Page 103 of Shatter

My hands curl into fists.

"She asks for you every day." Pierce's voice is soft now, gentle, a big brother's voice. "Every single day, Anni. I'm not asking you to come home for Dad. I'm asking you to come home for her."

"And Desmond?" Anni doesn't look up from the phone. "Is Desmond asking for me too?"

The name drops into the room like a stone into a well.

Aesir's chair creaks, but Pierce doesn't flinch.

"Desmond's willing to talk." He leans forward on his elbows. "He's agreed to renegotiate. The debt, the arrangement, all of it. He wants what you took returned, and he wants this to be over. He knows a wedding isn't going to happen now."

"He said that." Anni's voice is flat.

"He said that." Pierce nods. "To me, and to Dad. I came down here to fix it, Anni. I'm not here to drag you anywhere. I'm here so nobody else gets hurt."

He looks at me when he says it.

At my hands, and the knuckles still scabbed over from the smokehouse.

Tor gets there twenty minutes later.

He walks in without hurrying, the bell jangling over his head.

He stands inside the door and looks at Pierce Carrow for a long time without saying a word.

Pierce looks back.

To his credit, he doesn't look away.

"You're the brother." Tor's voice is low.

"I'm the brother." Pierce stands up now, finally, and holds out his hand. "Pierce Carrow. You must be in charge."

Tor doesn't take the hand either.

Pierce lowers it again.

"Here's how it goes." Tor doesn't raise his voice. "You want to talk to your sister, you do it on my ground. My clubhouse. With one of my patched brothers in the room. You don't come to this bakery again. You don't come near her anywhere else. You don't call her, you don't write her, you don't sit in a car across the street from anywhere she is."

"That seems excessive." Pierce smiles, polite. "I'm her brother."

"Somebody sent a man with a knife after your sister." Tor takes one step closer, and Pierce's smile flickers. "He cut her arm open in a parking lot and kicked her ribs in. I don't know who the fuck you are and I sure as fuck don't know who you talk to. Until I do, those are the rules."

Pierce's eyes go to Anni.

To the scar on the inside of her forearm, pink and shiny below the pushed-up sleeve of her T-shirt.

Something moves in his face.

For a second, he looks like he's going to be sick.

Then it's gone, smoothed over, and he nods.

"Fine." He picks up his coffee cup. "I'm at the Doubletree downtown. Room four-twelve. Whenever she's ready."

He looks at her one more time.

"Anni." His voice gentles. "Mom kept your room exactly the same. She won't let anybody touch it."