The Sinners of Saint Amos - Logan Fox Page 0,43

frozen fire streaks over my tender skin and I try to move away but he grabs my hip to keep me in place. Every stroke is like hot air on coals, stoking the fire buried deep within. Bringing it to the surface. I’d have started sobbing, but I’m spent.

So I lay there and somehow endure the agony.

I wish I could pray.

I wish there was someone who would listen.

I know it wouldn’t change anything, but wouldn’t it be nice to know you’re not alone?

I’m alone.

Even here with this sadistic fuck of a man who watches while a girl is beaten black and blue and then carries her somewhere dark and secret to hurt her some more….

Even here, with him, I’m still alone.

The bed shifts.

His hand slips off the back of my neck. There’s the sound of a lighter flicking. I expect cigarette smoke. But this is something else.

Pungent. Foreign.

The bed dips again.

“Open.”

Something dry pokes at my lips. I part them. “Inhale.”

I’m past the point of fighting this. So I do what he says and hope this is the last of it because I can’t take anymore.

I’m broken and used. A grubby porcelain doll with a cracked face, left to rot in the debris of an abandoned building. Once a treasured toy, now a spider’s nest.

The smoke makes me cough. But I take another drag anyway. Then again. Again. The pain is still there, but it’s distant now. And fading.

No, that’s me.

I’m fading.

Fingers brush my temple. A stray curl tickles the side of my ear. I let out a long breath, and my body finally relaxes.

“Who are you, Trinity Malone?”

My head thumps along with that distant pain. Something new worms its way into me. Something warm and fuzzy and…

Nice.

“No one,” I murmur.

“What are you doing here?”

“Nothing.”

I want to fade away completely. But he keeps asking me questions I’m compelled to answer.

“How do you know Gabriel?”

“He’s my friend. My best friend.”

There’s a long pause. So long, I almost do slip away. But then those fingers come back and touch the side of my face, tracing the outline of my jaw.

“I’d really hoped that wasn’t the case,” Zachary says.

The bed moves as he gets up.

I’m dimly aware this might not be my room. That I’m lying on a strange bed with my underwear around my knees and the back of my skirt hitched up. My hands tremble as I reach behind me, but Zachary snatches them by the wrists before I can adjust my clothing.

“You’re leaving. I’ll arrange a cab for you in the morning,” Zachary says. “Just give me an address.”

I laugh at him. “Fuck you.”

I hear the deep breath he takes, and that makes me regret what I said. But there’s no address I can give him. I don’t have anyone else. I don’t have anywhere else.

There’s a burst of dull pain as he yanks my underwear up my legs. “Sisters of Mercy it is.”

Hands slide under my waist. The world spins as he scoops me into his arms. Every thumping step he takes chafes my skin with fire.

We go down a flight of stairs, and then along a hallway. We’re back on my floor, headed for room 113. He barrels through the door and drops me on the bed.

On my back.

I flip onto my side with a hiss, tears pricking at my eyelids.

“Remember, Trinity, you chose the hard way,” Zachary says from the doorway. He tosses something my way, and it thumps against my tummy. Then he’s gone, my bedroom door slamming shut behind him.

I fumble for the cold, hard object pressing against my stomach.

The salve.

I wrap my fingers around it and curl into a ball.

I don’t cry, because there’s no point. Whatever I smoked dulled the pain enough that I can probably fall asleep. But sleep doesn’t come for a long time, because I keep replaying his last words to me.

You chose the hard way.

Just remember, Trinity.

You chose the hard way.

Chapter Twenty-Three

Zac

“Morning, Boss.”

I look up and frown at Cassius. It takes me a few seconds to move after the shock of seeing him at my door so early in the morning. “The fuck you doing?” I hiss, lurching across the room, hauling him inside, and shutting the door quietly behind him.

First Reuben, now this? You’d swear everyone had a fucking brain aneurysm this week with how they’ve been acting.

“How’d it go?”

“You couldn’t wait?” I swipe a hand through my hair. “This is far from fucking circumspect.”

“Circumspect,” Cassius repeats under his breath, his eyes moving away from mine. “Smells dank in