Page 16 of The Masks She Wore

?His back hit the cabinets and he held up his hands. “Please. Don’t do this. Please.”

?I pulled the trigger and his head whipped back against the cabinet with a sickening crack before he slumped over.

?I called Jade, balancing the phone between my ear and shoulder before unscrewing the silencer. “It’s done.”

?“Be there in a few.”

?We had cleaners in nearly every major city. We had to. There were times when we were in a different city every week, having them everywhere helped with that.

?I stuffed my gun and silencer away and hung up, looking around the place. He had managed to clear off some of the table, but there was a lot still piled there. Grenades, guns. Dynamite? I frowned. I couldn’t even begin to imagine his plan with that.

?I turned for the living room, glancing around. I didn’t expect to find anything useful besides weapons. We knew he had been plotting against us, but he hadn’t been smart about it. It was pathetic how terrible he had been at this. His brother had been better, it was ashame he died during the Initiation.

?With a breath, I headed out.

~~~

By the time I found Rae again, she had made it back to her apartment. Luckily for her, there was a building just across the way. Not blocking her view of the city but angled perfectly enough to give me a view of her balcony and the curtains she always had open. Careless in the sense that anyone who had moved into this apartment could have watched her. Lucky for me though. Very lucky.

?I wouldn’t cross some of the lines Azrael would, but Hell, the curiosity was there, especially after what I had found out about her today.

?She was on her phone, one arm wrapped around her waist while she stared at her television. Some sort of ghost hunters show, it looked like. None of us watched much television, but we weren’t immune to the references circulating around the world. Night vision, found footage type filming, men making strange faces. Definitely a ghost hunting show.

?My phone started ringing, pulling me from watching her. I answered it and turned back towards the apartment. “What?”

?“How was Brian Rant?”

?Everett. “Fine. What’s going on?”

?“Malachi called a meeting,” he answered, his voice low. “Have you noticed the way he’s been acting lately?”

?“No more on edge than usual.” I thought he was acting strange too. Ever since he gave me this assignment, he’s been more on edge than usual, but who was I to say that something was truly off? Malachi had his secrets, he had his bad days just like any of us, he was most likely just bitter that someone had managed to get onto our property without being seen, drop an envelope on our doorstep, and wire money into our highly secure accounts, all without being traced. That was a very good reason to have a bad attitude, and he has probably been dealing with it since I left. “Is it just The Family or everyone?”

?“Everyone who was available,” he answered coldly. “Azrael disappeared again.”

?Typical. “Has Greyson heard from him?”

?“No, not yet.”

?“Tell me when he does then.” I hung up and turned back to Rae’s apartment. Whenever Azrael went AWOL, which happened from time to time, he always contacted Greyson first. Nobody knew why. He made his hatred for our other brother clear, yet it was always him. Everett suspected that, despite the annoyance Azrael felt for Greyson, he trusted him, but I didn’t believe it.

?Azrael didn’t trust anyone. He didn’t have faith in anything. He was a ghost, whispering through this world on vengeance and blood.He cared for no one but himself and his ‘Mission’. A mission he wouldn’t share with any of us.

?I had always made jokes when we were kids, about sending him to an asylum for a while, get his head on straight, but when Malachi had finally decided to do just that, Azrael came back a little more untethered than he had before.

?It made him worse, more dedicated, more filled with a quiet rage.

?I think that if it came down to it, killing my brothers would be easy. I could kill them all without thought if I needed to, but Azrael? Azrael scared the shit out of me. The things I had seen him do. Even the devil would vomit watching him.

?I lifted my binoculars again just as Rae hung up the phone. She was frowning. She dipped her head, bringing the heel of her hand to her forehead, her hair falling into her face, the frustration clear.

?I pulled out my phone and pulled up hers, finding the last number that had called her.Unknown.

?Not ideal. My eyes lifted back to hers.

?She was standing very still, pondering, I would guess, before she inhaled deeply, straightened, and headed for her room.

?I lowered my binoculars and turned back to my phone, staring at that word.Unknown. “Okay, Princess, let’s see who else you know.”

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