Page 30 of Riot

Without ever giving me the chance to look him in the eye and say:

You destroyed me.

You were supposed to protect me, and instead, you used me.

Because Silas?

He was a sick motherfucker.

But he was smart about it. Strategic. He never laid a hand on Riot. Never touched Creed. Not in that way. No—he saved the worst of himself forme.His bastard son. The one outside the circle. The one whose mother he barely claimed. The one nobody looked too closely at.

And I think I know why.

Because he knew no one would believe me.

Because I didn’t matter enough to be protected.

I was just a boy when it started.

Eight. Maybe nine. I don't even remember the exact age anymore—just the coldness of the room, the way the door would click shut behind him, the way his voice would go soft, like he was doing me a favor. Like it was love.

He told me it was our secret. That the pain meant I was becoming a man. That this is how loyalty was earned in our world.

I still remember the burn of his breath. The sound of the leather belt unbuckling. The weight of shame that sat on my chest like a cinderblock every time I looked at myself in the mirror.

I tried to tell my mother once.

Just once.

She slapped me so hard I saw stars.

Told me not to speak that man’s name in vain. Told me I was just angry because Silas didn’t come around enough. Told me boys like me needed discipline.

That was the last time I spoke on it.

I learned quick: silence was safer than truth.

But silence turns into rot.

And now that rot is all I have left.

I walk around with it inside me, poisoning everything I touch. Every laugh. Every woman. Every fake-ass smile I give when I’m around those so-called brothers.

And the worst part?

They don’t even know.

They don’t know what Silas did to me. They don’t know that while they were learning how to shoot and fight and build kingdoms—I was learning how to survive a monster in the dark.

And they took him from me.

They took the one person I needed to face. To confront. To destroy with my own hands.

They robbed me of my reckoning.

And now?

Now they’ll feel what I felt.

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