Page 56 of When Sinners Fear
And now we’re smiling at each other like some lovestruck teenagers?
Flattening my face, partly in disgust at myself, I head back through the house and grab my car keys again. Doesn’t take long before I’m out on the freeway and glaring at traffic as it hampers every road I’m trying to take. First port of call is the museum to see if my car’s been recovered. It’s not there, so I can only assume it has or someone’s stolen it. A phone call to Shaw confirms it hasn’t. Seems it’s at one of our breakers yards after they found it outside the museum.
“Bring it home,” I tell him. “Don't talk to or touch the girl. You hear me? I'll rip your goddamn head off if you even try.”
“Yeah fine. I'll get someone to follow me later today.”
He talks about some things that have gone down since I’ve been absent, but it’s nothing more than the average every day. Why would it be from him? He barely knows anything we do at the higher levels. He does inform me we’ve changed the holding area location, though, which is more than either of my other brothers have bothered with.
Turning the car around, I head back up the freeway in the other direction, pissed that I’ve missed information that is fucking relevant to me in ways none of them comprehend. My head doesn’t work like that. Surprises, other than instantaneous carnage, are not welcome in my life at all. Peyton’s one of them, frankly. She’s both surprising and soothing somehow, which is probably the reason I’m so goddamn confused. And pissed. And continuing with this personal, emotional garbage that’s infiltrated my existence.
The eventual sight of the new place comes into view along the end of a dirt track. Dust and grime kick up around me as I park up by Abel’s car, and I spend a few minutes reorganising my head from the dream I’m currently living. The urge to call home, just to hear her voice, lingers inside me, but I’m not made for soft visions of long legs and pale skin, not when they’re at home in my bed, anyway. Nor am I capable of processing poetry when its purpose is suddenly romanticised by the actuality of reality. No, I’m made for the kind of evil and villainy I’m about to categorise in this building. I'm built of callous intent and nothing else.
Carmen greets me the moment I walk into the building. She smiles from her platform in the middle of the room and points me in the direction of my new office. I get to it and am instantly dissatisfied with the outcome. The whole damn thing is too bright and clean, like we’re in some office downtown rather than the dark and dirt I’m used to. I stare at it from the doorway, attempting to train my ears on the sound of screaming women further back in the building. They’re part soothing, and part fucking disturbing. All I can sense behind their fear is Peyton’s shouts for mercy those first few times. So, I scowl and back out of the room, heading for the sound until I get to it behind another door. I wait, listening and processing the sound. Cries for help, a pained yelp of agony, a deep, dark chuckle. Dante.
Opening the door, I walk in to watch. They’re all in there, other than Shaw. Two women, one being held by Kai while Dante does his thing with a branding iron, and Abel’s leaning on the back wall.
“Knox,” he says. “You’re early back.”
“The hell is that office about?” He smiles and walks towards me, one arm outstretched like he’s about to touch me. I back off before he gets a chance. “If that’s some fucking attempt at me forgetting where I’ve been, it’s bullshit.”
Dante stands and chucks his iron back into the pit. “I told you he’d hate it.”
Kai walks by me with both women in his hold. “Alright?” he asks.
“What the hell does that mean?” He chuckles.
“Conspiracy theory again? Get a damn grip of yourself.”
“Fuck you, asshole.”
He shakes his head and keeps moving. “Good to see you too.”
My gaze follows him out of the room, some undisclosed suspicion still set in low about him, until I turn for Dante. “Why are you still here?”
He picks up a bottle of something and wipes his brow of sweat. “Jesus, Knox. You want me to leave? That’s the second time you’ve asked.”
“He’s here because I’ve been doing your job,” Abel cuts in. “He’s covering while Kai and Shaw have been on the streets.”
“Kai’s here.” As proved by him walking back in with two new women.
“Just got back,” he says. He slings one woman away and shunts the other towards the table as Dante gets seated with his iron again. “Shaw’s still out there dealing with that ass you decided to be lenient with.”
“Who?”
“Ike. He went on a rampage and tried taking one of Lexi’s lines of supply down. Pretty sure he’s dead by now.”
“You left Shaw out there alone?”
“After I’d hogtied Ike. He wanted the job. Said he needed to vent.”
The woman starts struggling in his hold, which he barely acknowledges, and then screams. The purified stench of burning flesh hits the air immediately, and I’m instantly transported back to filthy ground and pain. Bile rises in my throat, and everything about me stiffens in response to a trauma I know is infecting me.
I swallow, trying to clear the visions from my head, but end up backing away without thought.
“Knox?” Dante says. My head shakes, and adrenalin starts fuelling my instinct to protect myself from outta nowhere. I scowl at everyone and anything, trying to displace the memories.
“Knox?” Abel says. I turn at him and glare, body trying to hold back from attacking for no reason at all. “Calm down.” I don’t want to calm down. I want to avenge something that happened to me – to Peyton. I can feel that fucking iron going into my skin, feel the beatings I took – for them, and her.