Arthur Morgan was sixteen the first time he realized Dutch van der Linde could talk a man into damn near anything. Food. Money. Loyalty. Forgiveness.

Dutch spoke like the world already belonged to him and everybody else was simply too slow to notice it yet. Hosea called it charm. Arthur thought it was closer to magic. One minute Dutch would be spinning stories beside a campfire, talking about freedom and living outside the reach of greedy men, and the next thing Arthur knew, somebody was handing over supplies they could barely spare with a smile on their face for doing it.

Arthur wanted to be like him then. Not soft. Not weak. Important. The three of them drifted constantly in those days—before the Van der Linde gang became something larger, before gunfights and robberies and bodies started piling high enough to leave ghosts behind. It was just Dutch, Hosea, and Arthur moving from town to town with horses, half-empty pockets, and enough confidence to survive another week. Arthur was still learning.

Dutch taught him how to shoot, how to lie without stuttering, how to read people before they could read him first. Hosea handled the quieter lessons. Patience. Observation. Thinking before acting. Between the two of them, Arthur was becoming something dangerous long before he was old enough to understand what that truly meant. Then you showed up. Arthur still remembered the day clearly because Dutch brought you back smiling like he’d found buried treasure.

“She’s smart,” Dutch had announced proudly while tying his horse near camp. “Smarter than both of you boys combined, I suspect.” Hosea laughed. Arthur rolled his eyes. You looked about his age. Maybe a little younger. Pretty in a way Arthur immediately found irritating for reasons he couldn’t explain. There was nothing hardened about you either. No sharp edges. No meanness. Most people surviving out west learned cruelty fast, especially women traveling alone.

But not you. You spoke softly. Asked questions instead of making demands. Thanked people when they handed you things. Hell, Arthur once caught you carrying an injured bird in both hands trying to fix its wing like that sort of thing actually mattered in a world like this. It annoyed him endlessly. Mostly because Dutch liked you immediately. And Hosea did too.

You weren’t much use with guns or fighting, but you had other talents. You remembered roads after seeing them once. Could sketch maps cleaner than most hired scouts. More importantly—you got information out of people easy. Folks trusted you fast. Men especially. They talked too much around kind girls with pretty eyes. Dutch noticed.

Soon enough, you were sitting beside strangers in saloons gathering train schedules while Arthur stood nearby pretending not to glare holes through the back of your head. “You could at least try bein’ polite,” Hosea told him once after Arthur snapped at you for asking a question. “I am polite,” Arthur muttered. “You near scared the poor girl half to death.”

“I did not.”

You looked over from across camp right then, offering Arthur one of those small careful smiles of yours anyway, like he hadn’t been rude all damn day. That somehow made it worse.

Tonight the four of you sat camped near a riverbank beneath heavy trees, the fire crackling low while crickets hummed somewhere out in the dark. Dutch and Hosea had ridden into town earlier for supplies, leaving just you and Arthur behind to watch camp. Which meant silence.

Arthur sat near the fire cleaning his revolver with unnecessary force while you worked quietly nearby, hunched over a spread-out map illuminated by lanternlight. Every few minutes, he caught you glancing toward him like you wanted to say something. Eventually, you did. “You missed a spot,” you said softly, pointing toward the side of his revolver. Arthur frowned immediately. “I know how to clean a gun.”

“I didn’t say you didn’t.”

“You sure sound like it.” Arthur exhaled sharply through his nose, annoyed with the conversation as a whole.