Page 1 of The Devils Melody
Prologue
LENNOX
The crisp autumn air nips at my skin as I watch the fire Kage started. The flames whip angrily as they devour the house of the man my brother and I just murdered in cold blood. I glance over my shoulder, scanning our surroundings. Everything is still, no movement, not a single soul in sight. But that doesn’t mean someone isn’t coming.
I check my watch. A quarter past ten. We had an hour to get this job done, and we finished with time to spare. I turn to my brother, his face streaked with blood, and grin. Another one down.
Jonathan Castro was a shitty, despicable human. Now, I’m no saint—neither is my brother—but this man was a rapist, a child molester. His latest victim was only fifteen years old. We couldn’t allow him to live any longer. He deserved the death he received. Arguably, he deserved worse. Something a little more…drawn out, if you will. But after the third night of murdering these pieces of shits, I’m starting to feel the exhaustion creep in.
Not my brother, though. Never him. He lives for the kill.He doesn’t like to bring up his past, and honestly, I couldn’t say that I blame him. He had a rough and ugly start. But after learning the truth of his past, I couldn't let him take on this mission alone. So here we are, just a couple of vigilantes for hire, tasked with taking out the trash.
A job like this leaves no room for mistakes. One fuck up, one slip, and it could all come crashing down, leading the cops straight to us. We’ve been at this for fifteen years now and have stayed undetected, we have Jimmy to thank for that. He finds the jobs, we make the kill, and he sends in the clean up crew. It’s a seamless system. Simple, yet effective.
All we have to do is follow it. No distractions, just precision and strict focus. That’s what I’ve been telling myself for the last decade, before we walked into that shitty bar and saw her.
One look. That’s all it took.
The mission was always supposed to come first.
Until her.
Our little bird.
1
Wren
THE SONGBIRD
Ding.
My phone goes off for what feels like the millionth time in the last ten minutes. Realistically, it’s only gone off about eight times, but at this point, the exaggeration feels justified.
I glance down at my phone. Richard.Again.
Rolling my eyes, I switch it to silent, shove it in the back pocket of my jeans, and get back to work. I can’t keep letting him distract me while I'm on the clock. This asshat has taken up enough of my time and I’m fucking over it.
Richard is my ex. We were together for two years, until I finally couldn’t take the mental abuse anymore. He wasn’t always like that, though. In the beginning he was actually quite the opposite. Charming, sweet, and so unbelievably loveable.
We met at a house party he was throwing in Beverly Hills. My best friend, Olive, insisted that we go. She’s into the extravagant and ritzy lifestyle. I, however, am not. I would rather stay home curled up on the couch with a good movie and save my money. But of course, there’s nosaying no to Olive. So, to Beverly Hills we went. The second he saw me, it was over. He didn’t leave my side the entire night and we were immediately entranced with each other.
Rich was everything a woman could possibly ask for. The kind of man that made you feel as if you were the center of his world. He was constantly showering me with gifts, smothering me with affection, and praising me like I was his queen. There wasn’t a day that went by where he wasn’t calling me beautiful or reminding me how much he wanted me. It didn’t take long before I was absolutely swooning over him. I should have recognized the love bombing for what it was.
The red flags came slowly, and at first, it was harmless little questions.Who are you hanging out with? Where are you going? Who’s all there?Then the judgment started. Mainly passive aggressive comments about my outfits. It was subtle at first, like I was showing too much skin or something, but then it started to get aggressive.Whoreandslutwere probably his favorite insults to call me.
After a while, he began accusing me of cheating on him every time he threw a house party or whenever we went out with his buddies; as if I would ever touch any of those pretentious assholes in the first place. He’s the reason I’ve lost so many of my closest friends. Everyone tried to warn me, but foolish little Wren, I never listened.
Working at a bar didn't help matters. My entire job revolves around being friendly; I don't exactly have much of a choice. God forbid I came home after a long shift and tried to tell him about my night. If there was mention of a man, that’s all it took. He’d scream at me and accuse me of fucking them. It got to the point where he started coming to the bar just to sit and watch me. He wouldn't speak a single word to me or interact with anyone else. Just a silent watcher while he sipped on beer after beer.
It was creepy and it made all the other servers super uncomfortable. Eventually, Joe, our bouncer, caught on to the shit he was pulling and stopped letting him in. It was embarrassing, but I was glad someone else at the bar had my back.
As awful as all of that was, it wasn’t even what finally made me leave his pathetic ass.
One night after coming home from the bar, I found him passed out in bed, a rocks glass damn near sliding out of his hand while the ice melted into a small puddle on the bed sheets. While trying to clean up his mess, I kept seeing his phone screen light up and I was curious about who would be blowing up his phone so late. Reluctantly, I decided to check his messages and regretted it almost instantly.
I shouldn’t have been surprised by the dozens of messages from other women, but I was. And suddenly, everything made sense. The accusations, the paranoia, the constant need to control me, it was all projection.Hewas the piece of shit.
There was a part of me that wished I had stayed ignorant, but the smarter part of me was glad I looked. It went so much deeper than just text messages. There were hundreds of pictures of all the women he’s manipulated over the years. It disgusted me to know thatthiswas the man I was sleeping with.
