Sancte Diaboli

Brantley

Squeezing my phone in my hand, I lean against the wall and try to count to ten. My pulse pounds inside of me, my head spi

“She got there safe?”

“Yeah.” I bring my phone back down, shoving it into my back pocket.

Bishop chuckles. “It’s cute that these girls think they can fucking slide out without us knowing where the fuck they are.”

“Do you know why Madison needs her?”

Bishop shakes his head, his eyes losing focus. “Who fucking knows at this point.” The front door to Bishop’s condo opens and closes, as Nate makes his way down the hallway.

He pauses, his eyes swinging between the two of us. “What’d I fucking miss?”

“Oh, you know.” Bishop rolls his eyes. “Yet another example of our stellar taste in women.”

Nate’s brow rises. “Where’s Saint?”

“Fuck you,” I snap, kicking off the wall and heading into the office.

Nate and Bishop follow suit, taking their seats amongst the numerous scattered chairs. The condo doesn’t get used nearly as often as we all thought it would. I sit in silence as we wait on the rest of The Kings before we can get down to business. My fingers tap against my thigh, my leg jiggling while my other finger traces the top of my upper lip. I do a repeat round of that before everyone is here. Bishop’s office here is big enough, but not as big as the one at his forever home, where he hasn’t even been since Madison left. Fucking shitshow. This place is more of a hotel than a home.

“Now that we’re all here, we need your attention. I’m calling in our fathers. We need them in on this.” Bishop pushes a few buttons and puts the phone on speaker.

“Dad, we’re all here.”

“All right.” I listen as the other four a

I smirk at Bishop.

He flips me off. “Agreed. We won’t make a move until after the ceremony.”

“Good,” Hector says easily. “The last ceremony we did was obviously mine. It’s a big deal to us. There are three stages of the night. You’ll receive information over the next forty-two hours. The first stage is with The Kings only, the second with family and friends, where there will be food, speeches, and drinking. The last part is the ceremony. A song will play, you will take your oath, and then that’s that. I step down and fuck your mom until I damn near rot, and you take on the stress.”

Bishop flexes his hand. “Dad! Fuck!”

Hector chuckles, and I can see his smug smirk from here. “I mean it. Nothing is to happen until the ceremony. We can’t take heat before it.”

We all agreed, and Bishop hung up the phone, his eyes falling on all of us.

Nate, Eli, Cash, Hunter, Jase—because the old fucks are always here anyway—and the silence that spills among us is deafening.

I shuffle in my chair.

Jase slinks down onto the ground, pulling his knees up to his chest. “Anything we missing here? You guys talk as if you know who has been doing all of this shit?”

“We do.” Bishop nods his head. “We’ve just been—”

My eyes collide with Bishop’s.

“—waiting.”

I sneer, the adrenaline already settling in my blood. I need it.

“Want to fill us the fuck in?” Jase crosses his arms in front of himself.

I run my tongue over my teeth. “Garcia.”

There was a reason why they called it frostbite. It would literally bite at your skin until you could no longer feel. I sank my nails into the white snow, my jaw clenched shut. It got progressively worse as I aged, I found out. My father wasn’t just an evil man, he was straight-up vile. He wanted to humiliate, torment, and destroy people in a way that you could never see on the surface. He worked his sins by hiding it behind human nature. I hated him. Fucking despised him.

“What you thinking about, boy?” Elijah said opposite me.

My eyes found his, my jaw tensing so hard that my teeth gritted beneath the tension. I didn’t answer him. He was Lucan’s right-hand man in this business. I soon found out after he raped me all those years ago. See, Lucan didn’t pull that shit anymore. Elijah was the last; now he just likes to humiliate me by making sure Elijah is always around when he’s with us. I swore one day he would go down, as would Lucan, only differently. I had to be smart when it came to Elijah. SO fucking smart.

I kicked out my leg, the snow melting against the heat of my skin. We had been in this goddamn igloo for four hours straight, waiting for a drop. I was fucking done with the trade, almost close enough to filling Uncle Hector in on Lucan’s little secret. I wanted to. Every fucking time I saw him, but then she came to mind. It wasn’t worth it. Civilians, other people—they didn’t mean shit up against Saint. Sad but true.

“Something going on in that head of yours?” Elijah asked, leaning his elbows on top of his knees. “Something you want to do to pass the time? I mean, I think you and I both know that I don’t mind bondage…”

I bared my teeth. “If you touch me, I will kill you, Elijah, and trust me, I don’t want to do that. Yet.”

Elijah laughed, his smirk so fucking smug I wanted to reach forward and punch it right off his face. “Settle, settle, Vitiosis. You’re a little old for my taste now…”

I ground my teeth, my fists clenching so hard in my palms that crescents indented. His phone was against his ear when he got a call.

“Ava, how’s my favorite little sister?”

Yeah, I’ll get you real soon, motherfucker.