by Elena Monroe
A broken heart didn’t leave room to be a gentleman.
The taste of him downplaying her effect over me left my tolerance for stupidity real low. Justice was the kind of girl who kicked you while you were down and destroyed and spat on your grave for hurting her.
She had me by the balls, heart strings, and mind that couldn’t make sense of up and down right now.
“I like you better… human.” Sitting back, I could see him looking for Abigail in the other room, and it dawned on me that we were more alike than ever—both pussy whipped.
Three weeks later
“Bowen, I swear to god, if you don’t get down here in the next 20 minutes, I’m going to pour out all the liquor in your house!”
Khaos was standing on a skateboard waiting for the group to move, and Grimm was just as bored as normal, just in a new scenery.
“He’ll catch up.” Khaos tried to make the mood lighter, while he flipped his board under his feet, landing perfectly, like he always did.
Bowen’s Aston Martin flew into the parking lot with blatant disregard for everyone waiting on him to show up. He even missed my rally speech and everything about today—the march against birth control funding being yanked.
We all watched Bowen slip out of his car holding up a pink slip—a speeding ticket. “You’ll be taking care of this, your highness.”
Snatching the ticket from his fingers, I pushed a clipboard against his chest, demanding he fill it out silently. I was tracking every good deed I did to balance the scales: from simple things like holding doors, to every time I volunteered, donated, and led protests. Today’s march was included.
Shoving his ticket into my back pocket, I shot a glare in his direction, just as Meadow started to lead the charge, giving me a nod.
Justice might be gone, but I wasn’t going to stop being the person she made me realize I could be.
No masks.
No more Golden Boy left.
Every other part of me was put into hibernation and on ice, since Justice liberated me.
Granting myself the gift of a custom bullhorn, painted matte black with the Clave symbol and a broken peace sign. It was my way of marching for both of us while she was gone.
Throwing a sign to Bowen that read No Justice! No Peace! he looked at me like he had broken his hands and holding something was just not a possibility. I looked at the guys who should have been used to the new me, working its way to being permanent.
“Can you all pretend to be happy to be here?”
Khaos stopped performing tricks, swapping out his ripped shirt for a black one with pink letters with the same phrase as the sign.
She was in everything I did now, motivating me, and challenging me still to do better.
“This is as happy as my face gets on a few hours of sleep. Abigail is nesting now.” Grimm wasn’t trying to be funny, even though the guys all broke out in an awkward laugh.
Turning on my feet, I pressed my Ray Bans onto the bridge of my nose and pulled my hair in a low bun, marching forward metaphorically, leaving their bullshit behind me.
Khaos skated by me. “We need a new nickname for this soft Vic version now. Vic the Stick? No. Vicy the Hippie?”
“Start using that, and bad things will happen to you.”
Smiling over his shoulder like the little shit he was, he said, “Like what? Vicy the Hippie is against violence.”
The new me was against violence, only when my hands didn’t shake and the pain of her absence didn’t beg me to pull a trigger. I was working on a sliding scale, with all the good outweighing my bad.
I was still at the soup kitchen every weekend and taking Meadow’s sunrise yoga every morning with Abigail, to Grimm’s dismay, sneaking her out. She couldn’t be in better hands, and let’s be real: Who is assassinating someone before the sun is up?
On the other hand, I was putting in orders for topless maids every week and praying she would show up at my door. No one was ever her though, forcing me to close the door on what would have been a typical night for me before she ruined me the way I promised to ruin her.
The good outweighed the bad.
My phone buzzed against the inside of my pocket, cutting through my attention like a knife. I had been waiting for a call back for weeks from Justice. I shoved the bullhorn into Grimm walking next to me, letting the crowd march on without me. The unknown number wasn’t actually that unknown. I had been calling Justice and her Grams too, almost every day after Grimm finally handed over her number.
Answering the phone, I held onto my breath, when I heard an older woman's voice come through. “So you’re the guy responsible for her bad attitude.”
A nervous laugh erupted from me. I had never dated anyone long enough to give them the idea that I would want to speak to anyone important to them.
Besides her.
“I’m so glad you called me back…” The Clave mask slipped back into place, polishing all my stained edges in the hopes of impressing her.
“Didn’t give me much of a choice, since you’ve been calling me every day. Is there something I can help you with?” Her voice showed her age, but her mouth was a family heirloom passed down to Justice.
“I love Justice very much. I wanted to express this to you and prove that I deserve her hand in marriage.”
Laughter poured in from the other end of the phone. “You don’t take no for an answer, do you? If she wanted to marry you, I don’t think she would have evacuated LA like a natural disaster was headed her way.”
“Respectfully, no. I don’t lose gracefully.”
“Go on. I’m gonna need to hear you express those feelings,” she said, but not with an iron fist. Her voice sounded tired and worried for Justice.
“Okay… I’m not a great person, but I’m a better person because of her. I want to be good enough to deserve her.”
“Oh, honey, she wasn’t always a good person either, and don’t you let her forget it. Wicked girls like her can’t forget to be humble. You know what I’m going to ask… the good stuff.”
I swallowed hard, pacing with the phone to my ear, knowing she wanted the truth and was testing me by making me say it out loud.
