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Once he’d come home with blood on his hands and she’d fucked him right there on the marble island, the metal shaft of his gun still in its holster, the steel hard against her ribs.
jesus christ
Perhaps she was glass. But glass is only brittle until it breaks. Then it’s sharp.
And he died.
Victor took them all in. Still collecting strays.
Mitch nodded, trying and failing to hide his clear relief.
Victor didn’t need to feel for a pulse, or sense the man’s empty nerves, to know that he was dead.
WHAT
Sydney had chosen it, she said, because it looked like a home.
“Happy birthday, Sydney,” he said.
June was just borrowing her body.
Not in the way she was different, but still, miles from ordinary.
“Who is it?” asked a warm voice, a big guy with tattooed sleeves and a friendly smile.
giggles
“Director Joseph Stell.”
BITCH
The bartender staggered, unbalanced by the sudden freedom, and was halfway to his feet when Victor drew his gun and shot him in the head.
okay!
“If you kill all the EOs you meet,” she said, “how are you better than Eli?”
queen went there
Syd’s eyes shifted from the cake to Mitch before landing on Victor.
crying sobbing screaming yelling
What she had now felt more like a family than her mother and father ever had.
“Girls like us got to stick together,” she added with a wink.
She ran her fingers over Dol’s muzzle. “You look after our girl,” she told the dog.
“The next time you point a gun at someone, make sure you’re ready to pull the trigger.”
“Maybe we are broken. But we put ourselves back together. We survived. That’s what makes us so powerful. And as for family—well, blood is always family, but family doesn’t always have to be blood.”
my favorite trope packed into one sentence
Victor had simply been waiting for Syd to come home.
Marcella opened her eyes.
omg i was wondering where this girly went
Marcella let the mess fall from her fingers, and went to find her husband.
“What’s the point of having beautiful things,” he’d said, “if you don’t put them on display?”
the way the meaning of this changes through his and her eyes
“I’m not a fucking coat, Marcus. You don’t get to check me at the door.”
the same one that had hung for more than a year in Marcella’s own closet at the Heights.
He lay there, listening to the other boys sleep with a mixture of annoyance and envy, his nerves too fine-tuned to let him rest among the various sounds of movement.
Eli didn’t know what normal was, or even what it looked like. But he’d spent a lifetime studying his father’s moods and his mother’s silences, the way the air in the house changed like the sky before a storm. Now he watched the way the Russo boys roughhoused, noted the fine line between humor and aggression.
“I’m afraid,” continued the man, “there’s been an accident.”
no joy for anyone apparently
He leaned back in his chair. “Do pretty girls count as bad choices, or are those two separate things?”
hes got the jokes
“You’re sure it’s a man?” “I’m not sure of anything,” said Eli, “but the odds favor a male killer. Female killers are rarer, and they tend to prefer more hands-on methods.”
looking right at you marcella
Haverty was no different. Stell couldn’t see—EON couldn’t see—but he knew that the ends would justify the means. He would show them. He would crack the ExtraOrdinary code, and change the face of science, and they would welcome him back. They would worship him.
the real villain
In Dom’s head, Victor went around acting like the world was one big game of chess. Tapping people and saying, “You’re a pawn, you’re a knight, you’re a rook.”
Victor was boss man, Mitch was big man, Syd was tiny terror
Holtz—who had had many girlfriends—shook his head. “Never underestimate an angry woman.” “Never underestimate a woman,” amended Rios.
“Don’t worry about it,” said Mitch, radiating kindness, warmth.
my bf <3
She had taken on a new aspect—that’s what she called them—this time, as a lanky girl with shoulder-length black hair and wide, dark eyes, spindly legs jutting from a pair of white shorts. She was barely sixteen by the looks of it, and when Marcella had asked, June had simply said, “I heard he likes them young.”
where is olivia benson when you need her
They say people grow on you, and maybe that was true, because every time Marcella saw Tony, she felt the need to scrub him off her skin.
How many men would she have to turn to dust before one took her seriously?
Jonathan didn’t say anything. He simply drew his own gun, aimed at the kneeling man’s forehead, and fired.
no mercy
Mitch was making dinner, and humming an old song.
Victor stared at the wall as if it were still a window. “He doesn’t know how patient you are,” he said. “Doesn’t know you like I do.” Eli cleaned the blood from his hand. “No,” he said softly. “No one ever has.”
“The locations,” said Marcella, “of the EO’s last five kills.” June didn’t look at her phone, but she knew that if she did, if she opened her texts from Sydney, she’d see these same places listed, each in response to the question June always asked. Where are you these days?
this is where i start sweating
June wanted to know, because the world was big, wanted to know because Sydney was hers to protect.
i need to know why she's so obsessed with sydney
“I’m sending you a photo. To whet your appetite.”
Stress
“We’re going to Merit.”
dear god
She was done playing by other people’s rules. Done hiding. If you lived in the dark, you died in the dark. But stand in the light, and it was that much harder to make you disappear.
Mitch frowned in confusion. “If this doesn’t work,” added Victor softly. “Even if it does. Take Syd and—” “We’re not leaving,” said Sydney, bolt upright in the backseat.
if anything happens to this little family imma gonna yell
The truth is, Syd, there will always be somebody stronger than you. That’s just the way the world works.” He looked up at the shining skyscraper. “It doesn’t matter if you’re a human versus a human or a human versus an EO or an EO versus an EO. You do what you can. You fight, and you win, until you don’t.”
He didn’t have time to wonder where she’d come from, didn’t even have time to step out of time—into the safety of the shadows—before Rios slammed a cattle prod into his chest and Dom’s world went white.
