Page 14 of Of Saints & Savagery
“No,” she cries. “I—I’m sorry, Heath. I didn’t know that’s what they’d think. I just told the truth.”
“You told them I was up on the road with you when they went under the bridge?”
“Yes!” She throws up her hands. “I told them everything I knew.”
“Then why do they think I was there?”
She swallows and looks away again, crossing her arms over her chest. She put the bed between us, but I consider diving over it, grabbing her, shaking the truth out of her. Instead, I shove my hands into my pockets, hiding my clenched fists. People think I’m violent because I am. That’s what they told me, over and over, for so many years that sometimes I’d almost convince myself I did it, that I went back, like they said I did. Until the question whispered in the back of my mind, in the depths of the darkness. Did I?
I know I didn’t, but sometimes, while I lay awake, delaying the nightmares, I’d replay it, and I’d add in what they said, until I didn’t know if it was imagination or memory.
“They found DNA that matches Angel’s in the right amount,” she says, hugging herself tighter.
My heart jolts. “That matches hers?”
She shakes her head. “I don’t know. I can’t find a DNA test for her.”
“What do you mean, you can’t find a DNA test?” I ask, narrowing my eyes.
She swallows hard, resolutely refusing to meet my gaze. “I’ve been doing a little digging.”
“On my sister?” I demand, heat pulsing in my temples. My knuckles ache against the unyielding steel of my knife in my pocket.
“Yes,” she whispers. “Saint’s helping.”
“Liar,” I roar, lunging across the bed.
She shrieks and cowers against the wall, and I catch her upper arms, pinning her flat against the cinderblock.
“Saint wouldn’t lie to me,” I say, seething with anger.
Would he, though? Before Mercy came back, I wouldn’t have believed him capable. But she’s always been his weakness. When we were kids, he’d do anything for her. He would have jumped in front of a train for her, fought a lion with his bare hands, defended her to the death if someone threatened her. As much as he pretends to hate her, he said he was going to fuck her. So how much has really changed? It pisses me off that she has me doubting him. He’s my brother, and nothing is supposed to come between us, least of all his bitch sister.
“I’m sorry,” she squeaks, quivering in my grasp.
“Tell me why.”
“Why?” she repeats.
“Why they think it was my DNA. Why you’re looking. Why after everything you did, you’re still trying to ruin my fucking life. What did I do to you that makes you hate me so fucking much, that after all this time, you’re still trying to destroy me.”
“Destroy you?” she asks. “I’m not—”
“Liar,” I snarl again. “You want to play innocent, but I know you, Mercy Soules. I know the darkest corners of your evil little heart. I know you’re not some fresh spring lamb. I knowyou liked what I did to you back then, and you like what I do to you now. You want to pretend you’re all sweet and innocent, but you’re just like us. You always were. That’s why you were one of us.”
“I’m not trying to destroy you,” she says. “I’m trying to find her.”
“Then why the fuck are you involving Saint?” I growl. “Why are you having him lie to us, after everything? Taking away the one person who—who—” My voice cracks, and my breath burns in my nose, closes off my throat. I rip my knife from my pocket and flip it open, holding it to her throat because I won’t show her how much it fucking kills me to know he still loves her more than us, more than anything, even after everything.
“He caught me,” she says, her voice desperate as I press the knife to her skin. “He made me tell him, and he said he’d help. That’s all.”
I scrape the sharp edge up her delicate neck, over the pulse I can see racing through her ivory skin. The sound of her whimpers of terror makes my cock stir, but pissed as I am, I know I can’t unleash myself on her, tear her apart like the heathen I am.
“And what did you find?”
She grips my wrist, her breath heaving, tears slipping down her cheeks. “Please, Heath.”
“I love the sound of you begging,” I growl against her cheek, catching a fat tear on the tip of my nose and following the tear track back up her cheek. “It makes me so hard. What about you? Does it make your pussy wet?”
