They killed Leo when he was sixteen—The Crows, over fifty lousy pesos he wouldn't hand over. I found him in the rain outside the store, curled up like a broken toy, his sketchbook torn open next to him. The top page was a drawing of me laughing. I stared at that smile and thought: that's gone now.
That night, I stood in front of the mirror and practiced a new one. Bright. Empty. The kind that makes people look right through you. "Gang business," the cops had said, shrugging. Fine. I'd do their job myself.
For two years, that fake smile never left my face. I got a job at the café where they hung out after dark—brought them coffee, laughed at their stupid jokes, acted like I didn't want to strangle every single one of them. I learned everything: Jax's bad knee from a bike crash, Rico's blurry left eye, Tito's slow feet when it rains. Leo was good with numbers, so I used his old notebooks to track their runs, their payoffs, their secrets. My hands never shook when I set down their cups. My smile never slipped when they bragged about "teaching kids a lesson."
I picked the night of their big shipment—all seven of them in the abandoned pier warehouse, rain hammering the roof, floor slick as ice. I slipped in the back with a crowbar in my jacket, that smile still plastered on as I crept behind the crates stacked high with coke.
"Who's there?" Jax snapped, hand on his knife.
I stepped out. "Just me. Brought coffee—figured you'd want it before the cops get here."
He laughed, but his eyes narrowed. "Cops? Nice try, girl."
That's when I made my move—not the Serpents, not anyone else. I'd lied about tipping them off. This was all mine.
Rico lunged first. I ducked low—his left eye missed me completely—and cracked the crowbar against his knee. He screamed and crumpled. Tito charged, slipped on the wet concrete, and I kicked his feet out from under him. I brought the crowbar down hard on the crate next to his head—coke spilled everywhere, making the floor even more dangerous.
Jax came at me then, limping on that bad knee, knife glinting in the dark. I side-stepped, grabbed his wrist, and twisted until the blade clattered to the ground. I drove my elbow into his jaw—he fell back against a stack of crates that toppled over, pinning him down.
I stood over him, and finally—finally—that fake smile melted away. All that was left was the fire that's been burning in my chest for two years.
"Fifty pesos," I said, my voice as cold as the rain dripping down my neck. "He died over fifty pesos."
His eyes went wide. "You… you're Leo's sister."
I didn't say anything back. I just turned and slipped out as police sirens wailed closer. Later, I'm at his grave, holding that torn sketchbook. I trace the lines of my own laughing face, and for the first time in two years, my lips curve into something that feels almost real. Almost.
Revenge didn't bring him back. It just made me as cruel as the men who killed him. But I lean down and whisper into the rain: "I kept you safe, kuya. Even if I lost myself doing it."