Page 47 of The Obedient Lie
A Crow is only as weak as the mistakes he fails to admit.
That line had been rattling around my skull for days.
One line—buried in the half-book-thick oath we bled to take at sixteen.
The one Luca and I memorized before we were even allowed to step foot in the basement for the tattooing.
I swore the oath.
And now, that one line was branding me deeper than the tattoo ever had.
A Crow is only as weak as the mistakes he fails to admit.
And I had made one.
No—
I’d made a hundred.
But one in particular wouldn’t let me sleep.
It was the way she didn’t smile anymore. That perfect, dynasty-trained, pain-hiding smile I used tohatebecause it made her look too damn golden, too good.
Now I hated it because it wasgone.
Because ofme.
That day… the one I yelled at her like she wasn’t a girl, wasn’t a person—just a problem I could shout into silence?—
I’d come straight from practice.
My shoulder was bruised to hell, ribs aching, jaw clenched from the hits I hadn’t dodged.
But what no one knew?
I’d also just come from a fight.
Not the kind they tracked on the football field?—
the kind that happened in the alley behind the locker room.
Her ex had been there, mouth running like a tap, bragging to the others, saying shit about what Emilia was “probably like in bed if she threw herself at the Crows.”
I didn’t think.
I justmoved.
Split his lip. Broke his nose. Got pulled off him before I could do more damage.
And that was the part that really pissed me off.
Not the blood on my knuckles?—
what fucked with me was that Ireacted. Again.
Like I always did.
I was supposed to be working on that.
