Page 7 of Remorseless Sinner

He was wearing a black suit, crisp white collared shirt, and jet-black tie, with his hands clasped in front of him.

Tattoos curled up the sides of his thick, bull-like neck, dark marks I couldn’t identify curved wickedly around his wrists, each finger smudged with letters.

When I’d last seen him seven years ago he’d been just as tall but a lot lankier, less muscular. But I’d know those cold, reptilian flat black eyes anywhere.

It was a man I hoped I’d never see again.

A man I assumed the Eye had saved me from.

A man I’d last seen the Congregation dragging out and throwing into the forest.

A man I thought I’d outmaneuvered and beaten. . .

My stepbrother Saul

“No!” I screamed. “No!”

His dark eyes didn’t change as they flicked down on me, and I scrambled to my hands and knees, trying to crawl away from him.

But before I could get anywhere, I felt his massive black boot land on my skirt, trapping me in place as my hands scrabbled ineffectively at the carpet.

“I will take her. I will marry her.”

The Congregation seemed tense, expectant.

Memories flashed unbidden in my mind. The first day I had met him, on the first day of senior year.

“And this is going to be your new stepbrother,” Mom had said, ushering Saul into the room. “You both just turned 18, so I bet you have a lot of things in common.”

At the time, we lived in a small clapboard house in the smoggy downtown.

He had been very tall then, lanky, with shaggy brown hair and dark eyes.

“Hello,” I said after she had left. “May the purity in me see the purity in you. I have the school schedule here if you want it.”

Saul said nothing for a moment, then he cocked his head at me and raised his hand, palm-up, toward mine.

“There’s no purity in me.”

The greeting unnerved me, but I extended my hand with the schedule, a bit nervously, because something about the expression in his eyes was unsettling, our fingers brushing as I handed him the paper.

I felt caught in his gaze, an uneasy skittering fear going up and down my spine.

Something was wrong with this man

And I hadn’t been able to draw a free breath since.

I should have known he’d come back.

“She has been denounced as a whore,” Pastor Mickelson said loudly.

His crooked finger pointed accusingly at me.

“Has she?” Saul said.

His voice could never be soft, but it was low and malicious. “I’m sorry to hear that. You’d better sign her over to me to take care of it.”

“No!” I cried.

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