CHAPTER 106

CHAPTER 106
“He’s not answering,” Arizen muttered, holding her phone to her ear. “I’m calling again.”

The panic in her voice sliced through the buzz of chatter and music around us. The bar wasn’t even crowded yet—just a few scattered students avoiding finals by drowning themselves in watered-down beer and old jukebox tunes. But the air shifted the second her phone started ringing for the fourth time. No pickup.

I stared at the door as if willing it to open. "What do you mean he's not answering? He texted Tony twenty minutes ago and said he was coming."

Arizen's eyebrows are furrowed tightly. "That was thirty-seven minutes ago."

My stomach knotted up with something.

Tony stood a few feet from us, stiff as concrete. His back to us. His jaw locked. One fist clenched at his side, the other grasped his phone in mid-call. No glance. No words. Only that silent anger that told us something was wrong. Very wrong.

Wells broke the silence. He entered from the patio like a shadow, the cloud of cigarette smoke with him. "Something's wrong," he said immediately, flipping the unlit butt out the door. "Just got a call from one of my guys. Reed's down."

Tony slowly pivoted. "What the hell does that mean?"

"Stabbed. Outside Harrington's. They're saying it's bad."

Time stopped. My ears were ringing. And then finally the muttering of the crowd reached my brain, like a tide of chaos.

"What?" I exclaimed, but no one answered.

Tony didn't hesitate. He was already shoving forward, muscling aside students as if they were paper. I followed him—blindly, automatically. Because I had to. Because the expression on Tony's face wasn't anger—it was something else.

It was grief. Too early and too raw.

\---

We found Thatcher bleeding to death in the alleyway at the back of the bar, ringed by flashing blue and red lights and a seething storm of whispers.

He was hardly conscious, tied down to the stretcher, blood drenched his shirt and running down his arm like a map to perdition. His eyelids fluttered open when Tony cut through the cops and paramedics, and his lips curled as if he wanted to speak.

Then he did.

"The shadows never left."

I will never forget the breaking of his voice. The roll of his eyes back in their sockets. The outstretched fingers, wet and trembling, to Tony's hand and down as the EMTs loaded the gurney into the ambulance.

And so he was gone—fled away under sirens and gasps and gossip to be spawned.

\---

We ended up in a cold waiting room at Saint Louisa's Hospital, metal chairs all around and the distant beeping of the machines that could save a life or not.

Tony hadn't uttered a word since the alley. He sat statuesque, elbows resting on knees, eyes fixed on the floor with a void that scared me worse than anything. Arizen sat beside me, arms folded, eyes scanning every doctor who entered.

Wells walked back and forth like a wild man. "I told him not to go alone," he growled, kicking the side of a vending machine. "I told him.".

"Where?" I insisted, but I already knew.

Harrington's. Where business was done and scores were settled dirty.

"Something's not right," Arizen breathed. "You heard him, didn't you? 'The shadows never left'? What does that even mean?"

"It means history never dies," Tony said finally, his tone like gravel, his eyes still dead. "It waits."

I swallowed. "Tony… what history are we talking about?"

He looked up at me then, and for the very first time in my life, I saw it. Real fear. Not for himself—for Thatcher.

"You think this is something about you?" he asked, voice low. "This goes deeper than anything you've ever seen, Mackenzie. Reed wasn't just my guard. He did things… to protect me. Things that I didn't have to know."

Wells mocked. "Play dumb. Come on."

I didn't," Tony snapped. "But I did not ignite that fire at Camden Prep. I did not beat up that kid half to death last year. And I did not know he still had people from before to pay." 

"People?" I asked.

Tony's jaw locked. "We called them the Shadows. That's what we were. When football was a cover for survival. When you had to be brutal to survive. Thatcher didn't just play at the game. He buried people for it."

Silence.

Arizen blinked. "You're saying this was revenge?"

"I'm saying it could've never ended."

\---

I ventured out for some fresh air. The chilling night bit me into awareness, wind lashing with frost and sirens on the horizon.

My phone vibrated.

\[Unknown Number\]

"You're not the only one who ruins lives with photos, sweetheart. Let Zacks know we're just getting started."
My heart stopped.

\---

I huddled back into the house. "Tony," I gasped. "Look at this." I thrust the message into his face.

His expression hardly changed. Just that same cold ruthlessness.

"Anonymous?".

I nodded. "But they do. They know about the picture. About us."

"They always did," he whispered. "That was the point."

Wells looked over his shoulder. "You don't think."

"They're watching," Tony said, standing. "And if they're bold enough to attempt to stab Reed, they won't stop. Not with threats.".

Arizen grasped my arm. "Mackenzie. You have to back away from this. Whatever this is—this isn't about internships or dreams anymore. It's blood and history. And it'll get you burned."

But it was too late.

Thatcher had spilled blood.

The war had started.

And whether I liked it or not, I was fighting.

\---

I did not sleep that night.

Not due to the blood on the pavement or the haunted look in Tony's eyes. Not due to the cryptic message or because I'd just witnessed a man who used to make my life a living hell break into tiny fragments.

But due to the way I felt.

Fear. Guilt. And something even worse.

Connection.

A diseased, warped corner of me felt connected to it all. To Tony. To Thatcher. To the harm we had done to each other.

What did "The shadows never left" mean?

What had Thatcher done to protect Tony?

What had yet to be repaid?

And who, in particular, would be next?