The Sinners - Ruby Vincent Page 0,13

for paying their way into the academy and preventing child services from splitting them up and sending them away. He was a hero to them.

“And I knew what I did with my money, helping out people from my old neighborhood. Dad even encouraged me. Said this was what the Horsemen were all about. I told you, Ember, by the time we met, Rio wasn’t done with me yet.”

I dropped kisses on his jaw. I sensed that he needed them. And maybe I needed them too if I was to hear the rest.

“What did he do to you, Royal?” I cupped his cheek with a hand that trembled.

“Technically, he did nothing.” His voice reached me—low and toneless. “Rio intends for me to take over for him one day. It’s why he showed up on my doorstep and wrecked my life. I’ll be the next leader, but that doesn’t happen if I get hurt. He keeps me out of the worst of it—off the front lines. I steal Ravener cars, and I help the doctor.”

“The doctor?”

His chin moved against my palm. “You’ve heard that all gunshot wounds have to be reported to the police.”

“Yes.”

“The Horsemen can’t have that. If one of the guys gets shot, they’re sent to the doctor. He’s a surgeon who lost his license after trying to cut someone open drunk. He left the city and crawled back to Raven River with his tail between his legs. Now he works for the leaders, stitching together their broken toys.” Emotion leaked into his voice.

“Royal...”

“Half-dead. Bleeding out. Fucking guts held inside by blood-soaked bandanas.” Royal grabbed my hips, crashing me to his body. “I had to hold them down as Doc dug bullets out of them. I lifted the feet and carried the bodies of guys I grew up with, tossing them in the back of his van!”

“Oh, Royal, no.” My cry was piercing and tangible. Wetness soaked my face, and then it soaked his as I kissed his cheek, nose, forehead, and mouth. His pain was raw. Biting. All-consuming. And my affection was the single force beating it back, pushing in the memory of the boy who helped me off the ledge, and used to see the world in color.

“The life you’ve chosen. The art you’ve created. It’s not too big of a leap to assume something bad happened to you after that night. Something that broke you.”

I imagined a myriad of horrible, traumatic events that ate Royal from the inside out. A member of a violent gang, it wasn’t hard for my mind to draw on every mafia movie I saw and guess from there. I prepared myself to hear he sold drugs. Knocked off gas stations. And though it pulverized my heart to dust, I readied myself for the awful confession his knife was stained with more blood than mine.

Those sins I was ready for, but this would never have crossed my mind because as I was harshly reminded, this wasn’t a movie.

Rio forced his teenage son to kneel helpless before death. To watch people he knew die, listen to their screams for help, and forbade him from saving them. For a disgraced surgeon was nothing compared to doctors and nurses and thousands in medical equipment, and the limit of Doc’s care was inevitably smaller than theirs.

In all likelihood, he lost boys that could have been saved, and those deaths bore down on Royal’s conscience until it shattered.

This is what broke him. Peeling back his father’s mask and meeting the monster beneath, and then crumbling under the realization he was no better.

“But you are,” I forced out, clutching his neck so tight I throttled him. “You are better than your father, Royal. No part of you is like him.”

“You can’t say that,” he barked. Royal pulled me off. “Especially not you.”

“You’re messed up. I’ll be the first to say it. I’d put it to music, announce it to the media, and write it in the damn sky.” I ripped out of his hold, throwing my arms around him, my cheek on his stubbly jaw. “But you’re not Rio. Rio would have killed me. You saved me. You stood between me and your father. You traded a favor that must have been massive to pay for my life. And you still carry your time with the doctor while I assume your father doesn’t spare a second thought to those boys.”

I laid my palm over his chest. His heart thrashed wildly against its cage, pulsating with ever-present anger, rage, and