The Sinners of Saint Amos - Logan Fox Page 0,145

why? Just so they could show me words have consequences?

And even after all of this…I have a feeling Zachary is still not going to tell me what I need to know.

“Zacha—”

He lifts a hand, the first two fingers raised, for all the world like a priest about to bestow a blessing.

“There was a file,” he says. His lips part, but then he hesitates. “Apollo, you tell her.”

“He hid it in the system directory,” Apollo says.

Ice blows over my skin and settles deep in my bones. I’m dimly aware of Cass moving behind me, making soft, pained sounds as he dresses. I can’t imagine how much pain he’s in—I only got a handful of lashes from Miriam and I could barely stand the agony.

How long has Zachary been beating him? Why do Reuben and Apollo allow it to happen? Do they always watch like tonight? Does Reuben always hold him down?

Suddenly I don’t want to be here anymore. Not surrounded by these four twisted men.

I thought I liked Reuben. Hell, I thought I could learn to love him, even, but not if he lets Zachary push him around like this. But can I blame him? I wouldn’t want to be on Zachary’s bad side either.

And that’s not the only reason I want to leave. As much as the Brotherhood terrifies me…it’s also the look in Apollo’s eyes.

Sympathy. Pity. I’m not sure.

He feels sorry for me and I’m not sure why.

“Clever, but not clever enough. He encrypted it, renamed it, and hid it around a bunch of other system files so it would blend right in.”

Apollo slips off the couch and stands to his full height. When he comes closer, I have to crane my head back to keep his gaze.

“See, he disguised it so well that I almost gave up. But I got a hunch. Ran a system check. Replaced all the standard files. All except a handful were overwritten. That file of his, it was one of them. One of the outliers, the ones that didn’t fit.”

“Any of this sound familiar, my little slut?”

I nearly jump out of my fucking skin when a hand lands on my shoulder. Cass’s voice is right by my ear. I want to slap away his hand, but…it was because of me that he was punished. And more brutally than I’d ever have considered necessary. I could at least hear him out.

Hear them out.

Even though I just want to run out of here with my hands over my ears.

Because even now, after I’d yelled at Gabriel and told him I believed the Brotherhood…I don’t want to be on their side. I want to be on my side. I want to live in a Utopia where there’s no such thing as pedophiles and sex trafficking and men with psychological issues caused by the kind of trauma normal people can’t even wrap their heads around.

I guess that stopped being an option after Lucifer was thrown out of heaven. Not that I ever believed in God and the Devil. It sounds like a story used to drive home common sense in a world where it’s somehow not obvious that you should love thy neighbor.

But after meeting the Brotherhood?

I don’t know if I can afford not to believe.

“What was inside it? What—?” I swallow hard to dislodge the knot from my throat. “What was he hiding?”

“We don’t know,” Reuben says.

His hand is on my shoulder too, now. Warm and big compared to Cass’s smaller, cooler hand. But both grip me equally tight. Both hold me just as firmly in place.

“It needs a password,” Zachary says. My eyes flicker to him as he steps closer.

Now that I’m surrounded by three of the four brothers, the room isn’t that cold anymore. Apollo stands a little way off still, watching.

“I’m running a decryption program on it, but unless I get my hands on a server farm or some shit, it could take months to crack.”

“So you don’t know,” I say, and the words come out with a laugh of relief. “It could be anything.”

The hands on my shoulders tighten. Cass begins stroking the side of my neck with his pinkie finger.

Zachary takes my chin, but almost gently this time, tipping my head up. “We don’t have to know what it says to know it’s what we want. What we’ve been looking for.”

I grab his wrist and slowly, carefully, pull his hand away from my face. “Gabriel’s not perfect.” I nod a little, glancing at each of them, even the two standing behind