Splinters of You (Retired Sinners MC #1) - Anne Malcom Page 0,97

and a point to prove.”

He moved to the table to snatch up his glass, down the liquid.

He somehow made necking a hundred-dollar bottle of wine look carnal and manly.

“Shot up a fucking supermarket,” he said when he’d finished. “My parents happened to be there. Luck. Because it wasn’t their normal store, not their normal time to shop. It all accumulated just so. Buried them both, turned my back on the church and their memory. Held on to the name my mother called me as my penance. To remind me of what I’d turned into. How far I’d gone.”

He looked up at me. “And I went pretty fucking far. I was young, angry, and looking for someone to blame. So, you can imagine it took me to some real dark place, real quick. But there was something inside of me before my parents were murdered that made it possible for me to turn into what I did. It wasn’t the situation. That only uncovered what had been there all along.” He shrugged. “Nature versus nurture and all that. Found them by accident, the club.” He paused. “Though they didn’t sell it as that. A club. Or even a gang. It was just a brotherhood. Didn’t lie about who they were, though. Especially since they made me do some pretty ugly shit to even get my boot in the door.”

I knew about this, had heard about this. Seen it in action. It could be as radical as shooting someone in the face, raping a woman, or as seemingly benign as beating the shit out of someone who sat in the wrong chair at a bar.

“Initiation,” Saint said. “That was just to prospect. That was small potatoes. To earn my patch, it was a lot more. I did it all. Without hesitation. I had already decided if there was a heaven and hell, I didn’t want to meet my parents in the former, with what I’d become, I’d be more comfortable in the latter. So, I did it all. Ugly shit. Evil shit. I hated it. Loved it. Hated myself for loving it. For a long time, I was content in it all. In the blood, violence, ugly.”

He sounded almost nostalgic for it all. I understood that. I immersed myself in blood, violence, ugliness, for a living. As it was fictional, I could legally make money off it. Come out without hurting anyone, except myself.

I didn’t move to comfort Saint, touch him. That wasn’t me. And it wasn’t him either. I just listened.

“It wasn’t a gradual thing, me wanting out,” he continued. “Shit, if this one thing hadn’t happened, maybe I’d still be there right fucking now. The club made money doing a lot of different shit. Runnin’ drugs. Selling pussy. Protection. Guns for hire. And that’s what it was. Some mobster had a witness or a rat. Wanted to make an example outta him and his family. He had two kids. One was a baby. Can’t say the age because I’m not good at that shit, but not able to talk. The other was a toddler. Knew what was going on. But quiet. Didn’t scream. It freaked me out. That it was lucid, gonna watch me and my brothers kill them. The wife was screaming. They were ripping off her clothes. Planning on raping her first.

“It snapped then, whatever was left inside of me that my parents made. I killed them all. All my brothers I’d bled with all those years. Told the family to leave the state, the country. Then I made myself disappear. They looked for me. Know they still are. They want my head. I betrayed them. The people I’d considered family.”

He stopped now, to take a visible inhale. “Came here.” He looked around the woods. “Ran here. And that’s it, Magnolia. That’s all you can take from me. That’s all I have.”

His chest was moving rapidly.

Mine was too.

What did I say to this?

The information was ugly, that was right. I liked that. That we had loss to share. Lives that were ruined or made by it. But I didn’t know how to put words together as a response.

Turned out, the man of very few words had an entire fucking novel inside of him tonight.

“I love you,” he grunted. His eyes darted around the area behind my shoulders. He was an eye contact man. It had unnerved me at first, attracted me shortly thereafter. Irritated me a healthy amount and scared me just as often. I thought his penchant