Page 11 of Forgive Me For I Have Sinned

CHAPTER 4

Alaric

I'm home getting ready to call it quits from my computer. I've been digging into Dorian Black's finances. He's in the red but barely scraping by. He could turn it around, but he’s too stupid to do the work. Lazy prick. The last thing you need is a lazy CEO running a business's hard-earned dollars into the ground. Expenditures are through the roof. He wouldn't have to decrease his spending habits if he put in more effort. It is probably why he wanted me to merge with him, so I could be the duck to do all the work while he played.

I've worked my ass off so I was allowed a free pass on the marrying requirement at the end of my senior year in college. Cash is king in the Order's world. And I know how to make loads of it from a laptop.

My phone rings, and I look at the incoming call. Reid.

"What," I answer impatiently.

"I need you to do something for me."

"I have. I got Tara off your back. You got the girl. She accepted your crazy ass and married you. Now what?"

"I need you to go check on Valen. He's at a frat party. Initiation night."

"And? He's a big boy. He can handle himself. We both know why he's there. What's the problem?"

"He's drunk and high, Alaric. After the whole Jess thing––"

"What? He has a problem getting pussy. He'll fuck five more and get over it. He has to marry Melissa. Get to the point," I grit.

I'm annoyed. I'm not his savior. He needs to get his shit together. I lean back, hearing the leather in my chair groan like my patience.

"He's there alone, and I don't trust anyone else to get him out of trouble."

I let out a puff of air from my mouth, pinching my nose. "Fine. I'll go get him but make sure it's the last time, Reid. I don't have time for this shit."

"Not everyone is a killer like you, Alaric."

He means Valen doesn't have a strong mind to handle his own shit because he fell for a girl that wasn't his.

"You know what they say, killers are smart. Most of them are geniuses."

"Whatever, dick." And hangs up.

Now that my night is screwed. I have to get mentally prepared to go to the last place I ever thought I would end up at: an initiation party. Some people might recognize me; some might not. I am one of the sons of Kenyan because my uncle and father are brothers as well as founders of the Order. I just choose to be excluded from the whole Sons of Kenyan dynamic when they all hang out. I'm not in college anymore, but I still have a reputation.

I'm untouchable.

The dealmaker and dealbreaker.

The sinner.

Now I have to help one of our own from doing something stupid he will regret later at a frat party.

I check the time, and it's half past eleven at night. I'm getting dressed like I'm still in college because I can't show up dressed in a suit to a college party, looking like a fucking parent who is searching for his kid.

Heading out in my Ferrari SF90 Stradale, I take the highway, remembering the last time I was at a college party that wasn't in Kenyan, and all I can think about is her. Tears falling from her eyes, the color of the clearest blue sky like fat drops on a window pane, play on my mind like a loop and I hate the memory. I grip the steering wheel and shift the car, pressing the gas and hearing it roar down the road.

Follow the rules.

Fuck the rules and fuck her.

She deserved it.

I pull up on the same street, and nothing has changed since I graduated college. People milling about. Cars parked down the road. The faint thumping music. People with Solo cups in their hands, drunk and high, laughing without a care in the world, except for who they are going to fuck next. Or making sure they have the answers to the next test and work turned in for class, so they can stay and do it all over again the next weekend.

---