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ELEVEN

Jamie

The smell of coffee hit me a second before the sound of someone shifting at the edge of the bed. I cracked one eye open to find Rio sitting there, calm as anything, holding out a mug.

He was already dressed for work in his faded Redcars T-shirt, the sleeves snug over his biceps, and jeans streaked with grease at the thigh.

His expression was unreadable—but not closed.

He looked like someone waiting to continue a conversation he’d already started in his head.

I had been half-expecting him to confront me the next morning, but it took him two nights and a full day to finally speak up.

He’d ignored me at work yesterday, and for a while, I’d convinced myself that he didn’t know what I’d done, but he’d known .

And now it was time to pay the piper.

“Morning,” I muttered, sitting up and taking the mug. The heat of it felt good against my fingers.

Rio didn’t smile, just leaned forward, elbows on his knees, his posture casual, but I braced myself for the storm. When he showed up with this tension in him, it was because it mattered.

I mattered to him.

“What did you do?” he asked. There was no judgment in the question. Just a quiet need to know. Just Rio, being who he always was—steady, grounded, someone who could look at the ugliest thing about you and not flinch. I sipped the coffee before I answered.

He was to me what others would call a best friend, but he was also the lightning rod to my storm.

We were both angry men, sharp around the edges in ways that didn’t always show.

But where Rio threw his fists, I threw fire.

He’d grown up fighting in alleys and gyms, learning control and earning cash with his fists.

I’d grown up behind a keyboard and a wall of flames, learning to make something burn enough to vanish and give me what I needed.

He’d seen me early on—really seen me. Not the smart mouth, twitchy hands, or half-smiles I used to deflect people.

He’d pulled me into the garage as one of Tudor’s rescues, handed me tools with grease still on the handles, and told me cars were simple.

If something broke, you fixed it. If you didn’t know how, you learned.

I already liked the big old muscle cars, and I took to mechanics like a duck to water.

He acted as if he was way older than me when, in fact, he only had five years on me.

“Stick with these over killing,” he’d said once, wiping his hands on a rag while I stared at the guts of a rebuilt V8. “It’s slower. Makes you breathe.”

I tried.

I stayed away from computers for a while. Let the fire rest. I focused on things I could hold and fix with patience instead of destruction. Tried, for once, to be something close to normal. But some nights, the itch came back in nightmares. One night, it had gotten too loud.

This half-collapsed house wasn’t far from the shop—forgotten, empty, but still standing as if it had something to prove.

Dealers had used it for years. A hole in the world no one would miss.

I slit the throat of the man inside, then lit it without thinking.

I watched it go up like a matchstick palace, the flames licking high and hot, and I stood there until the heat got too close and the happiness settled in my chest .

Rio found me. He’d followed me, watched my back, and didn’t yell. Didn’t lay into me. Just stood beside me in the dark, watching the building crack and groan as it fell. Then, he’d grabbed my arm, pulled me toward the truck, and said quietly, “You done?”

I hadn’t answered. Couldn’t. He hadn’t waited for me to explain; he told me not to be so fucking stupid and drove us back to Redcars in silence.

Later, when I’d stopped shaking, when I could finally look him in the eye again, he said, “You want to burn something, you can. But you have to talk to me first, and I’ll have your back, and you have control. That’s the deal.”

“And if I don’t?”

He’d stared at me, then made me promise. And I did.

Then Stockton had happened. Somehow, he’d taken control of me and made himself my safe place.

Now, sitting on my bed like it was his right, he was waiting and letting the silence stretch until I filled it.

“I did what I had to,” I said finally, not quite looking at him.

I’d lost control, seen Ricardo with his hands on Killian, and the red mist had descended.

I’d only been there to watch, following up on a pattern I’d analyzed with three missing men, and somehow, it had become a rescue mission.

I only meant to get them away. I hadn’t meant to kill.

But Ricardo had touched Killian.

How did I explain that to Rio?

Rio’s eyes didn’t waver. “Don’t bullshit me, Jamie.”

“I’m not.”

“How many did you kill?”

“Three, people-traffickers. I burned to cover it up is all.” I glanced up at him. “I didn’t go there intending to burn.”

He didn’t move, didn’t flinch. Just breathed slowly and deeply.

“You could’ve told me where you were going.”

“I didn’t plan on burning anything.”

“You felt it coming.”

I didn’t deny it. I’d felt the need for days, and part of me had known I was going to let it out, but I thought I’d have time to talk to Rio, to keep my promise to tell him.

