Page 43 of Sins of Autumn

One of the masked men held her close, a gloved hand gripping her arm hard enough to bruise.

And Naija…

Naija’s face was a swollen mess, one side red and grotesque from a vicious beating. Half her locs looked like they’d been ripped from her scalp, blood streaking what was left. She sat with her head down, her shoulders shaking.

The tears threatened to spill, but I blinked them back, gritting my teeth as I forced myself not to break. Six masked gazes swung my way as we entered the room, their presence suffocating. I knew who each of them was except for one. The masked girl in the corner didn’t move like the others. Her stance was more casual, almost playful, but it was her hair that drew my attention. Long, dark, and unmistakable. The girl from the gas station.

“Autumn,” Lucian’s voice broke through the tense air, smooth and sincere.

His mask tilted slightly as if he were studying me. “It’s good of you to join us. We’ve all been looking forward to this.”

I refused to speak. Wilder guided me toward an empty chair, his hands steady as he maneuvered me into it. I tried to resist, pulling against him weakly, but he only leaned down, his breath ghosting over my ear.

“Don’t make me force you.”

The chair creaked as he pressed me into it, pulling my arms behind my back.

“Kristy,” Lucian said gently.

The girl practically skipped over. Her gloved hands were quick and efficient as she wound what felt like coarse twine tightly around my wrists. I flinched at the rough texture biting into my skin, but I didn’t dare make a sound.

“Good girl,” Wilder murmured close to my ear.

The tears I’d been holding back spilled over, burning hot trails down my cheeks.

This couldn’t be real.

It couldn’t be happening, but every brutal, unrelenting detail told me otherwise. I didn’t want to cry in front of them. The last thing I wanted to do was give these psychopaths the satisfaction of seeing me break, but it was like everything was catching up to me all at once—the fear, the rage, the utter helplessness.

“Hey, hey,” Atlas’s voice broke through the suffocating tension. “You don’t have anything to be afraid of, Tums.”

Tums. The nickname Wilder’s friends had always called me. Hearing it now, in this setting, from a man wearing a mask and gloves, felt like a slap in the face. My eyes shifted toward him, and it was only then I realized he was holding Amber’s head.

One of his gloved thumbs was casually pressed into the empty socket where her eye used to be. Thorne chimed in, his voice smooth and just as sickeningly reassuring.

“This is nothing but an intervention, pretty girl. Relationship counseling in a sense.”

Relationship counseling? The words rattled around in my head. My mouth opened, a sharp retort on the tip of my tongue, but before I could get it out, something soft and damp was shoved between my lips. I jerked back, my muffled protest barely audible. It was a cloth, a gag.

His gloved hand stroked my hair soothingly, the gesture eerily gentle. I wanted to scream, to kick, to lash out, but I couldn’t do a damn thing. My heart pounded as his thumb trailed down the side of my face, his mask close enough that I could feel the faint heat of his breath. Then he straightened, stepping back to join the others.

His movements were unhurried, as if he knew he had all the time in the world to make his point. Each of their masks carried its own horror, and together, they formed a wall of terror that was impossible to ignore.

Wilder stood slightly apart, his towering presence commanding attention even without words. His mask, molded into a devilish visage with curved horns and an expression of restrained cruelty, glinted in the dim light, its black sheen absorbing the shadows around him. It was eerily formal, paired with his tailored attire that only added to the uncanny effect.

The girl’s mask was equally disturbing in its simplicity, a childlike porcelain doll’s face, grotesquely exaggerated with hollow eyes and painted lips that twisted into a mockery of innocence. The silence stretched, thick and suffocating, as their collective stares pinned me to the chair.

I squeezed my eyes shut, wishing for a moment of clarity. The soft hum of the music in the background only amplified the heavy tension in the room. My wrists throbbed where the twine cut into my skin. The cloth in my mouth was suffocating, forcing every shaky breath to echo in my ears.

Lucian stepped forward first, his movements calm and measured, like he was addressing an audience instead of a woman bound and gagged in a chair. His mask tilted slightly as if he was studying me. "You know us, Autumn. Maybe not as well as you thought, but you do know us.”

My stomach twisted as he stepped closer. I wanted to look away, but his voice had a magnetic pull that kept me rooted.

“You’re probably sitting there convincing yourself Wilder isn’t the man you thought he was,” Lucian continued, his voice deceptively soft. “Let me make this simple for you. He is. Wilder would never betray you. Never. Everything between youwasandisreal, including us.”

Someone laughed. Hunter. That had to be Hunter. “He only lures them into a sense of safety and want, but that’s all part of our job. He never follows through with more.”

I recognized the next voice just as easily. They were no longer distorting them. Atlas stepped forward to say his piece, Amber’s head dangling from his gloved hand by her bloodied strands of hair. Most of it seemed to be gone. I couldn’t fathom what was done to her for the end result to be this.

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