Page 114 of Soulless Saint

I wiped my blade clean on his vest, sucking a frustrated breath in through my teeth as he breathed his last. I reached over to shut his eyes, painting the backs of his eyelids with nature’s red paint. Hating the missed opportunity to add his demise to my little film collection, but there was no time.

“Better you than her,” I told his corpse, patting him on the shoulder before rushing back to the box and the wire that I still needed to cut.

I pinched it between my fingers, hearing my own blood rushing in my ears as I held the blade to it.

Don’t.

I shook my head, trying to rid myself of her voice, speaking through clenched teeth. “But she’s in there.”

Movement inside the building spurred me to complete my task, and I sucked in a sharp breath as I clipped the wire in two and the pulsing red light blinked out.

I was a dead man walking.

I hurried to place the front of the old box back into place, the metal scraping loudly as I hooked it into the latches and twisted the screw back in to hold it together.

The thorny bushes welcomed me back with claws and fucking teeth as I flattened myself against the earth just as two more Saints rounded the corner of the building, their flashlights scanning the yard.

I lay there perfectly still, patient as a patron saint, as they discovered their fallen comrade. As they searched the area, working their way into the street. As they shouted over radios and started up engines, the idiots completely unaware that the man they were hunting just saved all of their miserable lives.

Back at the apartment, I bleached my blood out of the white carpet and scrubbed myself clean in the shower before putting everything back just the way I found it. The owners, away in Spain, wouldn’t even know I was here when they returned.

With the borrowed towel around my waist, I took up the binoculars in the living room and watched the Saints’ nearest and dearest exit the building into the slowly growing dawn. But there was only one face I wanted to see.

Becca followed Pope from the front door, the pair of them making for Pope’s old Chevy truck, when a familiar vehicle approached the building.

Hardin St. Vincent was up and through the roll bars of the Bronco before it’d even stopped. Kaleb left the vehicle idling in the street as they both closed in on Becca. My grip tightened on the binoculars.

Hardin gripped her chin, jerking her face toward the light before Kaleb shoved him off and pulled her into his chest, burying his face in her hair.

Were they behaving as though the building should have blown? Or were they only worried my Da might have blown it regardless?

The only way I was getting away with the sin I’d committed against my father was if he didn’t detonate it. Because if he did and he returned to find the building still standing, all its occupants still whole instead of turned to ash, there would be no one to blame but me.

Kaleb threaded his fingers into Becca’s hair, crushing his mouth to hers while Hardin appeared to still be checking her own for damage. As if either of them had the capacity to love.

I’d done my homework on them like Da wanted. I knew who they were. What they were.

They were about as likely to love her as a lion would be to love a mouse.

I snorted, lowering the binoculars with a clenched jaw. Da’d been debating whether to take one of Damien’s sons as his sacrifice, but it seemed he’d decided against that idea. Smart, really. He didn’t want to go making any martyrs, only to sow enough fear to gain control.

A sharp rap at the door preceded Da’s return, and I set the binoculars down, rearranging my face when he entered the way I’d learned as a boy.

He took in the towel hanging low around my hips with a raised brow. “Enjoying your accommodations, fuil mo chuid fola?”

The Gaelic nickname, blood of my blood, sank into my ears like quicksand, the weight of it heavy in the face of what I’d done.

How I’d betrayed him.

“Da, you let them live?”

The attempt to sound surprised may have been too obvious and my throat tightened, blocking me from saying anything else that might give me away.

Da’s lips curled up on one side as he approached the window, staring out into the pink hued streets to watch the Saints and their kin disperse like rats from a sewer. No doubt they were all just informed of the explosives.

“Look at them run,” Da mused, a king overseeing his new kingdom as he removed his armor. First, his pistol belts and next his vest, revealing bricks of C4 strapped to his torso.

“Da?” I asked, uneasy as I watched him pull a metal pin connected to a wire from one of the bricks, disconnecting a device that also connected to two round tabs stuck to his chest. This… whatever this was, was not part of the plan.

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