She wanted the darkness just as much as Justice.
She was challenging me just as much as Justice did.
“I don’t know why she left, but I’ll give her space if that’s what she needs. Neither of us have been in love before…”
“She’s not easy to love, but if you keep trying, you’ll get inside those walls. Call me tomorrow, dear. Same time.”
For a split second, I heard Justice’s voice shout to her Grams, and I closed my eyes, muting my world just to focus on her.
When the line cut off, I still didn’t move, replaying her voice that I hadn’t heard in weeks inside my head.
I didn’t forfeit, lose, or even cheat this time, and I was still going to win her back.
JUSTICE
I was hiding at my Grams’s house, outside of LA, letting him win. I ran away. I didn’t fight it out. I didn’t wait for the truth to unfold.
I had a thick folder of truth screaming at me for letting myself love someone like Vic.
He didn’t have one good bone in his body.
His soul was Hell’s.
Injustice was his bread and butter, literally.
Being at Grams’s house was a kind of prison—a nice neighborhood that politely went quiet at 8:30. I didn’t fit in here. I had no purpose here.
Not yet.
I could smell pancakes and faux bacon filling the air as I padded down the stairs. Grams was pulling out all the stops having me here, and I could sense that she felt guilty for not telling me about the name change. But I understood why now; these people are dangerous.
Without a word, I poured my orange juice and sat at the island watching her buzz around.
“They’re never going to pay for what they did…” I was thinking out loud now.
The minute I arrived here, I told Grams everyth
ing. I told her about the Clave, the file, Vic’s dad and stepmom, the Hunt and how my parents actually died, letting it fill the emptiness.
His parents weren’t the only ones to blame… he was too.
Vic pointed the gun and shot my dad down when they were escaping, like a brainwashed cult member.
We both cried on her back porch, letting their memory finally feel laid to rest.
Laid to rest didn’t make the idea of them getting away with murder stop running circles around me.
“Then do something about it. You’re a smart girl.” Grams was a no bullshit kind of lady.
A plate appeared in front of me with the works, while I sipped the OJ, trying to figure out how I could make four powerful men pay for what they did to my parents.
Texting Meadow and Abigail was a daily task since I left LA. Both of them were cheering on this new and redeemed Vic that I wasn’t falling for.
A snake is a snake.
ME: Did you get me those addresses?
MEADOW: Just finished yoga class with your boyfriend. He won’t stop asking about you.
ME: Good for him. Not what I asked.
MEADOW: What do you plan to do with them?
ME: Just gonna send a message. You can’t murder people and live a happy life. They deserve to be scared.
MEADOW: Guess that means I’ll find my black beanie…
ME: I need Grace and Jasper too.
Grace was known for her sticky fingers and the ability to get expensive things to stick with ease. She could stick to just about anything and did because her lowlife boyfriend, Dove, was an abusive prick.
Meadow and I tried to get her out, but nothing we ever said made her feel safe enough to storm out of his grasp.
She was bad, but made up for it by being a part of the movement. Suddenly, her similarity to Vic shook me into thinking of him in a different way other than hate that I didn’t like.
Just having support made my brain unfold and plan the way I used to for rallies to solve the world’s problems. It had been weeks since I used this part of my brain.
If they lived in peace, I would be their destruction.
Taking a pancake on the go, I went back upstairs, rummaging through my bag, until I found the gun Vic gave me that only shot out a flame. Jumping on my old bed, I ripped down a poster and pulled the trigger putting the flame to the wall. Playing with the distance, I watched the pink walls turn a coffee color only where the blow torch hit as I snapped a peace sign.
Jumping down from my bed, I stared at my handy work, it was perfection.
This was the message I was going to leave each one of their fathers. I was going to open fire on their happy lives that my parents never got, that I never got, all because they bred four monsters to take their place.
I was in my room planning all day when my Grams knocked softly on the door, “Sweetie, dinner time. I brought it up for you.”
Opening the door, I took the plate through the opening and went to close the door again when her slipper stopped the door behind me.
“I know what he did is wrong. There’s no fixing that, but your youth was just as reckless…”
Putting the plate on the bedside table, I spun around, feeling attacked by her words, “Why does everyone defend him? You too? He’s a bad person, from an even worse family. The bad shit that happened to my mom and dad isn’t going to stop happening until someone stops them.”
“He was just a boy, Justice. Forgiving is the ultimate kind of peace.”
I stared her down in silence, until she left and closed the door behind her. Grabbing a pillow, I screamed into it with my fists buried in the material, trying to dispel the anger in a safe way.
Texting Meadow, I made it clear that this was happening tonight before anyone else had more unsolicited opinions.
I had waited long enough to react, for payback, with a message for Vic who was taking over my life in LA, like it would scream louder than his mistakes.
Ripping a black hoodie, skinny jeans, black Converse, and a black beanie from my closet, I threw them on the bed, preparing to be the shadow they will all be scared of.
I was the only one to make it out of the Clave with all of their secrets. I was the only threat to their fucked up ways.
Ordering an Uber for an hour from now, I had time to gather supplies for this war I’m starting and actually eat dinner. The space between meals seemed to be lost and blinded by my revenge plans.
