Page 120 of No Saint

“I’ll kill you, Atlas. I will fucking rip out your throat.”

“Then fucking end me, Gabriel. You think I fucking care if I die!?”

“Enough!” Devon yells, “It isn’t him!”

I freeze, my temper simmering for just a moment.

“I’m going to let go,” Devon says.

Atlas snatches out of his hold, glaring at me while he wipes the blood from his lip, “I care about this fucking family, Gabriel, despite the shit you’ve put me through. This is the only family I have.”

“Gabriel,” Devon catches my attention and then shifts his eyes to the table close to the door. On top lays a note, held there with a bloodied kitchen knife.

I feel my blood run cold as I walk towards it, finding a long strand of dark hair, cut roughly and the note.

My eyes scan the words. The message and warning.

I order no one to follow.

I go alone.

And I leave to collect my wife.

46

“Why are you doing this?” I cry, gritting my teeth at the pain. He holds me by my hair, forcing me to move, bare feet being cut up by the broken glass and grit on the floor. My face ached from the hits I’d taken, and the wound on my arm from the knife had stopped bleeding, but it hurt like a motherfucker, the skin tight and damaged.

Asher roughly pulls me to a stop using my hair and then yanks my head back. I cry out at the bite of pain on my scalp. He forces me to look at him, at his twisted face.

There was nothing in his eyes. A bleakness that promised endless torture.

“Why?” He mocks and then laughs, “Because you all fucking deserve it.”

And then he forces me forward again. My hands were bound behind my back, tied together tight enough that the rope cuts in deep and restricts blood flow to my hands.

After the fight back at the house, he’d dragged me out to the car, shoved me in the trunk and took off. He drove wildly, my body being thrown around like a damn doll.

He was going to kill me.

He’d stopped at an old house near the edge of the city and dragged me through the overgrown grass and shrubs, the thorns and branches cutting at me some more.

I’d die here. In this old house where no one would find me. Gabriel would never find me.

Tears prick my eyes, but it wasn’t the right time to cry. I had to figure this out, figure out how to get out of this.

Asher suddenly stops.

“I’m going to kill him too,” he tells me, voice almost calm, “Just like I did his brother.”

“You killed Lucas?”

He nods slowly, as if his mind has rolled back to the time it happened. “He fought. I almost didn’t manage it, but you see, the Saint’s have a false sense of power. They think themselves bigger and better, but they underestimated me. I have nothing to lose and everything to gain.”

“You’ll never be even half the man Gabriel is!” I snap, trying to snatch out of his grasp. I cry out when he yanks so hard, I feel several strands come loose. He forces me a little way down the hall and then the smell hits me, a foul, heavy smell that stuffs itself up my nose. It’s so potent I almost taste it on my tongue, feel it hitting the back of my throat. I cannot suppress the gag.

Asher kicks open a door, and the stench worsens until I’m doubled over, vomiting the contents of my stomach.

He doesn’t give me a chance to recover as he snaps my head up to look into the room.

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