Page 23 of Saint's Sinner

“I’m not a child, so stop talking to me like one.”

“Would be easier to do if you’d stop acting like a tantruming three-year-old,” His father said, that dry tone of his seriously grating on Sinn’s nerves. “Time to grow up and start acting like the man I raised you to be.”

“Funny, but I thought that’s exactly what I was doing when I took off to make a life of my own.”

“Seemed more like running away to me.”

“You would think that.”

“I’m a simple man Sinclair, and I call ‘em like I see ‘em.”

Sighing Sinn shook his head. “All we’re doing is talking in circles. I’m never going to see things your way and you’re never going to listen to what I’m trying to say. Let’s just call it done and give me a phone so I can call Saint and let him know I’ll be on my way back as soon as I can get to a bus or train station.”

“Saint can have you back if he can prove he deserves it, and the only way he’s gonna do that, is if he manages to track you here. Personally, I don’t see it happening, but if you’d like to lay down a wager…”

In the distance, Saint heard the unmistakable rumble of Harley engines growing steadily closer and knew the smile that slid across his face was smug and likely to piss his grandfather off more than he already was. “I think it’s a little late for that, unless you’re giving away free gifts.”

“It’s a lack of common decency is what it is, crashing in on someone trying to have a meal,” his father grumbled, but Sinn could finally hear him laying down his knife and fork. Several chairs scraped the wood as people shoved away from the table, a couple of those sounds quite harsh.

“If you all wreck my floor again, the whole lot of you will be on your hands and knees crawling around with sandpaper and fresh stain until every inch of it gleams!” His mom declared. She’d make them do it too, and stand over them to supervise and ensure they got it back to the pristine condition she preferred it in.

The rest of the house might look lived in, hell a few rooms were notoriously considered disaster zones with warnings thatpeople should enter them at their own risk, but the dining room was sacred in her eyes.

Sinn started to stand, eager to hear what was going on, only a window shattered, and instinct sent him diving to the floor.

“Somebody is gonna die for this,” his mother snarled, and sure as shit, he heard the hammer of a gun cock, and felt her brush by him as she headed for the door. The moment he started crawling after her, she stopped short, her silhouette rising some, deliberately blocking his path. “Where the fuck do you think you’re going?”

“With you.”

“The hell you are,” she yelled over the never-ending engine rumbles. It hit him then. There was no way it was the Jokers; their trademark train horn battle cry hadn’t sounded. As the rumble grew louder and the ground began to vibrate, Sinn was struck with the sudden irony of the moment. He was about to get caught in an all out war, because ofhisfamily, after they’d claimed that snatching him out of the alley behind the tattoo parlor and dragging him back to his childhood home was to protect him from theJokers’enemies. Even if the Jokers had called in their Outer Banks chapter, they wouldn’t have the kind of numbers to unleash an assault of this magnitude.

“Fuck!” Sinn snarled. “At least give me back one of my knives before you ditch me under here.”

“Wrong plan.” She snapped. The whole situation had rattled him so badly that he’d forgotten what else was under the table. All he could see was her light gray hand on a dark gray panel, then he was rolling. The shove she’d given him had sent him tumbling down the ramp to the basement below.

It was a brilliant design…. for hiding bikes or launching surprise attacks off the backs of ones, a fact which had contributed greatly to the last time the floor had to be redone. Their system of trap doors was better than a modern panicroom. At least with the tunnel maze beneath the house, there were ways out, not that he’d be venturing in that direction anytime soon. For all his desire to prove himself, he’d be just as libel to wander in front of a bullet as knife someone on the imposing side.

As he bounced off the memory foam mattress at the bottom, Sinn just hoped his side won, or eventually, Sinn knew he’d blunder into the enemy and be forced to concede that his family was right to see him as a liability. Saint would never learn his fate. The thought of the man grieving him, or worse, wandering through life thinking Sinn had up and abandoned him and everything they’d been to one another, left what little food he’d eaten threatening to come back up. It bolstered his resolve to survive this.

He inhaled the stale scents lingering in the underground space while struggling to decide which passageway to take. The undertone of motor oil mostly covered by lemon pledge and wood soap permeated the place. Pantry would have supplies, not that he could see what was in the fuckin’ jars. He wasn’t even sure theywerejars, until he reached out and his fingers slid over the smooth surface of one. Glass. Everything was dim, so he had to pick it up to tell if it was empty or full. Either way, they’d make a piss poor weapon if he had to throw them at someone unless his old man had filled them with gasoline again, in which case, he’d have some amazing bombs, until the house caught fire because of them. With his shitty fuckin’ aim, he might be better off trying to shatter it against someone’s head and hope it knocked them out.

Muffled gunshots and small trickles of dust from between the slats in the ceiling surrounded him completely. All the floors had been doubled, another feature of the sprawling fortress. An image flickered on the edge of his consciousness, one of the blue and black Victorian home Saint shared with his brother. Insidewas warm, cozy, and as protected and reinforced as here and yet, here had never felt as welcoming…. or as safe. Rumor had it that the glass in the Victorian was bulletproof. Whether there was any truth to that or not, he hadn’t asked, mainly because he hadn’t wanted anyone to misinterpret the reason he wanted to know.

The glass here needed to be reinforced, that was for damn sure. He could hear it breaking all over the floor, the dust brushing against his face as he felt his way deeper into the tunnel.

“You picked a bad time to visit.”

The voice came out of the darkness, of which there was a lot at the moment. He was glad for it though. It meant the other party didn’t see him flinch. He hated that he had but he hated being snuck up on more. Fortunately, he knew the voice. The only danger he was in from Maddox was being too annoyed to think straight. Considering the chaos above, that was the least of his problems right now.

“In case you didn’t notice, I didn’t pick anything!” Sinn snapped. “Like with so much else around here, my choices got taken away.”

“Yeah, well, if you’re done bitching about it, come on, I’m supposed to guide you to the other end, then I’d like to get back while there is still something to shoot.”

“Did I ask for your help?” Sinn hissed. “Go try not to get shot yourself, it would piss mom off if she had to sew you up again.”

The sound Maddox made was half snicker and half snarl. Sinn could hear his footsteps moving closer way before he saw a shadow move.

“Why do you think she sent me after you in the first place? Maddox said, sounding just as pissed off as Sinn felt. “Now come on!”

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