Chapter 20 #3
“London,” I say. Her name is a key in my chest. It turns and something old opens. “Taken when we were kids.” I let my thumb count against her pulse. “Leven knew we needed a way to punch above our weight and get out alive. We all fund it, all bleed for it.”
For a second we both just breathe. Then I pull out the folded photo that never leaves my pocket and set it on the coffee table.
“Every man I cut sees her first,” I tell Lindy.
“I show them who I’m carving for. I make them look, and then I ask what they know.
If they know nothing, they bleed for someone who does.
If they know something, I take it and keep going. ”
“When did they take her?” she asks.
“She was five. Pink princess dress she refused to take off. She’d sleep in it until Uncle Leven bribed it off her to wash, then the cycle started again.
Adrian taught her to read too early and thought it was hilarious.
This tiny thing sounding out street signs and cereal boxes.
Caleb built her a fort, but it wasn’t some kid thing with sheets.
It was wood, even then he could craft shit way beyond his years.
She called it a castle, forced us to pay a candy tax to get in.
The triplets were thirteen then, Adrian fourteen, and Caleb eight.
London could get us all to play castle any time, play anything.
We worshipped her. Eland drafted admission contracts for her in crayon, Evie handled security by lifting every fake lock she could imagine.
Elsie patched skinned knees with a surgeon’s seriousness.
By then their fates were already sealed, as were mine and my brothers.
Leven knew what he’d need as our empire grew and he shaped his children into it: lawyer, thief, surgeon. ”
I clear my throat. “London was born when my parents were still alive. When my father, Alistair, and his brother shared the same property. Leven didn’t plan on more kids after his triplets.
It was loud and crowded, but so easy. Simmering soups and Mom laughing with Auntie in the kitchen.
” A breath. “After my mom was gone, London kept the dark from eating us alive. She was the accident that saved the house. Exactly what we needed when we didn’t even know what we were missing.
Atlas was her shadow, same age, same trouble.
” My voice goes rough. “I carried her when she fell asleep in the wrong places. She always fell asleep in the wrong places.”
Lindy touches the edge of the picture like it might bruise. London’s grin eats half her face. A jelly stain ghosts the corner from a life that doesn’t exist anymore. “Leven is married?”
“Leven was married. It took us years to find their bodies,” I say.
“All he had to go on was an abandoned car and tire tracks in dust the cops smudged with their boots. Spiderweb was barely a rumor then. Leven started making calls he swore he’d never make and put men who hate each other in the same room and told them to aim in one direction. ”
“Your mother and aunt, they were together?”
“Yes.” I keep my voice flat. “They ran Mom and Auntie off the road. What they did before they killed them isn’t something I’m going to put in your head.”
She doesn’t look away. “Why,” she asks. “Why them. Why your family?”
“Because of who we are,” I say. “Because this city never had room for two crowns. For as long as there’s been light in this valley, an Ashenheart has owned the dark.
My great-great-grandfather, Gideon, hauled liquor through the desert during Prohibition.
” Lindy stills for half a heartbeat then nods for me to go on.
“He had boy girl twins, Valentina and Victor, absolute powerhouses. Valentina was a spitfire and brokered a lot of deals that back then women normally couldn’t touch.
My cousin Evie takes after her. Valentina stayed single, but she and Victor were dead center when the first casinos rose out of dust and money started pouring in.
My grandfather, Ronan, with his siblings, locked in our territory.
Uncle Leven and my father, Alistair, inherited a city that already knew the rules: you don’t touch women, you don’t touch kids, and if you want to do business in Vegas, you pay the Ashenheart house first.”
“A crime family,” she says, but there’s no judgment in it.
“Top family,” I correct. “That buys you a lot of enemies. Spiderweb wanted to prove Gods could bleed.”
Her fingers close around mine; she threads them between the letters on my right hand, braving the past with me. “To try to take your place in the city,” she says.
“Yes.” I nod. “But all they did was give the monsters a common target. The Italians, the Bratva, Dead Man’s Hand, the badges who stand with us, we’ve all lost to Spider at some point.
We don’t pretend we’re clean. We move guns, wash money, tax doors, run our territories.
But the Accord has one law carved in bone: no innocents.
