Sancte Diaboli

“—which I did,” Brantley snaps at Hector. “Until.”

“Until you came back into this life,” Hector finishes. “I underestimated the power of your generation.”

“Okay,” I murmur, thrown off by the revelation that I’m basically a damn freak. This explains a lot of things, but I need to bleed more information out of them anyway, at least before I spill. “What—what should I look out for?”

Hector shrugs. “That I don’t know. It comes in differently for every person.”

I hold my breath, my eyes swing between all of them quickly, shifting so fast, afraid I’ll miss something. I figure I have to read one of them, and one of them only if this is going to work. They can conceal anything far too quickly for me to catch.

I turn toward Brantley. “Ava Garcia.”

Goosebumps swell over my skin, a shiver crawling down my spine. The temperature in the room drops to dangerous levels, and suddenly they’re all silent. It’s fine. They can be silent, because Brantley’s slipup was loud enough for me to have an answer.

“How” —Brantley leans over, his elbows now on his knees while his eyes remain completely on mine—“the fuck do you know that name?”

I square my shoulders, fighting the urge to fidget. “I—I don’t know.”

“You obviously know,” Hector adds, far too calm for my liking.

I cross my arms in front of me. “It’s hard to explain.”

“Explain anyway,” Bishop says, turning his body toward me.

“You won’t believe me.”

Brantley chuckles. “Fucking try us.”

“Okay, but I want the truth. I want your side to what I know.”

“Fucking speak, Saint, my patience is ru

“I see her,” I admit, and because I can’t watch their reactions, my focus falls to the patterns engraved into Hector’s desk. “She, well, she started visiting me in my dreams a little after I first met everyone.”

“Great, the bitch is fucking walking into dreams and trying to tell her truth. Why don’t people just die anymore?” Bishop grunts to himself and I don’t have the energy to ask him what he means by that. They talk about people like they’re disposable.

“It was just that.” I search Brantley’s eyes. “But recently it has become, I don’t know, something else.”

“What do you mean, something else?” Brantley pushes, and I’m well aware how silent Hector is now.

“I mean, I—I actually see her. Like when I’m in the bathroom. It’s no longer only when I close my eyes. And that’s not only it. She showed me what you all did to her.” I lean closer to Brantley, pi

Brantley winces, baring his teeth and finally dismissing me and leaning back in his chair, his eyes on Hector. “How the fuck do we protect her from a goddamn ghost?”

“Brantley,” I say, but he doesn’t pay me any attention. His jaw is tight, his knuckles turning white as his fists clench. Before I can stop myself, I’m reaching for them. At the co

“Who she is?” Brantley turns to face me. “Is the product of very fucking bad people, Saint, but why she’s doing it? I don’t fucking know.” He stands abruptly, moving to the other side of the room. He leans against the window, gazing outside. “Bishop knows the story, but Hector, you don’t.”

Hector sighs, leaning back in his chair. “What the fuck did you all do now?”

Brantley chuckles, and I watch as he runs his hand over his face. I squeeze the sides of my chair to stop myself from walking over to him and jumping into his arms. “Remember Elijah?”

“I remember you telling me what he did, yes.”

Brantley’s jaw flexes. “His last name was Garcia.”

“Jesus fucking Christ,” Hector whispers, shaking his head. “So she was?”

Brantley finally turns to face us, but his eyes are on mine. “She was part of my revenge.”

The grip I have on my chair increases. “So something happened between you and Elijah?”

Bishop clears his throat. “You could say that, but Elijah Garcia is the son of one of the most notorious families known in the state of New York. His father is a don, Elijah the beta, and Ava?” Bishop shakes his head slowly. “Well, she was basically the fucking princess.”

“Okay.” My eyes close as I try to undo all the knots inside my brain that these revelations have tied. “So you killed Elijah, and Ava—”

“Not Elijah,” Brantley murmurs, and when I look up at him, all of my instincts are screaming for me to run. This time not to him, away from him. “His time hadn’t come yet.”

“Yet,” Bishop bites out. “I’m thinking it has now.”

“Boys,” Hector finally interrupts. “This is King business.” He casts a look at me. “Is there anything else you would like to know about yourself or me?”

Feeling satisfied with everything, no matter how confusing it is to digest, I nod. There is one thing I do want to know. I think anyone who has been abandoned by a parent would want to know. “Why did you get rid of me?”

The lines around his eyes deepen, his smile harsh but somehow still gentle. “I couldn’t keep you. I understand your knowledge of The Kings and our legacy and law is fairly new to you, but you would have been classified as a Swan. They would have killed you. The Vatican took you under their wing with the assumption that you, too, would bear the curse. They weren’t completely sure you would; they just assumed”

I chew on my lip while scenarios play through my head. “I don’t know enough, but I know a little bit. Madison, she was a Swan?”

Hector nods. “Yes.”

“And The Lost Boys, they’re who killed them?”

Hector leans to the side of his chair. “Yes, along with your biological mother, who helped.”

This wasn’t news, but it didn’t make it any easier to swallow. I’d heard enough snide remarks from Tillie to know our mom was obviously not wi

“But, why did you pull me out of The Vatican and bring me to Brantley’s?”

A range of emotions crumble over his face. His eyes harden, the wrinkles around his mouth seem to tense.

Brantley finally moves back to the chair beside me, and just as Hector’s mouth is about to open, there’s a knock on the door.

Hector keeps his eyes on me. “Come in.”

The door cracks open and Scarlet stands at the threshold. Scarlet, as well as being the first lady, was also a famous movie star. She’s featured in some of my favorite movies.

Her wide smile is directed right at me, as if no one else in the room exists. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to interrupt.”

“It’s okay,” I say, standing. “I’m tired anyway.”

Bishop takes my hand. “Come, you can crash upstairs.” I let him direct me past Scarlet. It’s not until we’re outside of the office that I notice Brantley didn’t follow. Bishop pauses at the bottom of the stairs.

“Hey.” My hand rests on his shoulder. “It’s cool. I can get the driver to take me home.”

“It’s not that.” He blows out a breath, his shoulders tense. “Come.” Then I’m following him out the glass sliding doors that open out onto a patio area and a large rectangular pool.

“Wow, party house, huh?”

“You have no idea,” he grunts, leading me around the sun loungers, past the DJ booth, and through the small garden. My attention wanes when I pass the overgrown rose bush.

“I could totally fix that.”

Bishop laughs. “You’re not doing our gardening.”

“I’m just saying, I could!”

We stop outside a house identical to the main one, only smaller. It’s adjacent to the pool, yet overlooks it at the same time. Completely constructed from glass with dark trimmings.