Rio sighed. “I don’t care what it is you need or why. I need to know so I can protect you.”

My throat felt tight.

“I know,” I said. “I do. ”

His hand touched my shoulder gently—no squeeze, no lecture. And for a second, I could breathe again. “Tell me what happened.”

“Killian was there,” I said quietly.

Rio’s eyes widened, not in surprise—more as if he’d been expecting that name to come up sooner or later.

“And?” he asked, voice still calm. Still Rio .

I took another sip of coffee. It had cooled, but I barely tasted it.

The words sat heavy on my tongue, not because I was ashamed, but because saying them out loud meant they were real.

I couldn’t pretend it was just a moment, something that hadn’t sunk its teeth in.

“Jamie, talk to me? Did he see you kill? Did he see you burn?”

“Yes.”

“Jesus, Jamie!”

“And I went to his place,” I blurted. “After.”

I set the mug down on the nightstand and rubbed a hand over my jaw. I wasn’t shaking, but something in me felt loose. Raw. Like skin scraped too thin.

“He saw it,” I said. “The whole thing. The kids, the blood. He didn’t stop me.

Just… watched. Then, he got the kids away, okay?

So, that was good, right?” Rio didn’t interrupt.

He knew how to listen. How to wa it without pressing.

“I think he hated me for what I did,” I continued.

“Or maybe I hated myself. I couldn’t tell.

But I didn’t want him to fix any of the noise.

I didn’t want to see him after to talk. I just—” I blew out a breath.

“I forced him to put me on my knees,” I said, finally.

The words hung in the air, heavy and absolute. No shame. No apology. Just the truth.

“I needed that,” I added, voice lower now.

“Not comfort. Not redemption. Just… control. I needed him to take it. To push me down and remind me there was still something stronger than the chaos in my head.” Rio was quiet, eyes unreadable.

“I didn’t want to fall apart,” I said, staring at the blankets bunched in my lap.

“Not in front of him. So I gave him something else. Let him pretend it was about sex. Let myself pretend.”

“But it wasn’t just that?”

“It never is.”

“You trust him that much?” Rio asked, tone careful now.

I looked up at him. “I don’t know why,” I said. “It’s fucking stupid, I know.”

Rio exhaled. His hand lifted from my shoulder. He leaned back a little, giving me space but not moving away. “No,” he said. “It’s not stupid. It’s risky. But not stupid.” He studied me for a long moment, then added, “Just tell me one thing—was he what you needed in that moment?”

I didn’t even have to think. “Yeah. He was.”

Rio nodded. “Then, I don’t give a fuck what it looks like to anyone else.”

That meant more than I could say. Because if Rio had judged me, I didn’t know what I’d do. Maybe nothing. Maybe everything. He was the line I didn’t want to cross.

“You know I’ve got you, right?” he said, more serious now. “No matter what.”

I nodded. “I know.” And I did. Because when the world burned, Rio was the one person who’d never let me go up with it.

“But if you go off alone again, bring that shit to Redcars, around Cassidy, around Robbie, I swear, I will smack you into next week.”

The garage was quiet.

Rio was out on a delivery, Enzo was picking up parts, and Logan was still away with his man down in San Diego. I was the one here to watch over things, and I wandered past the lineup of half-gutted engines, caught a whiff of oil and something sweet—vanilla, maybe cinnamon. Sugar.

When I passed the doorway to the little kitchen off the break room, I caught sight of Robbie hunched in a chair, one knee pulled up to his chest, a worn hoodie bunched at the elbows.

He had a couple of coding books spread out in front of him, old-school hardcovers with cracked spines and faded print.

I slowed.

“Those are ancient,” I said, grabbing a cookie from the cooling rack. “ Perl isn’t even a current coding language anymore. It’s practically digital Latin.”

Robbie looked up, then down at the open page as if he was only just realizing what he’d been reading. “Yeah, I figured. It mentioned something called CGI scripts, and I had to Google what the hell that even meant.”

I snorted. “Jesus. That’s, like, GeoCities-era shit.”

He smiled, a little crooked. “They were in a box in the upstairs office. I thought they might be useful.”

“They’re not,” I said, chewing. “But the fact that you were willing to read them? That is .” I leaned against the counter, grabbed another of the cookies cooling on a rack, still warm. “You know you can just Google that stuff and get something way more current, right?”

“I like books,” he said with a shrug. “Easier to focus.”