Page 28 of Colt
“I said no.” I kept my eyes forward. “Know your place.”
She started to say something else. I heard it beginning—something about knowing what I needed, something about letting her help.
“Didn’t any of you learn anything from what happened to Crystal?”
She went still. Then she was gone, slipping off the stool without another word.
Holden was three stools down. I heard him set his glass on the bar. He didn’t come over, didn’t look my way—just let the silence settle, which is what everyone did when Crystal’s name came up. The club had absorbed that lesson in blood, the way all the real lessons get absorbed. Club girls who mistake proximity for power. Who think what happens inside these wallsis currency they can spend on the outside. A brother used a club girl the way he used anything else that took the edge off a bad night. Nothing given back. No warmth implied, no claim granted, no morning after that meant anything. The women who accepted that did fine. The ones who decided it was something else—Crystal was what happened when that went all the way to its conclusion.
I didn’t feel righteous about it. It wasn’t a speech. It was just the only name that ended things cleanly.
I wanted to be left alone. And I was for twenty minutes until Glitch wandered over. “Surveillance room,” he said. No preamble. “You should hear this.”
The room smelled like old coffee and electrical heat. Six screens. The main display cycling through city camera feeds. He pulled a monitor around to face me and sat down.
“I was focused on the six months before,” he said. “Now we know what happened then.” He pulled up the first screen. “So I went digging again. At her life since.”
Glitch pulled up a new file. Appointment records in a clean column, seven years deep. Neuropsychological therapy, every three months, never missed. Headache management protocols. Sleep monitoring.
“Night terrors,” he said. “Years of them. Waking up screaming. She couldn’t tell anyone what from—just the fear. Some of it has settled.” He paused. “Not all.”
I thought about that. Waking up terrified in the dark for years and not knowing why. Going to appointments for injuries she had no context for. Being treated for damage from a night she couldn’t remember.
She’d been doing it for seven years. Without knowing what she was carrying, without knowing where any of it came from.
“The treatment isn’t cheap,” Glitch said. “She’s worked a string of part-time jobs over the years. Retail, admin, the librarygig she has now. Income’s covered the boys—food, clothes, school stuff. The medical bills are a different story. Iron Wolves have been carrying those. Betty and Graham both chipped in whatever they could on top.”
He brought up another window. Employment records, tax filings, a rental history that showed the same modest address for years before moving here with Betty.
“She didn’t want the help,” he said. “Took awhile before she accepted it. But she did it for them.” He paused. “No holidays. Eats at home. A cheap, reliable car.” Another pause. “The boys have everything they need. Little bit extra, even. She made sure of that.”
I looked at the column of appointments on the screen. Four times a year, seven years, her name at the top of each one. Her maiden name. Not Spencer.
“I want the full list,” I said. “Everyone at Death’s Head who knew what happened that night and kept their mouths shut.”
“Already building it.”
?
The night had gone cold.
I found a spot near the new addition and stood with my back against the wall, looking at what Dutch had built. Two weeks and it would be a thing you could walk through, run a business out of, bring someone home to. Dutch and Indira’s future in concrete and lumber. He’d built it because she made him understand that the only way forward was forward, and he’d finally decided to build a better future.
I thought about Lilac in Betty’s living room earlier today. The way she’d held herself braced, arms folded, waiting for whatever I was going to do with the space she’d given me.
She used to fall asleep against my shoulder on long hauls. Dead weight, completely under, trusting me so absolutely she didn’t even stir when I shifted. I’d carry her to bed those nights because I couldn’t bring myself to wake her.
Seven years of appointments. Years of waking up screaming from nightmares that didn’t have faces. Two boys she raised alone on a librarian’s salary, making sure the medication got filled and the rent got paid and neither of those kids went to bed without knowing they were loved.
Louisville moves when Colt’s ready.
I thought about the boys. Both of them looking up at me with those green eyes I hadn’t known existed until days ago.
If I had known, I would have been there every single day.
I knew now.
That didn’t change what she’d said in that living room. That she needed time. That she couldn’t give me anything yet, maybe not ever, and I had to sit with that and not push. I’d said I understood. I’d meant it.
