Dead Man Walking (The Fallen Men #6) - Giana Darling Page 0,65

question and a statement, a crisis of faith expressed in one sentence.

Anger with Tabitha for confusing him with her extreme devotion burned through me like a lit wick. “No. Listen to me when I say this, okay, Billy? Good people get sick all the time. Good people have bad luck, bad days, and terrible, unfair ends. The truth is, everyone has misfortunes. Everyone dies. It doesn’t matter what kind of person you are. That’s how it works.”

Billy’s jaw worked as he chewed that over. “Then I don’t get it. What Mrs. Linley said made more sense.”

I bit my lip. It was true, Tabby’s view of religion was so much easier to distill into organized, succinct soundbites. But it was also much more horrifying, especially for a ten-year-old boy.

I smoothed his dark hair back from his forehead as I collected my thoughts. “Sometimes words aren’t powerful enough to describe the complexities of what we feel inside. Can you tell me exactly how much you love your dad?” Billy hesitated, then shook his head. “No, just like I can’t tell you how much I love my family. Some things are just inexplicable. You need to have faith in death just as much as you do in life. You love your dad and you know he’s a good man, so you have to believe when he dies, he’s only moving on to a good place.”

Billy sighed, his body deflating, sagging into my side as he did so. I hugged him tightly, wishing my affection was a physical thing I could use to shield him from pain.

He turned his gaze back to the candles and whispered, “Will you light a candle with me for him?”

“Of course,” I agreed, standing up to grab a tealight. I noticed Tabitha and Eric at the door to the room, discussing something quietly but watching us with intense stares. I rolled my shoulders back to dispel the trickle of eeriness I felt, and struck my match.

Priest

No one outside of the club knew where I lived. Even then, only Zeus, Axe-Man because he was our Treasurer, and Bat because he was Sergeant at Arms had visited my house. Any place of residence I needed to provide was the clubhouse.

That was how they got me. Before. So many years ago when I was just a lad.

They knew where I lived.

So, I stayed off the grid.

And far, far away from the nearest church.

My apartment was a converted loft in the heart of the industrial district north of town, the entire second level of a warehouse that had once been used to store imports from China, but now housed The Fallen arsenal. Technically, Bat was in charge of munitions and weaponry for the club as Sergeant at Arms, but he’d outsourced the more illegal items to me to be hidden in the way only I knew how to hide.

I’d bought the warehouse with cash from an old man before he kicked the bucket, converted it myself over the span of two years. It kept my nineteen and twenty-year-old self out of trouble, and in the end, I had a home that suited my needs.

There were no windows.

I didn’t need light.

There was no television, no computer, no comfy lounge area.

A bed, a kitchen, a bathroom, and a massive gym.

The only indulgence I allowed was my library.

Floor-to-ceiling shelves in the area that should have been the living room. One deep, slouchy leather armchair and a side table where I sat at night under the dim light of the reading lamp in the otherwise pitch-dark apartment to read.

I didn’t read fiction.

Mostly, I read religious texts and science tombs. Technology, too, when it came to weapons, and history, if it was about warfare.

Yeah, religious texts.

The staunch fucking atheist reading about God.

Fucked up, but then again, I never claimed to be otherwise.

I read everything I could get my hands on about God, about faith, about why people subscribed to such nonsense. I read about the Catholic culture in Ireland, and happily, of its decline in the twenty-first century.

I read so I could understand.

I understood so that I could harness the demons of my past in thick rope and chains at the back of my mind and hope they never got loose.

Why can’t I touch you?

Bea had said last night after I’d thoroughly ravaged her sweet body and made it intractably mine.

I didn’t want her hands on my body. Honest as fuck, I didn’t want her sweet words in my ear either, but I couldn’t control that so well.