Sancte Diaboli

Brantley

Pulling into Nate’s driveway, I can sense Saint’s unease beside me. It rolls off her like a spray of Chanel. I’ve gone back and forth on what to do and what to say when it comes to her. I’ve seen firsthand how secrets can destroy people, and contrary to my reputation—snickers—she’s the one person that I never want to destroy.

I can’t explain why that is. All I can say is that there was a reason why she came into my life, and none of the reasons are what she thinks. Five-fucking-minutes.

We both climb out of the car and the front door to Nate’s swings open, with Tillie standing at the threshold.

“Little Terror, not today,” I growl in her direction. I can sniff out her mischief from a mile away.

Tillie waves me off, her full attention on Saint. Figures. It’s her last living sister. Tillie is a woman’s woman before she is anything else. “Nate is in Buckingham. Saint and I can chat.”

I carefully and naturally push Saint behind me. I trust Tillie, and I trust her with Saint. I’ve watched how Tillie is with her friends, and she’d die and kill for them. I trust someone like that with her, but it doesn’t mean my natural habits die easy.

“Bran Bran, you’re overthinking it.”

My jaw clenches as Saint sidesteps out from behind me. My muscles seize when I feel her cold hand on my arm. “I’ll be fine. You brought me here, it must be safe.” Before I can tell her that I brought her here to come to Buckingham and not to talk shit with Tillie, she’s already up the stairs and Tillie is blowing me a kiss.

“Fuck,” I breathe out just as I hear Bishop’s Maserati pull up behind me, his door closing loudly.

“The kiss of death is what that is,” he says, gesturing to the front of the house.

I turn to face him as he’s shoving his keys into his pocket. “You showered today?”

“Fuck you.”

No one has asked Bishop what the fuck he’s doing with Madison. I don’t know what is going on inside his head, but Bishop is calculating. He’s a walking, talking bullshitter. Lied his way into Madison’s heart, all to let her walk away with him still caged inside of it. Dumb motherfucker when it comes to her, smartest motherfucker with everything else.

Everyone is too scared to talk about her, but I’m no bitch. “We go

He stills, turning toward me. His eyes are on fire, his fists clenching beside him. He and I have been a little on edge lately, and I know me saying this is going to end in one way, with arms swinging, but the thing about Bishop is that he has to get angry before he makes sense of shit. So I’m fucking counting on him throwing punches.

And I’m not disappointed when his fist is flying into my face. I dodge it and laugh, backing away from him, only I lose my step just as his other fist swings and co

“Feel better yet, motherfucker?” I ask around my laughter.

“Fuck! Are you kidding me? Don’t get blood on my driveway, you idiots!” I can hear Tillie yelling, just as Bishop’s weight is being pulled off me and Nate is glaring down, shaking his head.

“Let me guess, you said the M-word.”

Rolling my tongue around the metallic liquid, I spit it all out and swipe my mouth with the back of my hand, unable to hide my smirk. “None of you bitches were going to do it.”

Bishop falls to the ground, his fingers buried in his hair. “This isn’t about me and her.” He glares up at me from beneath his lashes. “This should be about Saint.”

“But it’s not,” I say, getting to my feet and reaching down for his hand to help him up.

He takes it.

I continue, “It will never be about anything else until we’ve spoken about Mads, and you know it. You’re distracted. You can’t see anything past her.”

His eyes fly up to the front of the house where Tillie and Saint are both watching all of us. Saint is focused on me, her focus moving up and down my body frantically.

“So we can talk about Saint after we’ve spoken about Madison.” I push past him and Nate, making my way down the pathway that leads to Buckingham, which is behind the main house. Buckingham is directly behind a line of trees to the side of the house, hidden from plain view. If you didn’t know it was there, you wouldn’t see it. Thick shrubs conceal it perfectly, with the pool the main distraction. Nate and Tillie’s fancy shit. There’s a whole ass bar in the middle of the pool, too.

Pushing through the front door, I kick it closed and drop my cell phone into the metal bowl at the entrance, reaching for a rolled joint that’s on a table and snatching up a Zippo, sparking it up while moving to the negotiation table.

Eli and Hunter are on the sofa, watching the latest news when I’m sinking down onto one of the chairs, inhaling deeply before blowing out a cloud of smoke.

“You mentioned Madship?” Eli chuckles, shaking his head. “Had to be you.”

I ignore him as the door opens and closes again, and Bishop walks through on his phone before hanging up and dumping it into the bowl with the rest.

“Dad is coming. Table, now.”

I blow out more smoke and hand it to Nate as he sits on the opposite side of me, Bishop’s right hand. Eli and Hunter move in, too, until there’s nothing but silence.

“I’m not handling it well, shit.” He runs his hands through his hair again. “But you all have to respect my decision that I am not chasing her. She can stay there, and if she ever comes back to me, which I think she will, then I’ll be here. But for now, and for the future, I’m not chasing her again. I’m not a fucking puppy. Fool me once…” He looks around at all of us and my jaw clenches. His logic doesn’t make sense to me. He knows she didn’t cheat. He knows she was raped. I fucking know Madison. Longer than he has known her. I not only know her demons, I was there while those demons were created.

We share the same ones.

I may not have been a fan of her when I first met her. Hell, I barely tolerated her. Every time I looked into her eyes, I saw the kid that she no longer was. I saw everything that Lucan made us do to each other. Had nothing to do with her as a person, she was just a trigger to me. When you spend years upon years learning to control your demons, you get a little fucking angry when an old one comes back and reintroduces itself. Aside from that, I didn’t see the appeal that she had to Nate and Bishop, but that’s nothing new. Both of them never had problems dipping their dick into whatever wet hole they wanted. Me, on the other hand, chose my victims a little differently. Riding my dick wasn’t an easy feat, and surviving it wasn’t either, which was why…

Past

“Where the fuck are you going?” Nate shoved my arm as we walked down the loud corridor of this hellhole of a school. Senior year only just began, and I was ready to call it fucking quits. We didn’t need a fucking diploma. I had enough money to buy out the fucking president.

I needed something.

I pushed away from him and continued down the corridor.