Page 15 of The Masks She Wore

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In this job we had many enemies. Not just those wanting to take down Malachi and take over what he had built, but those who were angry that they didn’t get the chance to go through the Shadow Initiation Program in the first place. Many were denied every year for one reason or another. It made some bitter and angry, causing them to go after the man who created the program, along with his sons from time to time.

?Other times it was a family member who knew that their sibling, aunt, uncle, brother, sister, whoever, had died under Malachi’s watch. They decided to go after him, us, and it never ended well.

?The rules were made clear before the program began. There was always a chance that you would die, fail, never be accepted into it, yet people always seemed so shocked when thesethings happened.

?It was comical.

?Malachi hadn’t thought through how much his secret program would have grown over the years, but the more people he hired to work for him, the bigger he got, the more the rumors spread.

?After two decades, it was harder to keep it so secret, and even harder to control the crazies coming out of the woodworks.

?Nobody would ever be a son or daughter, but most had a chance to become an Initiate. Greyson’s best friend Jeremy had taken the chance and succeeded. Barely, but he had succeeded.

?There were hundreds more out there now. Initiates. Many others who worked for Malachi who had either gone through the program, failed, and lived to tell about it, or never wanted to go through the program, and remained where they were on Malachi’s hierarchy.

?Those men were grunts.

?Those who went through the program and failed, keeping their lives, they had some respect, but obviously not as much as the Initiates. And while the Initiates had all the respect, they were treated like Kings compared to my brothers and I who were treated like Gods.

?Perhaps we weren’t as high up as Malachi or his brother, but we were pretty damn close. The power was intoxicating, even for the Initiates, in fact, there were times we had to hunt down Initiates who let the power get to their heads. The world of Malachi’s graduates was a tedious one, but the balance was fair. Arrogance wastolerated to a point. Once the line was crossed, there was no going back.

?My target today, the male who pulled me away from watching Rae, was the brother of a man who had died on day two of the Shadow Initiation.

?It was fucking pathetic.

?It was even more pathetic that a guy namedBrian Rantwould ever challenge us.

?I sat on my bike down the street from his house. Brian was an idiot in all aspects. The curtains were open, and I could see him sitting at his dining room table with a pile of guns stacked in front of him. What he planned to do with them, I could only imagine.

?The building that we primarily used as home base, so to speak, was located in Seattle, Washington. We were in Los Angeles. It was roughly 18 hours away on a good day, unless he was planning on flying, I supposed, but nobody would allow him on a plane with that much shit on him. Not in this day and age.

?He was angry and that anger made him stupid. If his brother was anything like him, there was a reason he didn’t make it through the program. Anger was a weapon. You could learn to control it if you had the right control over your own mind, that’s what made us the best.

?We had a kind of rage that would kill normal men, but we learned to wield it in a way that aided us in our missions.

?I loaded my gun, started my bike, and sped off down the street. The sound would scare him. We all had bikes. Greyson preferred cars, but everyone who was anyone knew that we all had bikes. A graduation gift from Malachi himself.

?I rounded the block and pulled down a narrow dirt alley. I shut it off and parked it next to a few overflowing trash cans. It would be fine for now. This would only take a few minutes.

?I swung my leg over and headed for the back of his house. He would be scrambling to clean up his things before he ran to the storm shelter out back. Not many houses here had them, I suppose he could be considered lucky in that case.

?Better for me if he did get down there. Jade could easily bury that thing, Brian inside, before erasing him from the world completely.

?I jumped over the back fence and headed for his back door. Still closed, which told me he was still inside.

?Just as soon as I got up to the door, it swung open.

?I stepped forward, slamming my hand into his chest, causing him to tumble to the floor.

?His eyes widened, panic and fear mixing with the clear rage resting in the back of them. “Which one are you?” he demanded, crawling back on his hands. “At least give me that much decency.”

?I laughed. Decency. I pointed the gun at his head. Decency wasn’t in our vocabulary.

?“Greyson?” he hoped. “Please, don’t do this. My mother alreadylost one son. Please, it was a mistake. I swear to God, it was a mistake.”

?Hmm, trying to appeal to Greyson’s heart, but even he wouldn’t show mercy, not now. He understood the rules he had just as well as any of us. When someone threatened one of us, they threatened us all. “You should have been a better son,” I told him carefully.

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