Part I
Prologue
“State your full name for the record.”
“Ronan August Wentz.”
“Age?”
“Nineteen.”
“Do you know why you’re here tonight, Ronan?”
Because it’s the end of the road.
Two detectives waited for an answer. One was round and short—his badge said Kowalski. Harris was taller, had a mustache. I folded my arms and stared back hard, pretending the white-walled holding room wasn’t fucking suffocating me. On the table, Styrofoam cups of black coffee flanked a thick file with my name on it. A camera perched in a corner trained its black eye on us, recording everything.
The detectives exchanged glances at my stony silence, and then Harris got up and paced behind the short guy, Kowalski.
“Where were you on the night of July thirtieth around eleven p.m.?”
“My apartment.”
“What were you doing?”
“Watching TV.”
“Anyone with you?”
“No.”
He nodded at my bruised knuckles. “How’d that happen?”
“Don’t remember.”
It was a shit answer, but the truth wasn’t much better.
Kowalski smirked. “You don’t remember?”
“Are you supposed to be asking me this shit without a lawyer?”
“Do you think you need a lawyer, Ronan?”
“We’re just talking,” Harris cut in. “Your hands are pretty banged up.” He picked up my file off the table. “Lots of people find themselves ‘banged up’ around you, don’t they, Mr. Wentz? Starting with your mother.”
I stiffened, bracing myself.
“You grew up in a violent household, is my point,” the detective continued casually, flipping through my life story: behavioral write-ups, police reports from a stint in juvie, and ten years’ worth of social workers’ notes from my time in the foster care system. “Says here your dad beat your mother to death with a baseball bat when you were eight years old.”
Inwardly, it felt as if he kicked me in the gut. Outwardly, I only nodded.
“He died in prison after a knife fight with another inmate?”
I crossed my arms. “He got what he deserved.”
Wrong answer.
The cops raised their brows. Another knowing look passed between them: Now we’re getting somewhere.
“You witnessed it, didn’t you? Your dad murdering your mom?”
I winced as blood-stained memories instantly tried to claw their way up out of the grave. They wouldn’t stay dead no matter how deep I buried them.
“Seeing something like that’s gotta mess a kid up,” Harris stated grimly.
“Did it make you angry, Ronan?”
“Angry enough to lash out?”
“They say that kind of violence runs in the family.”
“In the DNA.”
“Like father, like son.”
The last words hung between us, sucking the oxygen out of the air. My worst fear spoken out loud. I shifted in my chair and said nothing.
“Back to the issue at hand,” Kowalski said finally and took a turn with the file. “Says here on your first day at Central High, you broke Frankie Dowd’s nose.”
“He was harassing my friend.”
“So you clocked him in the face without so much as an introduction?”
“Miller was fucking dying.”
“Miller Stratton?” The cop read from the file. “He wasn’t your friend at the time of incident. You didn’t know him from Adam, isn’t that right?”
He’s my friend now, asshole.
I’d die for Miller Stratton. For Holden Parish.
For Shiloh…
Pain gripped my chest. Kowalski rapped on the table to jar me out of my thoughts.
“It’s looking like you got a reputation for unprovoked violence. That true?”
I stiffened, said nothing.
I tried. I tried to do better. Be better…
“Let’s take a walk down memory lane, shall we?” Harris consulted the file again. “In one year, you were suspended from Santa Cruz Central High no less than six times. Vandalism, assault… Two months ago, you had a physical altercation with Miller Stratton’s stepfather. Dangled him over a two-story balcony.”
I gritted my teeth. I didn’t dangle anyone. I’d bent that fucker Chet Hyland over a railing to scare him away from Miller’s mother. And it worked. But so what? These assholes weren’t interested in the truth—it didn’t match the story about me that was already written. Written in my mother’s blood. And my father’s. His blood flowed in my veins.
Like father, like son.
“Well?”
“Chet wasn’t his stepdad,” I muttered. “He was a deadbeat who hit Miller’s mom. Not that you give a shit.”
The cops exchanged glances.
“You got a problem with police?”
An old memory broke free—my mother, broken and bleeding, dragging herself into a corner, and my dad standing over her with the bat in his hand…
You failed Mom and now she’s dead, I thought, but was I aiming that at myself or the cops? They failed her but so did I. I couldn’t protect her.
Couldn’t protect Shiloh, either.
Guilt, rage, and grief—the three monkeys on my back—squawked and howled.
Kowalski gave me a hard look. “Answer the question, son.”
“People need help,” I said. “If they don’t get it from you, I give it to them.”
“Well, ain’t that some vigilante shit.” Kowalski rolled his eyes. “Threatening to toss a man over a balcony is helping?”
I sneered. “He left her alone after that, didn’t he?”
“How about Frankie, two nights ago? Were you ‘helping’ then too?”
“I didn’t touch him.”
“You didn’t see Franklin Dowd on the night of July thirtieth?”
I shifted in my seat. A bead of sweat crawled between my shoulder blades like an insect. “I’m not telling you shit.”
“Come on, Wentz,” Harris said. “Let’s make this easy on everyone. We all know what happened.”
Kowalski ticked off his fingers. “You got a well-documented beef with Frankie Dowd. You broke his nose within seconds of meeting him. Fifty witnesses can say they saw you tackle him to the floor at a house party on September ninth of last year, and a few months ago, you were heard telling him that if he hurt anyone you cared about, you would quote: fuck his shit up.”
Harris crossed his arms. “Shiloh Barrera is someone you care about, isn’t she?”
“Yes,” I said. And that was the truest thing I said that night.
“And Frankie hurt her,” Harris continued. “So you did just what you promised and fucked his shit up. Hard. Didn’t you?”
“I told you, I—”
“He’s in the hospital, Ronan,” Kowalski said. “Fighting for his life.”
Harris nodded. “That’s called motive.”
“And here you sit, your fists swollen and bruised all to hell. But this time, it wasn’t you. Is that what you’re saying?”