. I need to go.” I squeeze his shoulder. “Take care of your girl, Ry.”
Danny and Kaiden stay. Danny scrolls his phone. Kaiden stretches on the mat. Our companionship of boys who don’t need conversation to share space.
Kaiden’s phone buzzes. “Cat needs me. Hard day.”
Danny: “Not the only thing that’s gonna be hard.”
Kaiden punches his arm. I laugh—real, brief, the relief of humor in the middle of everything.
Danny stays another hour. We talk about nothing and everything—Becca and her death stare, whether college is worth it, the future that exists on the other side of this crisis if we can get to the other side.
His phone rings. Family meeting. He groans. Hugs me. Leaves.
I’m alone. The gym is empty. I shower. Change. The warm water running over the bracelet on my wrist—teal and yellow, faded, returned. I press it to my lips. The threads taste like evidence storage and time and the memory of a seven-year-old girl who said “forever” and meant it.
I head outside. The parking lot is dark. January cold. My breath visible. My car across the lot, waiting.
I’m three steps from the driver’s door when something hits the back of my skull. Not a fist. Something harder. Metal, maybe. Wood. The impact of an object designed to cause damage wielded by a person who doesn’t want a fair fight.
I stagger. Turn. Try to see.
A second blow. My temple. The world goes sideways. The parking lot tilting. The streetlight smearing across my vision like paint on wet canvas.
I see a shape. A body. A face I almost recognize before the third blow connects and the world doesn’t tilt anymore. It stops.
The pavement is cold against my cheek. The bracelet is warm against my wrist. The last thing I register before the darkness takes me is the particular irony of a boy who spent his evening hitting a bag and is now the one being hit.
Penny. The bracelet. The porch light.
Then nothing.