Page 225 of Sins of the Hidden

She crumpled like paper in rain, folding in on herself with a whimper that cut through the air sharp as a knife blade—the practiced response of someone who'd been shattered and reassembled too many times to count. No fight left in her. No screaming. Just eyelids squeezed tight as coffin lids.

Tyrant's body slammed into mine with the force of a freight train, leaving the woman unguarded as he shoved me back so hard my boots skidded across the wooden floor. He positioned himself between us, a wall of muscle and leather, chest rising and falling like a bellows, icy eyes burning with the intensity of blue flames.

"You're scaring the wrong fucking girl, brother," he growled, before turning back to her and softly asked. "Do you know where she is, sweetheart?"

"S-She told me to run," the woman sobbed, her voice fragmenting like glass hitting concrete. Arms wrapped around herself in an embrace that looked more like holding broken pieces together. "She said to find the Unforgiven Souls...V-V and L-Law." The words dissolved into gasps that sounded like drowning. "I-I'm sorry, I'm so sorry I left her?—"

"Hey, hey—you're safe now." Tyrant returned to the woman, positioning himself to shield her from the rest of us.

My attention snagged on something else, pulled like iron to a magnet. A thin trail snaked across the wooden floor with the precision of calligraphy, leading from where I stood toward the far corner where a small table sat pushed against the wall like an altar waiting for sacrifice. Something in me went still as death. I followed the trail, stepping carefully around Tyrant and the woman, aware of every pair of eyes tracking my movement.

The world stopped.

Everything fucking stopped.

A sound escaped me that wasn't human—wasn't anything that should come from a throat designed for words. It started deep in my chest like a machine breaking down, grinding metal against metal, building into something that made the cabin walls shake. Glass rattled in broken windows. Dust rained from rafters.

Oakley's severed finger, her wedding ring catching the weak light.

Behind me, the room erupted. I heard Law's sharp intake of breath, heard his boots stumble across the floor as he rushed toward me. "No, no, no—" His knees hit the floor beside me. His wail joined mine—a duet of men being torn apart by the same cruel hands.

"Jesus Christ," Grim's voice cracked from the wall.

The scream that finally tore free didn't belong to any living thing—it was the sound of a soul being ripped in half.

The lilac polish. That fucking lilac polish she'd painted on yesterday morning while she baked cinnamon rolls. I'd watched her blow on each nail, tongue poking out in concentration.

My body moved without permission from my brain, lurching upright. The table loomed before me—solid oak that had probably witnessed a hundred family dinners, now serving as an altar for this obscenity. My hands found its edges, gripping until wood screamed under the pressure, splinters driving deep as thorns into my palms.

But I couldn't look at Law. Couldn't look at anything except that small piece of her, that fragment of the woman who'd traced my scars like she wasn't scared of what they said about me.

Three days ago—Jesus fucking Christ, it was only three days ago—she'd traced the edge of my mask with her fingertips while telling me she'd give me her answer on Sunday.

The beast I'd spent years chaining in the deepest dungeons of my soul broke free with the violence of a dam bursting. Every careful lesson in control, every moment of restraint, every time I'd chosen mercy over massacre—all of it burned away like tissue paper in a furnace. The man who'd learned to love was dead. The husband who'd promised to protect her was a failure. All that remained was what I'd always been beneath the mask: a killer with nothing left to lose.

My hands swept across the table, sending everything flying except that small piece of her that I couldn't bear to disturb. Behind me, men scrambled to avoid the debris—Sarge pulling Knight back, Husk ducking, Grim pressing flatter against the wall.

I needed destruction. Needed something, anything, to match the devastation inside my chest. Spinning toward the wall whereLaw had been pressed, I drove my fists into the wood with the rhythm of a funeral drum—over and over, feeling nothing but the satisfaction of something else breaking the way my world had. Law scrambled sideways to avoid my rampage, pressing against Grim as I pounded holes in the wall.

Knuckles split. The dark wetness painted patterns across aged wood as sounds tore from my throat that had no name in any human language. Couldn't stop. Didn't want to stop.

I found a chair near the door, hefting it like a weapon. Husk dove sideways as I hurled it across the cramped space with enough force to shatter reality. Wood exploded against the far wall inches from where Sarge stood, splinters becoming shrapnel, debris raining down like an apocalypse while my roar filled every corner of the cabin—raw, animalistic, the sound of something breaking beyond any possibility of repair.

Tyrant had moved to shield the woman completely, his broad back taking the brunt of flying debris. Grim stood rigid behind him, face drained until he looked like a ghost of himself.

I couldn't stay here. Couldn't look at them. Couldn't look at what was left of her without feeling my sanity slip like sand through a broken hourglass. The walls pressed inward like a closing fist, air growing thin as mountain peaks. Every breath tasted of copper and failure and the bitter flavor of absolute inadequacy coating my tongue like poison.

Pushing past the others, I stumbled toward the door and exploded into the storm. Rain struck my face like tiny bullets. Lifting my face to the sky, I let the storm try to wash away the image of Oakley's finger burned forever into my retinas like a photograph taken in hell.

But the rain couldn't wash away the truth: I'd failed her. Every scar I wore, every wound I'd collected—all of it had found its way to her skin anyway. The worst parts of me had bled into everything good in her until she paid for loving someone like me.

Running through the forest like a man possessed, branches tearing at my suit jacket, until I reached a clearing deep in the woods—a perfect circle of earth surrounded by towering pines that rose like cathedral walls, their branches weaving together overhead to form a natural cathedral of shadows. The trees stood sentinel around the space, ancient and silent, witnesses to whatever unholy reunion was about to unfold.

There, in the center of the clearing, stood a figure from hell itself.

The downpour plastered dark hair to skeletal features I'd inherited from her like a curse, eyes hollow with the hate she'd carried since drawing her first breath. She'd always felt bigger than life when I was small; now, she looked painfully mortal.

Stepping out of the tree line and into the clearing. The moment I saw her face everything clicked into place with sickening clarity.

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