Page 23 of The Devils Melody
I crouch beside Trevor, his eyes wide and frantic, darting between me and the gun.
“I didn't touch them! I'm sorr?—”
“You know what the worst part is?” I ask softly. “You’re not even sorry. You’re just scared, and you know what? You should be.”
He opens his mouth, maybe to lie again. Maybe to beg. I don’t let him finish, though. I shove the gun in his open mouth and shoot, the sound ringing out as loud as a bell in a cathedral. Sharp and final. Blood explodes against the cracked drywall, Trevor’s body slumped to the side, twitching once before going still.
The silence in the room is deafening. For the first time ever in my life, I just killed a man. I’m a murderer, and I can’t even bring myself to be sorry. My hands are shaking;not from fear, but the adrenaline of taking a man's life. Of playing God and making this man’s last breath my final decision.
I look over at Kage with a smile on my face only to see rage in his eyes. His fingers tighten around my throat as he drives me back, my body hitting the wall with a jolt. The rough surface scrapes against my skin, and my head snaps back hard against it, the shock of it blooming like fire behind my eyes.
“Bro, what the fuck?—”
“Why did you do that?” he’s screaming in my face, the anger evident in the way he grips my throat. “Now you’re really in it and you can’t take it back! You have blood on your hands, blood that wasn’t yours to fucking spill in the first place!”
“I wasn’t going to just sit here after everything you told me and not do anything about it!” I'm screaming now too, pissed the fuck off that he thought telling me this wouldn’t change anything. “I won’t let you do this by yourself! You’re not alone anymore, Kage. It’s you and me against everything, remember?”
Kage stares at me for a beat too long, almost as if he’s trying to decide if I mean everything I’m telling him. His eyes drop down to my lips, lingering there for just a moment before looking back up into my eyes and crashing his lips against mine. A rush of electricity courses through my veins, a feeling I’ve never felt before, especially not with a man. It’s too fucking much.
Pushing him away, I hold on to his shoulders and stare back at him. I don’t know what the fuck we’re doing, but despite everything telling me how wrong this is, I’ve never felt anything more right. There’s always been a sort of chemistry between us, more than two brothers should feelfor each other. We’ve toed the line before, more flirtatious than physical, but this feels like a long time coming and exactly what I didn’t know I needed.
I pull Kage back into me, kissing him with a passion that feels so foreign to me, but I don’t let it stop me. Turning our bodies, I slam him against the wall and take the lead, tugging his shirt over his head and tossing it to the side. We crash back into each other, only stopping for Kage to remove my shirt in turn.
The dead man in the chair behind us is long forgotten. Everything falls away as Kage and I finally let go. At this moment, nothing else exists. Not the blood, or the pain from the past. We’re just two broken boys clinging to the only thing that’s ever made sense. Each other.
8
Lennox
THE ENFORCER
The engine of the SUV dies with a low rumble, the sounds of the night swallowing it whole. We’re here.
I glance out the window, my eyes scanning the dark, secluded area. The warehouse is on our right, its dilapidated exterior barely visible under the faint glow of the moonlight. It’s an abandoned place we bought specifically for jobs such as this, it’s isolated and off the grid. I made sure of it. Not an easy job to do in the city of angels, but already knowing how Kage prefers to torture his kills, the last thing we needed was someone hearing these pigs squealing for help. We needed somewhere quiet, hidden, and far from prying eyes. Besides, he needs the room to work and take his time.
I don’t need to look at Kage to know he’s got that fucking fire in his eyes. He’s been itching for this moment all night. Frankie’s barely conscious now, his body slumped against the door of the SUV, still twitching from the pain in his leg. I step out of the SUV and pull open the door,Frankie’s body falling out in a loud thump on the gravel beneath him.
Well, that’s one way to get him out.
Kage circles the SUV like a fucking shark, ready to tear into his next victim. We grab Frankie by the arms and haul him up, the metallic scent of blood now mingling with the stale industrial air around us. His leg is practically dead weight, dragging along behind him as we pull him up to the warehouse door.
On the outside, the warehouse looks like a place you would pass without a second glance. Metal siding peeling away from the frame, grime and rust coating the entire building, windows boarded up to keep the homeless from going inside. It doesn’t seem like much, just another forgotten building on the edge of the industrial plants. But once we step inside, it’s an entirely different building.
The moment I swing the door open, the first thing that hits me are the lights. They’re fucking blinding. The overheads are all exposed bulbs and bright as all hell.
The entirety of the building is open and wide. The floors are smooth, cold concrete, and there’s grated drains every few feet that we had installed for easy clean up. They run along the entire floor, each one there to siphon off the blood, sweat, and piss; any kind of evidence of what goes down here. When we’re finished, we just wash it all away as if it never happened, calling in Jimmy’s crew to dispose of any pieces left behind.
The walls have freshly painted white surfaces that are almost too clean for a place like this. It’s not just an old warehouse; it’s a fucking operating room. It’s clean, efficient, and the perfect setup for what we do.
With the kind of fun Kage enjoys having, we had to add a space for cleaning up. In the back of the warehouse arebedrooms with full bathrooms and closets where we keep spare clothes, only crashing here if we stay late. More times than not, Kage gets carried away with his kills.
Frankie is disoriented as we drag him through the entrance, the overhead lights only get brighter the further we make it inside, illuminating the stark, sterile surroundings. The cold metal of the chair we’re about to strap him into gleams in the center of the room, ready and waiting for him. Our own personal throne of torment. It’s heavy duty, dark steel, and bolted to the ground.
It’s not the chair that’s intimidating, it’s the four thick eye hooks embedded into the floor surrounding it. Each hook has a short, stainless steel chain attached to it. These chains are too short to give the person sitting in the chair even a shred of freedom, forcing them to stay in one place. At the end of each chain, a cufflink rests, designed to lock the victim in place, incapable of escaping.
We drop Frankie into the chair, ignoring the way he groans in pain from the open wound in his thigh. Kage moves, grabbing one of the cuffs and snapping it tight around Frankie’s wrist with a brutal, loud click. The sound echoes in the room, cold and final. Frankie tries to resist, but there’s nowhere to go, the chains are too short and tight. He’s stuck, same as the many others before him.
Frankie’s breathing turns erratic, his chest rising and falling in panicked bursts as we finish locking him into place. His body jerks against the cold steel of the cuffs, the chains keeping him restricted, only able to shift a few inches at most.
