Rafe was spiraling. He hadn’t slept in days — at least not without waking up in a cold sweat, heart pounding, your name the only word on his lips.

You were gone.

Barry had taken you.

Rafe’s hands trembled as he stood in his room, the walls closing in. His jaw was locked so tight it ached. Empty baggies littered the desk, the mirror still dusted with white. He barely saw them. All he saw was your face — scared, maybe crying, maybe thinking he’d abandoned you.

He hadn’t. He wouldn’t.

But Barry had played his hand.

“I warned you,” Barry had said, voice slick and smug over the phone. “You don’t pay, I collect. And I know what you care about most. Funny how she was so easy to snatch.”

Rafe had snapped the phone in half.

Now he paced, wild-eyed, the gun heavy in his hand. He’d always lived on the edge — coke, lies, violence — but this? This was something else.

No one touched what was his.

Not without bleeding for it.

“I’m gonna kill him,” Rafe muttered under his breath, over and over like a prayer, a promise. “I’m gonna bury him for this.”

He looked in the mirror, pupils blown, hair a mess, blood smeared across his knuckles from punching the wall.

Then he smiled.

That sick, broken kind of smile that never reached his eyes.

“See, Barry doesn’t get it,” he said, talking to himself now, voice low and twitching with adrenaline. “He thinks this is just about money.”

He cocked the gun, metal clicking with finality.

“But he made it personal.”