Page 10 of Cinder
They were two innocent sixteen-year-old girls.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’m peachy.”
Beast gives me a pointed look. “The fact you just saidpeachytells me something isn’t right.”
To ease his suspicion, I give him one of my shit-eating smiles. The one that has gotten me out of a lot of situations in my thirty-four years. “It’s two a.m. Your head is fucking with you, brother. I’m feeling good. Feeling satisfied. We gave those girls justice tonight, and I don’t regret any of it.”
He doesn’t look convinced. But that’s Beast. It takes a lot more than a couple of sentences to ease his suspicions.
But he nods and doesn’t press it. “Get some sleep.”
I give him a wink, and he walks off. I watch him bound up the grand staircase to the second level where the bedrooms are before I continue toward the clubhouse bar.
Inside, it’s empty and still, and lit only by moonlight. The silvery light cuts into the room through an ornate leadlight window on the back wall.
Once upon a time, it was the grand ballroom of the castle. But now it’s where the Knights like to party. Taking up one wall is a long timber bar with rows and rows of glass shelves behind it, every inch taken up with a bottle of liquor.Whiskey. Bourbon. Tequila. You name it, we have it in abundance.
After taking a bottle of Jack from the shelf, I grab a glass tumbler from the drying racks and take a seat at the bar. I pour myself a decent shot, throwing it back and relishing the burn as it carves its way through my chest.
But it does nothing to calm the uneasy feeling in my gut. So I pour another. And then another.
I have a feeling it’s going to take a few tonight.
I remove my wallet from the breast pocket of my cut and flip it open. Tucked neatly inside is a photo folded in half. My guts twist when I unfold it and see the sweet smiling faces of Carina and Beth looking back at me. I’ve looked at this photo a million times leading up to tonight. But this will be the last time.
There’s a half-full packet of cigarettes on the bar. They’ll be Sticky’s for sure. He’s always leaving his cigarettes somewhere and then wonders why he can never find them.
Stealing one, I reach for the Zippo lighter in my pocket and light it, drawing the smoke deep into my lungs as I look at the photo of the two girls, silently telling them goodbye. Then, holding the corner of the photo over the lit Zippo, I watch the flame devour the photo and the cinders drop to the floor.
I was twenty-five when I became the enforcer of this club, and in that time, I’ve taken thirteen lives. Lives of men who didn’t deserve to take one more breath. Sometimes I wait for the guilt to set in, but it never does. Maybe because the menwere evil and deserved what they got. Or maybe I’m just a psychopath and I don’t have a conscience. I don’t know, I gave up trying to figure it out years ago.
I splash more whiskey into the glass and drink it down in one mouthful, finally feeling the calm that comes with too much alcohol.
I push up my sleeve and let my gaze drift over the twelve white lines etched into my forearm. They cut through the tattoo of Medusa and Zeus on my arm. Twelve little reminders of what scum I’ve erased from this earth.
On my chest, cut into the skin over my heart, are another four lines.
But I don’t let myself think about them anymore.
They were a very personal revenge.
Blood spilled, not for the club. But for me.
For them.
I remove my knife from my hip sheath and pierce the skin next to the twelfth scar on my arm, carving the thirteenth line beside it and feeling a high from the pain as blood rises to the surface. I open and close my fist and watch the little rivers of blood run down my arm and onto my jeans before tugging my shirt back down.
I re-sheath my knife.
Number thirteen is done.
Another evil fuck I’ve taken from this earth.
But I know he won’t be my last.
CHAPTER 6
Ella