Scarfing down my food seemed pretty stupid, once I thought about it and how nervous I might be. I didn’t want to leave DNA or evidence behind; I couldn’t, without leading them back to me.
I waited until Grams retired to her bedroom, when I snuck out like I was seventeen with a curfew again. With a duffle bag over my shoulder, hitting my ass with every step I took, I had anything we could possibly need to get in and out without being seen. That’s where Jasper came into play. He lived in Seattle, but he was always in LA for the big protests and was always available for hacking help.
Tonight, I wanted him with us just in case anything happened that we couldn’t handle. I had only ever been to Vic’s dad’s place, no one else's. I had no idea what we would walk into and that part thrilled me about getting even. It was a risk, but one that was worth it.
Before I closed the door, I could hear Grams cough, a deep kind of cough that only fueled my rage.
Grams wasn’t getting any younger, and soon I would be an orphan with no more family ties. That alone made me hate the Clave for taking away the people meant to be here for me long after Grams.
Getting in the Uber, I realized I looked like a bank robber on the lam, and I thought about coming up with some kind of excuse. I decided it wasn’t worth it, and LA was much further away than I remembered. I was in the safety of my own bubble when I let my mind drift to Vic and what he could be doing right now.
If it was trouble or this good boy act he was upholding that people couldn’t stop falling for.
I forced the driver to stop a few houses down when we arrived at the address Meadow sent me for all their dads. I hadn’t taken in the neighborhood the last time, but it wasn’t on par with what I made up in my head. This neighborhood was a lot more modest than I expected for someone of Vic’s caliber.
All of the houses were alike, but in different colors, or had shutters along the windows that others didn’t. They were all carbon copies, when people like their dads screamed wealth louder than most of the population.
Thankfully, they had a brick wall lining the property and a gate at the end of their long driveway.
Grace’s raspy voice scared the shit out of me. “This is the mark?”
“Jesus, Grace! Where’s all your stuff?” I looked her up and down, wondering where all her tools were, gadgets, whatever people use in her field…
Showing her hands outside her hoodie pockets, she looked at me confused. “This is all I need… What do you think I do?”
“I don’t know... steal?” My shoulders were still tense up to my ears, watching through the iron gate at the front of the driveway, when I spotted Vic’s car.
Blowing a cloud of smoke out, she looked over her shoulder, leaning into the brick. “That’s the ex-boyfriend?”
I could tell she was judging me. He was the polar opposite of me. “His car…”
Another cough and inhale, she looked again, “With the leggy blonde. He’s right there.”
I felt my cheeks go up in flames, blushing so much I felt my body break out into an uncomfortable heat. I didn’t even reply as I scanned the driveway for Vic, when I watched him escort a girl to her car and proceed to open the door the same way I had gotten used to.
“He was at the rally the other day. Guess the pretty ones are always trouble in the end. Still worth it, though.” She shrugged it off like she knew better than anyone how pretty is dangerous.
No one knew what her abusive boyfriend looked like, only that he has a dove tattooed on the top of his hands and is some kind of exotic dream boa
t.
I’ll take her word for it.
“Everything seems really pretty, really genuine, until you pull back the layers. He’s the best liar I have ever met.” My fists clenched, and the idea of damaging his perfect life felt like breathing in fresh air unpolluted by his lies.
“Whatever you say, babe.”
I watched the girl pull down the driveway, and I pushed Grace further down the brick wall, where we were hopefully out of sight Vic stood there by himself, outside of his car, shouting silently into the air, when he almost convinced me to pack up my anger and go home.
“Pretty legs on that one though,” Grace hummed from behind me, egging me on. She wanted to do damage as much as I did, or just get her hands on anything expensive.
Meadow texted me she was pulling up with Jasper, while Grace continued to burn through her joint. Giving her a mean mug, I faced her. “Aren’t you high enough? I need you sober to break in.”
She held the joint between her teeth, not speaking, as she held up my phone that was tucked into my back pocket, lifting it, without me realizing at all. “Sober is overrated. I can steal in my sleep, Justice Barbie.”
Meadow was wearing black gloves and proceeded to press the lock button on her key fob, and I scolded her for making any unneeded sound. Jasper had a computer with him when he pushed his glasses on, looking Grace up and down, like he had never seen a sexier woman in his life now that he had his specs on. I always thought of them as part of his Clark Kent identity, and he wasn’t moving among us without them. Without them, you couldn’t overlook how attractive he is and how the bottom of your spine fixes your posture when he’s around. I wanted to react, but I didn’t have time.
I didn’t think about if he was there or if his parents were still awake.
Fuck.
“There’s lights on. Are we waiting until they go to sleep?” Meadow was the only one thinking clearly.
All three pairs of eyes stared at me, waiting for me to decide what to do next. I wanted revenge; I wanted to destroy what destroyed me; and I wanted to have the answers; but I was jilted—a jilted woman on the verge of change.
Jasper started his hacking thing, sitting on the grass against the brick wall, while we waited until the lights went out. When the porch light went out, Grace tossed the butt of her joint behind her and reached through the gate to disable the keypad.
