Page 34 of Of Heathens & Havoc

“It’s just us, or it’s no one,” I growl at him. “We can give them one of the thirsty bitches you just fucked. That’s how it works if the original sacrifice taps out. This one taps out after the three of us.”

“Yeah, okay,” he grumbles.

“I like it this way,” Heath says. “Mercy’s not for everyone. This shit’s personal.”

“Don’t worry,” I assure him. “She’ll pay for her crime.”

“With her body,” he says, palming his dick. “Just like a whore.”

Angel chuckles darkly. “We can make that happen.”

My own cock throbs at the thought of what I’m about to allow them to do—to my own sister. I’ll watch them, but I won’t participate. No matter what Heath says, no matter where she’s lived for how many years, she’ll always be my little sister, the girl my parents adopted when I was five, giving me the sibling I’d always wanted. I’ve always protected her, but she gave up the right to that when she turned her back on us.

They deserve her penance. They did more time than I did.

But I’ll enjoy watching from the sidelines as she finally atones for the sin of her betrayal. I’ll enjoy watching my two best friends—brothers to me in a way she was never a sister—enter her paradise and wreak havoc on it in ways she’s never imagined in her pathetic attempt at wildest dreams. I’ll relish every tear that falls from her lashes as they take everything pure about her soul and paint it as black as theirs, destroying what she loves most about herself. I’ll revel in her misery as they corrupt and defile her Garden of Eden without mercy, using up every part of her body and soul until there’s no part of her untouched by their depravity.

And I’ll make her wish it was her own brother doing it instead.

That’s what will extinguish the last spark of hope for redemption for her soul. When we’re done with her, her Eden will be a desolate hellscape of perversion that matches our own.

fourteen

The Merciful

I’m halfway across the small, tree-lined courtyard when the chatter around the fountain dies. I swallow hard, gripping my blazer tightly around me, even though it’s already hot at eight in the morning. Sneaking a glance, I’m relieved to see no one is looking at me. They don’t know, even though I took the mask off, which is against the rules of the game. No one knows what I did last night except the Hellhounds, and they’re not going to talk.

My relief is short lived as I realize there must be someone notable following me. A shiver of dread wracks my body, and I duck my head, stepping aside to let them pass. Maybe it’s not one of my former friends, a member of the Quint. Maybe it’s just a stranger, one who saw the most intimate, unholy places on my body displayed and made a laughingstock like a disobedient wife of old trapped in the stocks in the town square.

Or maybe it’s the stranger whose lips and teeth left the bruises along my shoulders and up the sides of my neck, who touched places on my body that even I’ve never touched, who abused the sacred place that only my future husband has the right to, stealing that privilege from the man I’ll one day marry. It’s not enough that I can lie, adding another sin to the crushing weight of guilt on my chest after last night’s sick game. Even if I never tell my husband, it’s too late. That gift is already gone, stolen from me, even if my husband never knows it was stolen from him.

How could I ever tell him? How could I confess to him that a perfect stranger, a man I’ve never seen in my life, not onlyrobbed me of the gift of my purity that I should have given tohimon our wedding night, but he shared it with a dozen other men?

He didn’t just rob me of my innocence, either. He stole it and then destroyed it when he didn’t treasure it, didn’t treat it as sacred. He treated it like it was worthless, therefore leaving me without worth. Heruinedme.

He used me like a cheap harlot who was there for every man’s pleasure, took a part of me that was private and untouched, and put it on display for them to scorn or lust after, and he abused it until I was forced to submit to the temptation and give in to my base, sinful nature. They all know that I’m unclean.

If he speaks to me now, I think I’ll die.

Squeezing my eyes closed, I pray it’s not him. That it’s not Heath, who took my confession that wasn’t his to hear, a confession almost as shameful as the one I’ll have to share with a man someday, a man who will surely walk away and not want to marry me if I tell him. I pray it’s not Saint, that he won’t stop and humiliate me in front of everyone the way he humiliated me in private last night. I pray it’s not Angel, who belongs to the gang that threw bricks through our window when I sent their prince away for killing my friend, even though he belongs there.

They all belong there. They’re all heathens, savages capable of the deepest depravity. They proved that last night. There’s nothing they won’t do, no limit to their deviant desires. They think if they force me to participate, I’ll break. They expect me to run in shame, but I won’t. Not when they walk free after what they did. I won’t give up this easily, no matter how badly I want to. I will put all three of them back where they belong, for good this time, no matter what it takes. Because no matter how badly they ruin me, they can’t destroy me worse than they did her. She deserves justice, and if no one else will pursue it, I’ll do it alone.

“Well, well, well,” drawls a voice full of scorn and irony. “Did we find a lost little lamb?”

I stare at the cobblestones underfoot, praying fervently that they’re talking to another player from HAVOC. And then a pair of sleek oxblood loafers appear in my line of sight, pointed directly at me, the toes splayed slightly in that masculine stance of confidence that rich men take. I refuse to raise my eyes, to see which Hellhound it is. I know it’s not one of the three I know, and I don’t want to see the face of the man who touched me.

“Little lamb,” taunts another voice in a quiet sing-song from beside me.

“Are you lost?” whispers a voice from behind me. Warm breath stirs the hairs on the nape of my neck, and a cold chill of fear grips my body.

“Where’s your shepherd?”

“Take a vow of silence after your night of debauchery?” another mocking voice asks from my other side.

I want to shove my way through the circle of them and run, but my feet are frozen, like I’m the scared little rabbit Heath said I was, frozen in the hopes that I won’t be spotted even after my predators have closed in around me.

A pale hand appears, and I glimpse a horned skull on the back and an altered hourglass symbol tattooed on the thumb before he reaches under my chin, tipping it up. My gaze travels up, and up, and up, into the captivating grey eyes of the man who told me to bow on my first day. I cast my eyes around in a panic. I’m not surrounded by Hellhounds. I’m surrounded by Sinners.

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