Page 51 of Ride with the Devil

“The same prophet who, uh, stole your girl?”

“Yeah.” I shift so that Kylie doesn’t have to touch me if she doesn’t want to. “You can guess what happened. We turned twenty-one. I thought we were engaged. And then…”

And then I was told to head to the church pulpit where I was forced to watch Jack Donovan fuck Emily on the altar while wearing a white dress.

Aweddingdress.

Because she agreed to marry him instead of me.

“She’s his wife now. He decided that, of all the congregation, she was the one who was holy enough to bear his heirs. Last I heard, she’s had at least two of them. She seems happy, and I want that for her… Emily was sweet. A little feisty like you. But she didn’t choose me.”

She was supposed to.

Maybe it wasn’t meant to be. Twenty-one-year-old Luca was convinced the world was ending when I lost her. I’d known Emily for almost a decade at that point, and Ididlove her. Was Iinlove , though?

Who the fuck knows? But Idoknow that the feelings I have for this woman lying next to me right now? They’re undeniable.

What would I do if I saw anyone fucking Kylie?

I’d get my ninth tally mark, that’s what I’d do…

Completely oblivious to how murderous she makes, Kylie scoots closer to me—and that only firms my decision that, if anyone is going to touch, taste, and eventually fuck this woman, it’ll beme.“So she made the wrong fucking choice. Tough luck for Emily, but I’m not complaining because I get to have fun with you. That still doesn’t answer my question about the key, though.”

“Donovan has this gold altar where he keeps his copy of the Bible, his gold goblet, and his cross. This key… it belongs to that altar. I stole it. I just… I told you it was stupid, but afterhe married Emily, it made me feel good to know that I had something of his. And I knew he probably had a spare. I knew he could get in regardless. I was still so brainwashed, I didn’t even take the cross with me when my parents disowned me.”

Kylie digs her fingers in the sheets on the cot between us. My mood brightens a little when I think that she might actually give a shit about how awful my parents treated me back then.

“Probably a good idea,” she says after a moment. “I mean, what would you need it for? If you left the church. The key, I get. You wouldn’t want to wear a cross.”

Oh. She doesn’t know. “It was six inches tall and covered in diamonds. It’s worth a fortune.”

“What? Dude! You should’ve taken it. They kicked you out with nothing!”

“I know. I also should’ve realized that no prophet, priest, or pastor would have such a fucking gaudy cross. It was a sign of how loaded he was. Of how powerful he was when it came to taking every last dime his congregation had. He was a cult leader.” Plain and simple. “And even though I didn’t take the cross, I took this key.” I take it between my forefinger and thumb. “To me, it’s a reminder of what I left behind. What I escaped from. It’s also a sign that I’ll never go back.”

Reaching up, Kylie’s soft fingers ghost over the bump brand on my forearm. “This should’ve been the first one, ace.”

“I know. And it is. I needed it, too.”

“What do you mean?”

She wants to know? I’ll tell her.

“When they disowned me, I didn’t just take this key. I took another set. To my parents’ car. I used it to drive all the way out of Oklahoma and ended up in Hamilton. I spent two years there as an eventual wheelman for this guy, Kane, and his crew. But they found me.”

I lay my hand over hers, covering my brand. “My parents, I mean. They said Donovan wanted me to repent and return to the fold. That Emily already gave birth to a son, but she was now pregnant with his daughter. The prophet finally realized how important it was to strengthen the congregation… that, if I confessed my sins and vowed to follow his word again, I could marry his daughter when she was grown.”

Kylie sucks in a breath. “No, he fucking didn’t.”

I nod into the dark. “I remember saying something like, so I wait twenty-one more years to make my ex’s kid my wife? And my mother… mymother… patted my arm and said, if I’m faithful again to the church, it would only be about fifteen. That the prophetpromised.”

I was twenty-five at the time. They were telling me that, at forty-one, I’d finally get a chance to fuck—and it would be Emily’s fifteen-year-old daughter.

Luckily, Kylie comes to the same conclusion as I did then: “Your mother sucks.”

“I know. And while they waited for me, expecting me to be their doting son and do what they said, I packed my shit, ducked out through the back, and took off. I hid out for a week, then shit went down in Hamilton… a job went bad… and I left. I didn’t stop running until I hit Springfield and I discovered the West Side was ruled by a man called ‘Devil’.”

For the first time since I rolled onto my back, I turn to look at Kylie. “I figured the only way to get them to leave me alone was to show my allegiance to the devil for once and for all. The devil or just Devil, it didn’t matter. And you know what? He saved me.”

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