You break it, you vanish. Spiderweb breaks it as policy.
That’s the difference. That’s why we hunt them.
And we don’t stop until the fucking thing is ash. ”
“But why London?”
I slide a second photo over. Christmas lights, triplets in the middle, London in that pink dress. “Fifteen years ago, we cut close to the center. We found a leg that touched it and took a grown son off the board, a man the center loved.” My jaw locks. “They answered by taking London.”
“Five,” Lindy whispers, testing the age against the horror of it.
“Five,” I confirm. “We’ve never found a body. We’ve never stopped looking. The Accord was born inside that vow.”
She nods once, absorbing, not pitying. Her thumb smooths the jelly stain like she can press time back into place. Her fingers tighten over my knuckles. “I hate that you never got to choose,” she says quietly. “I hate that you were made into a weapon.”
“I did choose, darling. No one put the knife in my hand that first time. I chose to carve the life out of my father’s throat. Everything after that was Leven making sure we survived and stayed powerful enough no one could do that to us again.”
“But no one else does what you do.”
“No,” I kiss her cheek because I need a breath. “I made a pact with Leven the night I killed my father. He’d already been avenging Mom and Auntie for two years then. I told him I’d be what he needed, would become the Machine, so my brothers wouldn’t have to. Ever.”
She kisses each letter on my knuckles. “Make a new pact. With me. When the darkness tries to eat you, hand some to me. Don’t carry it alone. Don’t disappear.”
“Deal,” I say. “I owe you one last truth.” I take her hand, press her palm flat to my sternum, and tap three, five, seven against my heart.
“I married you because I can’t let you be used against me.
Not because of courtrooms. I don’t give a fuck about that.
If you ever decided to testify, to turn on me, I’d drive you there myself and wait in the hall.
” My jaw flexes. “But what you don’t realize, what I didn’t realize fully until I thought I’d lost you, is that you cut me off at the knees, Lindy.
This was never about leashing you. It’s about leverage.
Every enemy I’ve ever made will figure that out.
It’s a suicide mission to take you from me, but some will try.
My name will protect you from most, but not all. ”
My thumb strokes the inside of her wrist, gentle where the plastic burned.
“I have to teach you how to survive me. Survive what follows me. Make you dangerous enough that even the suicidal ones think twice.” I steady my breath.
“And also, I will never be done wanting you. You, my Lindy darling, are my every thought, my every breath. That will never change. All of that is true at once.”
“Okay.” She shifts closer, knee pressed to my thigh. “Then teach me to survive you. And the world that comes with you.”
I bracket her hips between my hands, bring my forehead to hers.
“Training won’t be kind. I’ll gag you so you learn to breathe through panic.
Tie you so you learn the angles of escape.
Put you in the dark so your brain stops lying to you.
I will push—” I kiss her brow, a promise stamped in skin “—and I will pull you back. Every time.”
“I owe you a truth too,” she says.
“If you haven’t guessed by now, I know everything about you Lindy.
” There’s so much I know about her, so much Adrian has fed me that I can’t imagine her saying anything surprising.
My mind runs a fast audit anyway. Is she about to say she’s leaving?
No, she wouldn’t, not now. Did Adrian miss something?
Doubtful. Is there anything she could say that would change what I feel?
Maybe what I do next. Maybe who I have to be for her. But no, not how I feel.
“You don’t know this.”
“Say it.”
“I’m going to tell you a thing that sounds impossible, and you can’t fix it for me, Cassius.”
“Whatever it is, darling, we’ll be okay.”
“Have you ever felt a room tilt?” she asks. “No one walks in, but the air changes. Mine do that all the time because someone has walked in.”
“Go on,” I say. My thumb taps my knife to keep from reaching for her.
“This isn’t a metaphor.” She twists her ring three times before making herself stop. “The air literally has weight for me, voices, shapes who follow me. They follow you.”
My jaw sets. “You hallucinate?” She’s gotta be going somewhere clinical with this, right? I just have to give her space to talk this out.
“No.” She doesn’t blink. “I experience people after they’re gone. They crowd rooms. They’re loud around you. The world has always had an extra layer for me.”
I breathe in deep through my nose. “How long?”