Page 52 of The Devils of Saint City

“Then why the fuck did you stop me?”

His intent to kill is back now that he has someone to pin it on, but I don’t let it phase me. “Well what were you about to do when you walked in there, huh?”

“Tell him if he ever calls her again, I’ll show him what his insides look like by gauging out his eyes and shoving them up his ass.”

Sounds right up his alley. “And to her?” I add, because I couldn’t care less what he does to the guy, I care about which side of himself he shows her.

He scoffs, but the way his eyes drop to the floor tells me everything I need to know. “I’d have fucked that sweet little mouth until she remembered who she belongs to.”

“Exactly. All I did was give us both a moment to calm down and plan our next move. Is it worth finding this guy to send a message? Or do we just take her damn computer away because she needs to remember she’s ours? I personally think computer... I’d like to know what the fuck else is on there anyway.”

“Weren’t you the one always preaching that the shit we do will make her hate us more?” he pushes. “You think taking away her computer and making her quit her job will be better than facefucking her for telling another guy she loves him?”

Scratching my head, I think about it a little longer. He’s right. We’d be better off just facefucking her, but where do we go fromthere? “So what? We go in there, punish her for doing her job and then what? Let her continue doing her job? And what else does her job really entail? What kind of fucking videos are out there right now ofourgirl?”

Fuck, I’m spiraling when I’m the one who’s supposed to keep it together.

“A lot,” Asher growls. “She sells her fucking sexsomnia videos, remember? You really want to see those? We’ll need a bigger grave out back.”

His words make me growl and pace like a caged animal, and this time I need his help pulling me back from the ledge. “I don’t want to share her with anyone else. She needs to take all those videos down.” The second those words are out I have another thought, one that might truly make Ash murder again. “You think she uploaded ours?”

Something dangerous flashes in his eyes, and I know there’s no going back now. “She wouldn’t fucking dare.”

Once again, he’s right. He has to be or all the progress he made last night was for nothing, because things are only going to get worse between us. “Only one way to know.”

I hate it, but in reality we don’t have a choice here. Our faces can’t be on the internet, our livelihood relies on us being ghosts, and if she’s fucked with that we have more problems than we think.

Asher’s jaw ticks. “Stay here. Only one of us needs to be the devil, and we both know it’s been me for a while.”

He pushes past me to Rhea’s room, stopping for just a moment with his open palm against the doorframe. I watch his fingers curl slightly, his shoulders tense. He doesn’t want to be the devil anymore, he just doesn’t have a choice.

The sound of him clearing his throat has Rhea whipping around and holding a finger to her lips, but Asher doesn’t care. He stalks across the room to unplug her headset, then picks upher laptop and removes the power cord and HDMI adaptor that extends it to a monitor. “What the fuck are you doing?” she snaps, standing so quickly her chair rolls back a few feet. “Give it back, I wasn’t done!”

Without a word, Ash rushes out to the living room with her belongings, and Rhea and I both follow. I can’t make him carry all the weight here, I just can’t. “You’re over here telling some other dude you love him. What the fuck is that, Rhea?”

“It’s my fucking job,” she retorts. “That’s what. Give it back.”

Asher clicks around for a minute, not saying a word, and going off of how tense he is, shit isn’t looking good. May as well rip off the bandaid now, I can’t wait on Ash to find the answer. “Did you upload the video of us?”

Her body goes rigid. “Yeah. I did. You said this was all transactional, remember? So you two get a fuckdoll and I get fucking paid.”

Asher picks up her lap and raises it up in the air like he’s about to smash it to bits, and I yell for him to stop. “She has to take it down, Ash! Don’t fucking break it yet.”

He’s trembling with restraint, but I breathe a little easier when he sets it down and rounds on her. “You just fucking exposed us, pet. Is that your endgame? Getting us fucking killed?”

She backs up a half a step toward the couch, but stands tall. “I didn’t know what you did when I uploaded it. And who cares, anyway? It’s not like you admitted to anything except for taking advantage of me. Newsflash, the guys that buy my videos like that sort of thing.”

Asher crowds her space, shoving the computer into her hands. “Take it down, or you’re going to find out just how cruel your big brother can be.”

As his eyes travel down to the burn on her hand, Rhea relents. Fear takes over as she realizes exactly what he’s saying — take it down, or Asher will finish what he started that night.

She’d be an idiot not to.

Trembling, her fingers fumble on the trackpad and slam the keys a bit too hard, but she nods when it’s done. “There were only three downloads, the rest were all streams. It’s down.”

“Take all of them down,” I rush out. “All videos of you.”

“That’s over half my income,” she argues. “Especially since you two keep me either handcuffed to a bed or - or paralyzed half the time and I can’t take as many clients as I used to. Why do I have to take them down?”

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