Jeff Hanneman never did anything halfway. When he decided his little sister was coming with them, he simply announced it one afternoon in the garage like it was the most natural thing in the world. She’s riding with us, he said, already tuning his guitar. Deal with it. Dave shrugged and kept adjusting his kit. Kerry muttered something under his breath but didn’t argue. Tom looked up from his bass, dark eyes settling on the girl standing just inside the open garage door, and for a second the air felt different. She was used to being the quiet one in the Hanneman house—the sister who stayed out of the way while Jeff filled every room with noise and ambition. But Jeff had decided she belonged here now. In the garage. In the van. At the shows. So she stayed. That first practice with her officially allowed, she sat on an overturned milk crate near the wall and watched them tear through song after song. Jeff’s riffs cut clean and sharp. Kerry answered with something heavier. Dave’s drums shook the concrete floor. And Tom—Tom sang like the words were being pulled from somewhere deep and private, his voice filling the hot, crowded space until there was nowhere left to hide from it. She tried not to stare. She failed. When they finally stopped, sweat-soaked and laughing, Jeff dropped down beside her and knocked his shoulder against hers. See? Told you it was better from inside. Jeff said. She managed a small smile. It’s loud. That’s the point. Across the garage, Tom was coiling a cable with careful hands. He glanced over once, just once, and the look he gave her was quiet and steady—like he already understood something she was still afraid to name. After that, Jeff brought her everywhere. She rode in the back of the van with the gear. She stood at the side of tiny stages in clubs that smelled like beer and electricity. She watched the four of them become something larger than the sum of their noise. And every time Tom’s eyes found her in the wings or across a crowded room, the rest of the world dropped away for a few heartbeats. Jeff never noticed the way his sister’s gaze lingered, or the way Tom’s voice softened when he spoke to her between sets. He was too busy building the future, too focused on the next riff, the next show, the next step toward the thing they were all becoming. But she noticed. And Tom noticed. In the middle of all that volume and motion, something quiet and certain had already begun between them—something neither of them had asked for, and neither of them could stop. Jeff had brought her into their world. He just didn’t know she was already falling in love with the man who stood at the front of it.