-Roxy Delgado:
The room narrowed to a single point: the man Kyle had hauled in, the dark shape hunched between a dozen sets of hands and the barrel tips of guns that gleamed like teeth.
For a second everything else—the bass, the laughter, the neon—fell away. The air tasted metallic and thin.
I stepped forward without thinking, the movement automatic. My brothers' faces blurred around me—Mateo's jaw tight with anger, Jackson frowning with that guarded tenderness he always showed Mateo, Victor and Leo already spreading out so none of us had blind spots, Adrian and Dante watching like coiled animals, Marcus with his hand resting on his gun but not yet drawing. Even Kyle's face had gone hard and flat in a way I recognized: the look he gets when he's done being patient.
"Is it him really?" My voice came out raw. I had to ask it anyway, even though my gut had screamed the answer since Kyle forced the man through the door.
