sentenced. It’s disgusting how little prison time they even served.
All those children who were abused, tortured, murdered… and the blame all fell on one man.
Keith motherfucking Malone.
Everyone else was just an accomplice. A not-so-innocent bystander.
They were set free, their crimes pinned on a dead man who was already serving an eternity in hell, and probably laughing as he watched each and every trial dissolve into ridiculous “time-served” penalties that wouldn’t give any man a second thought to do what he did again, and again, and—
The Ghost yells. Tries to jerk his leg away from Trinity’s knife. But there isn’t much give in those ropes Apollo tied.
If there’s one thing he didn’t have an issue with, it was making sure this fucking Ghost wasn’t going anywhere. They have history—deep and personal—Apollo and this grunting, panting excuse for a man strapped to the wooden chair in the middle of this cabin.
“Cut all the way through,” Zachary says, crouching beside Trinity as she bends to hack deeper into the back of the Ghost’s ankles. “Until there’s no more tension.”
A year or two ago I might have expected Trinity to retch, or go pale. But she merely tightens her mouth into a line and starts sawing blade through flesh.
I’m proud of her too, but not because she hasn’t puked in the corner yet.
It should be Apollo in her place, sawing that hunting knife through the Ghost’s Achille’s heel, but he’d have passed out after she made the first incision. So he asked her to do what he could only imagine, what he could only dream… and she became his angel.
He’d peek back over his shoulder every few seconds—too quick to see much but a blur of blood and shadow, I’m sure—and then face the windows again.
That same pride reflected in his eyes, mirroring Zach’s.
Even Cass watches over her with a twisted smirk on his face.
The Ghost’s scream is rough and raw. He’s been in the chair for over an hour already, and we haven’t exactly been good hosts—now or the hours he’s been in our captivity before we arrived at Saint Amos. We drove here in a junker Zachary bought for cash at a used-car dealership one state over—something roomy enough for the five of us and our captive.
Cass kept him entertained the entire trip over here with a detailed explanation of what we’d be doing to him once we arrived. When the Ghost passed out, he’d rouse him with the tip of a cigarette pressed into the back of his hand, or his ankle, wherever the skin was thin and the nerve endings shallow.
“Fuck it, I can’t stand watching you tease him like that,” Cass says, pushing away from the wall and making to flick his cigarette into the corner of the cabin. Zach snaps his fingers, and instead Cass hands him the last two inches of his cigarette.
Cabin might be too fancy a word for this hovel. It was once a hut used for hunting, if the animal bones we found out back were any indication. It’s basically one room with a crude fireplace, a rickety table, no windows, and a single door with a bar along the inside.
For when prey becomes predator?
It suits our purposes just fine, which is why we all agreed it would be our torture chamber when Apollo told us what he’d found out in the woods. Usually, Saint Amos students weren’t allowed past the cleared areas of the school grounds, but Apollo was always good at bunking off.
But despite what we’d promised each other, this will be our first kill at Saint Amos. It’s been years since we’ve been back here, and seeing the imposing silhouette of the cathedral-like building soaring into the sky as we arrived plucked my heartstrings…in more ways than one.
My memories of Saint Amos are bittersweet. Everything came to a head in this place. We thought we’d lost Trinity forever, Zachary had betrayed us, and we’d lost all hope of ever finding Gabriel again.
But it was also the first place we got a solid lead on our lifelong vendetta against the people who’d tortured and abused us for our entire childhood.
The place where we met Trinity.
Our first love.
Our salvation.
“Move over, my precious little slut.”
I snap out of my reverie to watch Cass take hold of Trinity’s shoulders and maneuver her out of the way. She gives up the knife grudgingly, but when Cass dips his head and presses his lips to hers, her fingers open.
Everyone’s looking, even the Ghost. Who wouldn’t? They could