Page 49 of Forever Filthy

“I already know who it is,” I say quietly.

The shock is evident in his gaze. “Who?”

“The girl I called you about, Kim. I think it's her in that box.” Sadness coats my words, she was so young. Twenty-six with her entire life ahead of her but because she crossed paths with me, she was murdered and I will have to live with the guilt of that for the rest of my life. I close my eyes not wanting to see her face when David lifts the lid. His resounding sigh is all the answer I need.

It’s Kim.

“Give her a burial and make sure there is evidence for her parents to find, they don’t need to be wondering what happened to her.” When Nial leaves the room with the box, I finally takea full breath and flop into one of the dining chairs and bury my face in my hands. “Lordess, we need to do something. That’s the third one and I am afraid to say it?—”

“There will be more unless I start giving into their demands. I know,” I answer. David shoots me a solemn look.

“I think we need to start looking through all the members and making a stockpile of the ones who want you out the most.”

“Yeah, let’s do it now.” I’m already so far behind on all my college classes with no hope of catching up, so I may as well devote my time to something useful, I mean there isn’t any point in studying or submitting essays if I’m dead.

David makes a call to have all the records of current and past members delivered to my house. While we wait, I decide to go and check on Nova. My bedroom door is slightly ajar and I pause when I hear her talking.

“I love you, witch.” Hearing those three words come from my brother fills me with a sense of pride. Him being away from this place for the past year has been the best thing for his relationship with Nova.

“I love you too,” she says through her tears. I decide to leave Nova to talk to Vox and head back downstairs to wait for all the files to be delivered. David is sitting on the sofa with his phone in his hand, at the sound of me approaching he looks up and forces a smile.

“It’s going to be a long night so I’ve ordered some Thai and coffees.”

“Have I told you that you are worth your weight in gold, David?” This time when he smiles it's real. I drop into the single seater opposite him.

“I just received a message from Tate.” At the mention of her I sit up straighter.

“What happened?”

“Another girl didn’t turn up for her shift.”

“Fuck!” I run a hand through my hair. “What’s the chance that she’s sick?” I ask hopefully.

“Slim to none considering she was just hired last week to take over the Explorer room.” Every room in Lividica is dedicated to a certain type of pleasure. The Explorer room is for men to try new things that they wouldn’t dare do with their wives. We even have a room dedicated to golden showers.

“Let me guess, no one has seen her since she left the interview?” David nods. “So, we know for sure the fucker is in town and no doubt watching us right now.” Again he nods. “I want you to get a team out here first thing in the morning to do a sweep of the house.”

“You think this place is bugged?”

I shrug. “I’m not putting anything past this sick fuck, I want us to take extra caution. We need to change our routine every day.”

“I’ve already changed my meeting times for the week and I have my assistant Cornelia handling most of my in person checks.”

I reel back in surprise. “You have an assistant?”

He laughs and I find myself smiling at the sound of it. Given the horrendous situation we are in we need to find a reason to smile. “Yes.” David goes on to explain that he actually has his own accounting firm which floors me given the coupe I have staged. When the boxes are delivered, I almost want to cry at the sheer amount of them. Each folder has pages of information on every member and their families. I comb through the stacks that are in alphabetical order trying to find Ezekiel, Hayze, Archer and Vox’s files but the files aren’t in there. “I already had their files removed from the archives after you banished them.”

I whirl around and face David in surprise. “Why would you do that?”

“Because I knew they would become targets by the other members. If they weren’t targets, they would be the ones they would go after to try to overthrow you and I couldn’t allow that.” His declaration renders me speechless. What David has done breaks a lot of rules that could have him banished or killed by the other members, if they were to discover what he did.

“I… Why would you help me? You didn’t even know me well then.”

“Call me insane but I had a feeling that you would be the leader the Saints have needed for years. I have been a member of the Saints for longer than you have been alive and believe me when I tell you that some of these men shouldn’t be free to walk the streets.”

“David—”

“Can I be curt with you?”

---