Page 56 of Beast: Part Two

“You own the Church,” he says walking up to Sam.

“Of course we do.”

“Except, you forgot something,” Priest says stopping in front of Sam.

“And what’s that?” Sam folds his arms over his chest.

“Thanks to you, we no longer work for the Church.” With those words, Priest pulls his actual gun out and places it at Sam’s cheek.

“Whoa. Whoa,” Sam says, the humor from his earlier tone is no longer there. “Wait a minute.”

“No, we won’t wait.” Priest slings Sam by the collar of his robe to the middle of the floor. He lands flat on his back.

“Let me tell you something about the Church.” Priest walks slowly over to where Sam is lying. “The Church, for all its flaws, creates damn good killers. They have a way of desensitizing you from the fear of death and the outcome of it. They teach you that pulling the trigger on a female begging for her life in front of her children is no different than stepping on a spider that somehow got lost in your bedroom.”

He squats down in front of Sam. Placing his gun at Sam’s knee cap.

“The Church creates perfect monsters. It’s why they have such strict rules. For instance, rather than letting one of its members go, they’d rather kill them off. They know that once you’ve been trained to kill you can’t shut it off. Once you’ve beenconditioned to take a life without remorse or second thought, you cannot survive in the real world. It’s too dangerous.

“Now the part that you play in this story, is that you helped set free seven of the deadliest motherfuckers the Church has ever seen. And right now, six of them are in the room with you and they are pissed the fuck off.”

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry,” O’Cleary claims.

“I don’t want your got damn apology, O Cleary.”

“What do you want then?” he asks the million-dollar question.

Priest stands and then nods for O’Cleary to do the same. Slowly the man gets to his feet.

With a polite smile, Priest says. “I want you to withdraw your signature on that order.”

O’Cleary’s eyes balloon. “Are you mad?” he scoffs. “Corbyn would—”

“Corbyn isn’t here right now,” Priest says cutting him off. “So, you need to make the decision. Would you rather die now at the hands of my sons or face Corbyn’s wrath later?” Turning his back to O’Cleary, Priest walks over to the dresser and leans his back against it folding his arms over his chest.

He stares at O’Cleary waiting for him to make the decision. O’Cleary looks around the room, his eyes bouncing off all of us. When they land on me, he pauses. He stares at me as if he’s seeing a ghost.

“Yes,” Priest says. “That is Corbyn’s son. We also have Maksim with us.”

O’Cleary swallows then turns back to Priest. “I’ll withdraw my signature.”

Priest nods. “Smart decision.”

“May I ask one favor?”

“You’re not really in the spot to be asking favors,” Seth says what we’re all thinking.

Priest quiets Seth with a hand in the air.

“What do you want?” I understand why Priest asked this question. Phoenix explained to us that the RC loved favors. He also explained owing one or having one owed to you wasn’t a bad thing. These were some of the richest people in the world.

“When you return to the Church, may I call on your services personally?”

Although the thought of doing kill for hire doesn’t sit well with me, we knew this would be one of the things that the RC would want in return. And seeing that we’ve been doing it for them all this time without knowing, there is no reason to stop now.

“As long as your kill is within our standards, we have a deal,” Priest says. “Now make that call.”

We didn’t leave O’Cleary’s home until he’d successfully called all the heads of the family’s that didn’t sign the EO and withdrew his name. He did warn us before we left that Corbyn, and the others would know something was up. We explained, we didn’t give a shit.

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