Page 62 of Sin and Salvation

“I’m sorry I believed that,” I said, already trying not to sniffle. “I should’ve known better.”

“Devil damn it,” Zane whispered. “What did we tell you, Venus? No matter where you are on this earth…”

“You’ll hunt me down,” I finished.

Aeron forced himself to relax, and made me look at him. “We’re going to have a really, really long talk about that,” he told me sternly. Then he softened. “But we’re not angry. He spent years fucking with your head; it’s not your fault. You can’t get over that sort of thing overnight. We’ll just have to prove to you that no matter where you go, we’re going to be there.”

I nodded, squeezing him tightly as something rustled and footsteps echoed in the hall.

Zane and Crow were pulling the folders from the mummy’s arms. “Brody, get these back to the club immediately.”

Brody the bouncer stood in the door, mouth hanging open at the sight of the mummified Maxime. “Yes, sir.”

Several of the Black Hearts flowed in and out of the room, taking every ounce of evidence they could find.

It was Crow who hefted Maxime’s corpse like it weighed no more than a feather. “Where do you want this, Venus?” he asked.

I smiled. He was really, truly dead. My worst nightmare would never be free to torment me again.

“Somewhere outside the city. In a deep, dark hole. I don’t actually care where, as long as no one ever knows where he was buried. He doesn’t deserve the remembrance of a grave site.”

Crow nodded.

Together, we left the bullet-shredded ruins of Giraud Tower. Now that the shooting was over, the outside was swarming with cops and journalists; we crept out the back, tossing Maxime’s body in the back of a work truck driven by a Black Heart.

“Some of the members posed as delivery men, but instead of goods, they were transporting the full cache of our weapons over here,” Aeron said to me quietly. “We broke in through the back.”

I shook my head. If I’d kept my head, I would’ve been able to use my power to sense all of this going on without me.

Never again,I told myself as I got on a bike behind Zane.When it comes to my mates, I will never lose hope again.

ChapterThirty-One

Hours later, I was curled in Zane’s bed.

“We’re going to have a talk,” he said, staring directly at me in a way I couldn’t evade.

In fact, three sets of eyes were staring at me, but while Zane sat next to me, his healing touch pushing cool relief through my aching skull, Crow and Aeron stood at the end of the bed, arms crossed over their chests.

“About… getting snatched from warehouses?” I asked, feeling unusually meek.

“No. About how you didn’t believe we were going to come after you.” Crow’s gruff voice was deadlier than usual. “We’re your mates, Venus. In what world were we going to abandon you?”

I shook my head, and Zane grumbled, forcing me to hold still again. “I… I couldn’t help but believe Maxime… I know all of his tells. He wasn’t lying.”

“Maxime had been fooled.” Crow paced restlessly for a moment. “The moment we realized you’d been taken, we sent several of our patch members out disguised as us to hunt down Gian. We made sure Maxime’s guards would see them and report back to him.”

I swallowed. Of all the shady things I hadn’t considered… that had been one of them.

“And what, exactly, was that little plastic shiv for?” Aeron asked, his voice dangerous.

I stared back at them for a moment, then relented. “If what Maxime had said was true, and the club was blown up, I wasn’t going to let him keep me. I was going to kill myself rather than be his prisoner again.”

The silence was so intense I could’ve dropped a crumb and it would’ve sounded like an elephant falling from the sky.

“If you ever consider something like that ever again…” Aeron ran both hands through his hair, clutching his scalp.

“I should’ve believed in you,” I said softly. “And now there’s no reason to ever try it.”

---