Sancte Diaboli

Brantley

The first thing everyone should most definitely know about all of us is that ending someone’s life comes as easy as one, two, three. We were dropping bodies when our friends were dropping alcohol shots in the club. It doesn’t affect any of us, and it never has.

Not when we’d watch the life of someone slowly bleed from their eyes.

Not when we’d know that person had a family to go home to.

I wish I could say that everyone who has met the end of our blade deserved it, but truth is, at least for me, that’s not always the case.

“You know who’s going down?” I ask Bishop, my eyes on his.

He looks up at me from his phone, the dark night setting behind him. The light from his screen bounces off his face. “We could go clean and easy and dip into The List.”

I lean against my car, crossing my ankles in front of me. “Clean and easy will never be clean and easy if they’re from that list, and you know it.”

“Who was next anyway?” Eli asks, biting a cigarette into his mouth and lighting the tip.

I shrug. “Not sure. I never know until the last minute.”

“Who issues them? Do we know? Are we ever going to know?” Cash asks, ru

“Yeah, I’m guessing after the ceremony, the wheels are going to start spi

“Personally, can’t fucking wait.” Nate smirks around the end of his smoke. He glances at Cash. “You can’t tell me you’re not ready for the next chapter. This is it. What we’ve been fucking living for.”

“I am.” Cash nods. “That fucking school, though. You remember the legends… it’s fucking—fucked. It’s fucked.”

I curl my lips between my teeth to stop from laughing. “Anything with us around it is fucked.”

“All right, I got our kill.” Bishop flashes his phone on our face.

I still. “What? Nah, fuck that.”

He grins, turning the phone back around while kicking off the car. “Mmmm, smells a lot like death.”

“Why?” I glare at him over the photo of Josiah Dux, aka Dux of The Gentlemen, and Elijah’s pops. “Why that person? And don’t give me bullshit about my shit.”

Nate rubs his face with his hands. “We know it was The Gentlemen who hit us at the parking lot, B. We fucking know. We know it was them who drugged us, too. We just go

“They weren’t the ones who drugged us. That wasn’t them. Too—clean.”

Nate shrugs. “Well, shit, our bad if it wasn’t—or not.”

I smirk, my shoulders relaxing. He has a point. Even if it wasn’t them who drugged us, which I’m ninety-nine percent sure it wasn’t, The Gentlemen have done enough to fuck with us to take it anyway. The shooting was reckless as all hell and had their stench all over it. “We get the last fucking say.”

The night was quiet. Too fucking quiet. It took an hour to get our hands on three black G-Wagons just to pull this off.

“Execution style. Keep it clean.” Bishop slips leather gloves over his hands.

I clench my jaw. “We do this, we can’t come back from it. Don’t get me wrong, The Gentlemen have always been on my list, but I was waiting for their time to come for a reason.”

Nate is in the passenger seat, tapping his thigh with his thumb along to the rap “Joker” by Dax. “Nah uh, they’ve been on borrowed time.”

“Nate.” I bare my teeth, shoving the back of his chair. “You have shit to lose now. You can’t think recklessly.” Nate is erratic and rogue with his wrath. Complete opposite of me. I like to think it’s because I’m more controlled as a human being, but I know it’s more because I’m conditioned for murder. It’s like sipping tea on a Sunday. “You have Tillie and War.”

He turns over his shoulder, his hoodie covering the outline of his face. “And you have Saint. But you also have a duty.”

I clench my fist as our driver continues to drive us closer to the border. I jolt in my seat when the tires roll over the train tracks, directing us to the east side of Riverside. The bright lights and opulence of the west slowly fades out as the modesty of the east bleeds in.

I lean my head against the back of the chair. “Nate. Put on ‘Day of the Dead’ from Hollywood Undead.”

“My man!” Nate cheers, flicking through his phone and pushing play on the song, cranking it all the way up. Nate is right. I have Saint, but I’ve always had her and it’s never stopped me before from what I do on a weekly basis. If anything, she’s safe. She’s surrounded by some of the most feared individuals in not only the United States, but other countries, too, but there’s a reason why I’ve wanted to take my revenge slow, and not rush through it. Maybe stripping Josiah Garcia from Elijah will be a good thing. I always pla

The car pulls up to a stop outside a quiet suburban-style house. The front porchlight is on, curtains drawn.

“Aside from my shit,” I say, ru

“Since when do you give a fuck about other people?” Nate jokes, turning the music down.

“You don’t have to give a fuck about someone to know what happened to them is wrong, you fucker. And besides, you didn’t see the shit I did.”

They both remain silent. Eli turns in his seat to look over Hunter’s shoulder as the other G-Wagon pulls up behind us with the headlights cut. “Got to say, good to have the whole crew back.”

I chuckle, shaking my head. “Yeah, true. Even if only for one night.” In the Bugatti behind is Jase, Cash, Ace, Saint—the King Saint—and Chase. The whole fucking crew we started with. It feels good.

“Execution style, Brantley,” Bishop repeats beside me.

The corner of my mouth tips up in a smile.

“I mean it.”

I tap his leg. “Oh, I know you do.”

Swinging open my door, I slide out and make my way to the front of the house, pulling out my Glock from the back of my jeans.

“Bran!” Bishop snaps from behind me. I’m over the talking. Josiah Garcia isn’t who I want. Elijah is. I turn over my shoulder as footsteps thud from behind me.

I pull my hoodie over my head. “What?”

Bishop grinds his teeth. “He’s not here. Get back in the fucking car.” He turns to walk back to the SUV. “Fucking drive-by it is.”

I make my way back, cursing that his kill is going to be something easy and clean. I had every intention of carving my initials over his forehead, despite Bishop’s wishes.

Slamming the door once I’m back inside, I glare at Bishop. “How do you know?”

Nate flips his photo to my face. “Spotted by one of our eagles.” The eagles in The Kings are how we know the exact location of everyone. Yeah, technology is good, but it’s still not as reliable as the human eye.

“That’s on our side. What the fuck is he doing there?” I ask as the driver pulls us back out on the road and the Wagon behind us follows.

“Don’t know, but he won’t be there for long.”

It takes us fifteen minutes to get back on the west side, and as every second passes, I find myself more and more restless. Nate switches the song as Bishop throws his hoodie over his head and loads up his AK.