Chapter 3 #3
The next morning, Rafe was still hollow, but he didn’t leave us.
He rose when we did, his eyes shadowed, and when we mounted our bikes and left the abandoned motel behind, he followed.
For a week, we kept driving like that, miles bleeding into miles beneath us, the world rushing past in blurs of trees and highways and gas stations we never lingered in.
We didn’t really talk. Kane and I both knew that the one thing Rafe could heavily relate to was silence.
We thought that if we offered him that and showed him that it was a safe silence that maybe he would come back to us, and with every day, pieces of him bled free.
It wasn’t all at once. There was no miraculous return to the man he’d been before prison, pain, and years of isolation.
But in tiny fractures there was Rafe. The man who protected his family at all costs, who took a life sentence in that fucking prison when he really hadn’t done anything to deserve it.
It was really small things, you know? Sometimes his glance held a second longer than before or his breath didn’t shake so badly if one of us accidentally touched him.
Then it was the way he stayed closer to us on his bike instead of drifting ahead or lagging behind.
It was like watching someone surface from deep water, lungs burning, unsure if it was safe to breathe yet.
Honestly, I couldn’t help thinking about Halden’s Tank.
Rafe had saved my life that day, had physically thrown himself into glass just to communicate, and those first days after escaping prison felt a lot like that—only it was Kane and I throwing our bodies at the glass, trying to reach across an impossible void and just… be there.
One evening, when the sky had melted into bruised purples and oranges and we’d stopped outside a rundown convenience store to refuel both the bikes and ourselves, Kane came back with a pack of cigarettes despite neither of us being real smokers.
It was just like how we drove those damn bikes like our lives depended on it.
We did it for Thorne. We leaned against our bikes in the cooling air, passing the cig back and forth while the engines ticked softly, the smoke curling upward into the dusk.
Rafe hovered at first, uncertain, then slowly he stepped between us.
He didn’t look at either of us. He simply reached over, plucked the cigarette from my lips like it was the most natural thing in the world, and slid it between his own, inhaling shallowly before letting the smoke drift from his mouth.
His hands shook as he lifted them to sign, the movements broken and stiff from the damage in his hands, but the effort was unmistakable.
Thorne, is she okay? he asked.
My eyes burned instantly, and when I glanced toward Kane, his were glassy too, the two of us sharing a tortured look over Rafe’s bowed head.
I swallowed down a sob as Kane lifted a shaky hand and returned, Yeah, Rafe.
Our little flame is better than okay. She’s going to kill Viktor. Won’t that be something?
After a week of silence, days of wondering if he was still trapped somewhere we couldn’t reach, Rafe huffed around a proud smile and flicked the cigarette to the ground, crushing it under his boot.
It was the first pieces of him that came back, the piece that was grieving Thorne, the piece that loved Creed, and the piece that wanted Viktor dead.
It was the same pieces that came back for all of us, really.
Thorne…it wasn’t just missing someone; it was like missing a limb, such a vital fucking part of our bodies that there wasn’t much we could do except stitch it back on with the blood of the man who’d set all our tragedies into motion.
It was why I preferred an ending of retribution instead of revenge.
Revenge is personal. It’s about satisfaction.
Retribution…it’s restoring balance. Killing Viktor was rooted in personal trauma for all of Creed, but it was so much more than that.
It was about stopping an injustice that the world had decided to turn a blind eye to.
We were Death, but we were no longer expensive.
At that point, anyone hurt by S.I.N. could’ve simply just looked our way, and I knew we’d only pose three questions.
Kane would ask if they were ever hit when they couldn’t fight back; Rafe would ask if they were ever forced to do anything they didn’t want to, like having a rifle held at their head; and I would ask, without an ounce of hesitation—how alive do you want them to be when they start to burn?
Viktor’s trail led us toward familiar places, and the second the three of us realized the ugly truth, we no longer looked for leads.
We knew where he was. He’d never fucking left.
As if we were still nothing to him. I ripped through bend after bend in the roads that had risen my price, Thorne’s eighteen-year-old ghost flickering ahead.
We passed the lot where he’d given out assignments to the thieving crew; past the place in the city that I knew would take us to that overlook where I had my first real kiss; and we didn’t slow until we approached those iron gates, all three of us switching our headlights off.
The estate glowed with vibrancy at the top of a hill, the winding driveway filled with luxury cars.
Viktor Shaw knew we were coming for him, and he didn’t fucking care.
He didn’t bother to move or hide, and I couldn’t help the sick I felt.
A few weeks. That’s all it took to trace him back to that fucking hell, and yet the authorities had left him untouched.
Eight fucking extra years of tormenting kids, picking up little Leahs and Ardens and Rafes and Kanes and Thornes all across the country.
He wasn’t even trying to hide in the slightest, and every fucking car in that driveway belonged to a Buyer.
They were in that house raping kids and stealing light and no one had done anything to stop it.
“I don’t know about you,” Kane said suddenly, his boots planted on the ground as he straddled his bike, cracking his knuckles and gritting his teeth. “But I’ve got eight years of torment in desperate need of exchanging and it looks like we just got really fucking lucky.”
I placed down my kickstand and swung off my bike, shoving a hand into my pocket and skimming my fingers over Viktor’s lighter. “Agreed,” I said and walked to the gate, grabbing the handle and yanking it back.
It wasn’t even locked.
My rage flared to a newfound height, but I forced myself not to be impulsive.
“Just remember…” I turned back to them, and my eyes caught Rafe’s.
It was the most present he seemed since we rescued him, the black in his eyes not hollow but starving.
He looked between me and that estate, and he reached for the rifle stashed in his bike’s compartment.
It was disassembled one second, then whole in the next.
Even with his fragile hands, he put that gun together like his life depended on it.
He’d stolen it at a combo Gas and Guns only a few days earlier.
He’d gotten a gun for Kane too, since I still had my Glock, but Kane refused and threw his into a ditch as we drove away.
I was worried, at first, about Rafe having a rifle in his state, but if anything, the thing was like a safety blanket.
Just holding it seemed to bring those gold flecks in his eyes back to life.
I signed, There’s kids in there. Innocent kids. We can’t just storm this place. I looked between them. We get the kids out or at least all in one area that we can contain. Then we fuck up their party.
We might lose Viktor, Kane said. He’s still at this estate because of ego, but if he catches wind of actually being found, he’ll run.
Then we’ll hunt, I promised, but we will not let those kids get hurt any further.
Swear it. If you can’t go in there with a level head, then you sit this out.
I gave Rafe a firm look. There is no shame in staying out of the fucking way to save an innocent life.
Then I glared at Kane. Do not be selfish. Not right now.
If I was selfish, Kane said, signing slowly and locking his cold gaze with mine, I wouldn’t have tossed that gun aside.
I dipped my chin and we both looked to Rafe.
He was glaring past me at the estate. Then he cocked his rifle and dragged his eyes to mine. The tiniest bit of steadfast love leaked from him as he signed, Lead the way, Mrs. Creed. Pain broke across his face, his wrapped fingers shaking with the words. We have your back.
It wasn’t lost on me that he’d said the same only minutes before we lost Thorne, and I knew that history was repeating itself, but so had pain and sorrow and sometimes by some miracle, hope. We lost a limb that day, but what was a limb to corpses? What was a body or even a heart?
Viktor, I decided as I thrust open the gate and strode up that driveway, had taken enough from us. He bred monstrous products, and we would make good on his investment.