Page 22 of Be My Sinner

Fear slithers down my back; I have only two living family members left in this world. While they could demand my presence for another Founding Father’s funeral, they haven’t in the past, content to leave me in captivity, hidden away in the shadows because of my unhinged and deranged behavior. One that I play into every time one of those fuckers comes here to inspect me.

“I’m sorry, Nightstar.” He pulls me into the circle of his thick arms, crushing me against his chest. His scent of mint and sage is not having its usual calming effect. I can feel his heart thundering against his chest. He’s scared. No, more than that, he’s terrified.

“Gabriel is gone.”

The words make no sense as they leave his lips. I can’t make my mind understand them. Three words. Three fucking words to destroy my world. No, they have to be false. There is no way I heard him correctly.

“YOU’RE LYING!” I scream and try to extract myself from his tight grip. No, he has to be lying. I would know if Gabriel was gone. I would feel it deep inside of me. We aren’t twins, but we have always felt things deeply. A connection between us that has two souls intertwining. I would know if he was in trouble. I would know if he was no longer walking this earth. Wouldn’t I?

He called me last week. We spoke, and he was his usual charming self. I love hearing the sound of his voice every week. I look forward to it every single week; it is literally the highlight of my time in captivity. The opportunity to speak with him, to hear how he and mom are doing. Never once has he complained about all my questions, nor has he indicated he was unwell or in danger.

How? How could this happen? No! It’s all lies. Fabrications from the Order to make me insane. I would know. I would fucking know if he was gone!

“Dinah…fuck!” Sammy shouts as I slam my fist into his back, and anywhere I can reach, as he tries to restrain me without hurting me. I have no such qualms. I want to hurt him like his words are destroying me, one grave syllable at a time. My fury rises inside of me at his gentle attempts to counteract my violence. How could this have happened? How could my brother, a massive part of my heart, be gone? Dead.

I finally pull away from his grip and stumble from the sofa, my chest heaving with the effort to catch my breath. I feel like I just ran a million miles. I end up having to squat with my head in between my legs. I can’t seem to get enough air into my lungs, and my head starts spinning rapidly.

He’s gone.

My brother, my protector, my confidant, and my best friend. Gone.

I raise my head and stare at Sammy with disbelief and despair. I can feel pieces of my heart-shattering in my chest like delicate glass, splintering into so many tiny, clear shards that there will never be a way to put me back together again. I will bleed out from each and every cut until I am empty. A shell left to rot in the world the Brotherhood has created.

“How?”

“Officially it’s being called an accident.” The angry sigh that leaves his lips tells me all I need to know. It’s complete bullshit—another fabrication of the Brotherhood. “Unofficially, they say he killed himself, Dinah. That he wasn’t mentally well, and he hung himself at his house, and your mother found him.”

NO!

My brother would have never hurt himself. Mentally unwell? There was nothing wrong with Gabriel’s mental health, other than the fact that he was forced to take our father’s place as the head of our household, and uphold the sins and duties of the Brotherhood, all at the age of seventeen. Could all of their bullshit have pushed him over the edge?

No. He wouldn’t have left my mother and me vulnerable and unprotected. He would have known the consequences of not having a founding male to protect us. He was the only thing standing between the Brotherhood and their depravity against women, and against the women of his immediate family, sacred women. He would have known what would befall us, that we would be given away as prizes to anyone who would claim us, regardless of our name.

He was the one to stop them from forcing my mother into another marriage the minute they killed my father. He was the reason we weren’t strung up in the middle of the great cathedral and beaten for the sins of my father, for his betrayal against the Brotherhood. He took on the mantle of our house. He pledged himself and our family back to the Order. He saved us. How could he then go and leave us, by doing something so out of his character?

“LIES!” I pick up the lamp on the closest table and launch it against the wall, where it shatters with a loud crack. The same sound emanates from inside my chest, where my heart is doing the exact same thing. Splintering with the loss of hope. With the words that are ripping me apart, piece by piece.

Sammy warily moves towards me, his hands open, palm up, and placed in front of him as if he is attempting to approach a wild animal. In this instant, the description fits me to a tee. There is a tornado of emotions twisting and rising inside of me. All of them are fueled by anger and hate.

“I’m so sorry, Nightstar, so very sorry.”

Hot tears cascade down my face at his words and their soothing tone. My body shakes as a huge, ugly sob escapes my lips, and my knees give out. It causes me to drop to the floor, where Sammy catches me and pulls me tightly into his embrace. His arms secure around me, promising me a safety that he cannot guarantee.

“We have to go, Nightstar. They will drag you kicking and screaming if we don’t go willingly, and you need to see to your mother.” His words are mumbled into my hair. His lips pressed against my thick strands, causing even more tears to slide down my face. “You need to appear to do your duty.”

My mother, I haven’t seen my mother in almost six years. Not since that day they forced me out of our house and into a van and sent me here. A hostage used to punish my father for his malicious sins. A prisoner forced to watch daily through a video feed as they tortured her father, killing him slowly, one brutally inflicted injury at a time. I was a card they held onto, the virginal Sacred Daughter of one of the original founding families. A prize worth my weight in gold.

My mother was used up at that point after all the years of being a Sacred Wife, of having to endure punishments and sexual deviance from its Founding Fathers with my father’s acceptance. She would not fetch the same price despite her name. No, she would be handed over to some lowly member, perhaps not even a founding family, as punishment. As a warning to other families of what befalls a traitor.

Gabriel was the only reason that didn’t happen. He was too young to have taken over the head of the household, but they’d allowed it. They craved his pledge and loyalty, and needed to save face with not only the entirety of the Brotherhood, but to keep their hold on a society that was just aching to revolt against them.

A society that was quickly realizing that the peaceful and holy world that was promised by the Brotherhood of the Sacrament worldwide was not as it seemed. That peace would be granted only on the backs of the less fortunate. That the words of the benevolent God they professed and used as their reasoning were filled with lies and twisted, so that they would only benefit one group—the Founding Fathers.

My father’s betrayal, and public questioning of the Order and their commitment to God, was a bleeding wound they had to stem and suture quickly. They couldn’t allow it to fester malcontent and spread amongst the privileged class and, more importantly, the serving class. They knew they would be outnumbered. They could not afford a revolution or to further entice the rebels. My family could not, under any circumstances, become a martyr to their cause.

They had my brother denounce him, and side openly and loudly with the Order. To label his own father a traitor and a heathen, and agree to scatter his remains to the four corners of the earth so he could not be buried on sacred ground, or given last rights. My captivity and removal from my home, and my mother’s forced servitude and penance, were other measures used to ensure our place—the Order flexing their muscles and power.

My poor, gentle mother was brought down low, forced to serve as a reminder to the other women of the Brotherhood, mothers, wives, and daughters, of how she had no control over her own life. How she was at their male mercy. How she would now, even still as a Sacred Wife, be repugnant in society. She was forced to wear the color red everywhere she went as a visual sign of her sins. So that the other women, not only of the Order but of the lower classes, would be forced to shun her, and she would be a prisoner in her own home, left to die within its walls and only paraded out when an example needed to be made.

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