Chapter seventeen
Riven
“Yup, ok then. Just a double cheeseburger, loaded fries, and a chocolate shake for me.” Hatchie gathers up all the menus and politely hands them to her. Her smile is saccharine sweet as she walks away.
“You really are something, Hatchet.” Skylar laughs, leaning back in her seat.
“Yeah. A jackass.” Shane retorts, folding his napkin into a swan.
“You say jackass. I say 'food connoisseur.'” Hatchie corrects.
“It’s connoisseur, not coniswinger, idiot.” Shane looks appalled.
“Hey, don’t you think Roxy’s been gone a while? She should be back by now.” Skylar asks.
“Well, not all of us can be smarty pants like you. Using fancy words like ‘furthermore’ and ‘ado’. Like, what the fuck is ‘ado’?” Hatchie bulldozes right past her. She’s not wrong though. Roxy went to the bathroom right after… Nadia did. Oh fuck.
I’m on my feet just as the bathroom door busts open and Roxy is launched right out of it, taking a nasty tumble onto the floor.
Nadia saunters out soon after, the epitome of cool composure.
That familiar facade of glacial aggression.
A cold-blooded killer on the loose, ready to tear those who cross her limb from limb. And right now, Roxy has crossed her.
Roxy stumbles to her hands and knees, blood dripping from multiple cuts on her face and what looks like a broken nose.
“Nadia?” Abigail Spencer stands, coming closer, but deliberately not touching her. In fear that she’ll snap.
“I tried. I really tried. No matter how much she pisses me off, I left her alone. I stayed out of her way. But she had to go and provoke me, Abby.” She watches Roxy as she tries to crawl back to our table.
“Do something!” Hatchie shouts at me. Nadia sends a kick to her ribs that has her falling flat, and presses her boot into her spine.
“They should know better, Abby. I’m not someone to be provoked.” She presses harder, reaching into the boot on Roxy's foot to pull out a switchblade.
“Nadia, stop it! Right now!” Skylar warns, taking out her own blade from her own boot. A trick that Nadia taught her when they first met.
“Or what, Sky? You know how it is, LBC versus Phantoms. She started shit, and now I’m not allowed to finish it?” She rolls Roxy onto her back and straddles her hips.
“How is that fair?”
“What happened?” Deck gets down on his haunches next to her. “
She said some things. Dug herself a grave.” Nadia shrugs.
“You don’t wanna do this. Not really. Your emotions are running high. You’re scattered, all over the place. You’ll regret this later.” Deck tries to reason with her.
They don’t understand. Her father molded her.
Broke her bit by bit and remade her in his image to be his herald of war.
She always described it as a switch in her head.
Whenever she was pushed too far, whenever she had to defend herself or someone she loved, whenever she had an important task assigned to her.
A switch was flipped, and god protect anyone who got in her way when she was in a state like this.
Only, there is no god capable of saving Roxy right now.
“Riven. Stop this. It ends now.” Shane whispers to me alone, always the voice of reason.
“You wanted her to suffer. To feel the pain that she made you feel. Take a good look.” He gestures to Nadia, her knife hovering on Roxy’s neck.
“She’s suffering. Mission accomplished. Now end this.” He pleads.
Ignoring everything else, I step forward and get on my knees. She doesn’t look at me, but I know she can feel me. I feel her no matter where in the world she is. I always feel her. Tucking her hair behind her ear, I palm her neck.
“What’d she do?” I talk to her, only her.
“Why the fuck would you care? Why do you assume I’m innocent?” She sneers.
“Because, like it or not, baby, I know you. I know you’d never start shit when your crew’s unprepared. When Isla is pregnant and unable to defend herself.”
“Sure. But you also know her .” She continues to look Roxy dead in the eye.
“Probably gave her all that juicy information and sent her in there to fuck with me. Jokes on you, you sent her to her grave.” She smiles. An icy yet burning smile.
“What information?” I narrow my eyes, confused.
Now , she looks at me. The raw, unfiltered pain in her eyes cuts me open.
Shane was right. I wanted her to hurt. Once upon a time, Nadia was the calm to my storm.
I wasn’tstill notright in the head, but that didn’t matter.
Because no matter what was going on with me, she was always there to talk me down.
To listen to me. To understand me. She was my safe place.
And to someone as fucked up as I am, having something, someone like that was sacred.
But then, she went and pulled the rug right from under me and let me fall deeper into my own insanity.
She left me, and I spiraled. I became this monster, this manifestation of hate, this plague on the world and the one I cared about the most. I hated myself, and I wanted to do any and everything I could to die.
So, yeah. I wanted her to feel even a fraction of the agony I felt when she left me. I got what I wanted.
“You told her everything .” Betrayal mars her perfect face.
“Every single thing I ever told you about myself. All my most shameful secrets. Everything I told you at my most vulnerable. I thought I was sharing it with someone I could trust, but obviously not because you turn and tell it to her. You betrayed me for her .”
There’s nothing I can say. Nothing I can do to defuse this situation. Because I don’t know what was said and from the sound of it, I fucked up even worse than I thought. The bell above the diner door rings, signaling the arrival of a new player.
I’m roughly pushed away by a calloused hand, but I stop as I go to retaliate. A furious-looking Pop glares right back at me, daring me to do something. To finally give him a reason to declare war on the Phantoms and put me in a box six feet under.
I don’t. Instead, I stand down.
Huffing, Pop turns to Nadia and drags her off Roxy.
If she really wanted to, she could easily get back to Roxy, but I see the fight has drained out of her.
The switch firmly turned off and back into place.
It seems our little moment has brought her some clarity.
Hatchie gently lifts Roxy into his arms, Shane and Skylar guarding him.
“Easy, trouble. I’ve got you.”
“Why are you here?” Nadia’s a shell of a person, leaning all her weight on Pop.
“Betty called.”
“Oh.” She mumbles, barely coherent. She’s crashing, and she’s crashing hard.
“C’mon, let’s get out of here.” He leads her out of the diner. Not before he administers one last warning.
“This isn’t over, Devereaux.” No, it isn’t. I look at Roxy, lying unconscious in Hatchet’s arms.
“Get her patched up,” I ordered.
“On it, boss.” Hatchie takes all of two steps before he looks at Betty over his shoulder.
“Hey, do you think you could pack up all of our food to-go!” He runs outta the diner when Betty throws her shoe at him.
“Ok, damn, I’m gone.”