Page 19 of King of Cruelty

I shot him point-blank through the skull, putting an end to his caterwauling. His minions burst through the trees and I finished them off before they could shoot, dropping them in quick succession.

Crossing the distance, I bent over their corpses, picking their pockets clean of weapons as a faint chime echoed through the forest—Abraham’s phone ringing.

There was no point searching for it to talk to Kenzie, because there was nothing more for me to say or more information to give. They’d already had all the information they needed to find me, so they’d better do it.

“Fast.” I cocked my borrowed guns, narrowing on the innocent-looking cabin in the distance. “Shit’s about to get real.”

“GENNY? GENNY, PLEASE, pick up!” The phone kept ringing until an automated voicemail message picked it up.

I craned to see out the large, wall-swallowing window of Banana Tree. Sienna and I insisted on coming with the guys to check out the gas station, but Liam, Bane, and Sunny didn’t make it very far and Sienna and I were even farther away.

Bane and Liam loitered on the sidewalk, watching as the Cinco PD Bomb Squad swept the place.

After our very close—too close—call at the movie theater, the guys weren’t about to run into any more buildings that had the Brotherhood’s stink on it. So, Liam called up a buddy of his inthe force and told him flat out the Brotherhood blew up the theater, and the gas station could be their next target.

This was serious enough that not even my gangster boyfriends could deny the police and proper bomb-defusing professionals needed to be involved. A bomb at a gas station could take out half the city block, and put way more people than just us in danger.

Knowing that, the guys wouldn’t let me anywhere near the place, and Sienna wasn’t going near it without me either, so that left us sipping oolong tea at Banana Tree while half the patrons crowded around us, straining to see down the street.

Liam and Bane were only so close because they were backing Sunny up while he gave his interview.

“It was horrrrribbble,” Sunny wailed. “I was picking up some snacks for my girl. She’s pregnant with our fifth kid. I keep saying, ‘Kenzie baby, let’s slow down or at least bag up,’ but she can’t keep her hands off me. Wants it everywhere, all the time, any place. She loves me, man. Loves me more than all those other rejects lapping at her feet.”

Sienna smothered a snort at my narrowing eyes. I shook my head at the doofus while I dialed and redialed Liam and Bane—whoever picked up first.

We had a front-row seat to my man’s lunacy because his interview was being broadcast live from the scene, and it was playing on every television. All of Cinco City could see Sole Bellisario, but not as the slick, handsome, dripping-in-expensive-clothes playboy that I knew. Sole dressed all the way down in a simple pair of jeans, scuffed shoes, a shirt with a hole in it, and hair that was ratted up like he just rolled out of a bed filled with four children and a sexually voracious girlfriend.

“This one time, me and my girl, Kenzie, were getting it on—”

“Yes, thank you!” the reporter half shouted. “Please, get back to what you were saying about the man standing on the other side of the pump.”

“Huh? Oh, yeah, that freak.” Sunny shuddered. It was scary how good an actor he was. If more than half of the Merchants’ children weren’t called to a life of crime, I had to wonder what their alter egos would’ve done with their lives. “He was weird, dude. He kept mumbling all this freak stuff about the devil being in Cinco, and that it needed to be purified with fire.

“Just like the movie theater. He, uh... He said—” Sunny paused, scratching his chin. It was then I noticed he’d put dirt under his fingernails. No detail too small for his grand performance. “He said something about the theater being cursed with sin, so it had to go too.”

“Shocking,” the reporter said. “For those listening and yet unaware, only a few hours ago, the old Late-Nite Cinema in Rockchapel was the site of a bombing. That very cinema was closed down due to a shootout that tragically claimed the lives of ten innocent people. Mr. Bell, sir, do you believe that was the theater and the sin this man was speaking of?”

“I don’t know. I thought the dude was just crazy and mumbling to the voices in his head. I didn’t realize he was talking to me until he said I’d better repent of my sins. I ran around to tell him to fuck off, but I couldn’t even get close.

“He was wearing dirty rags and his pants were wet and yellow like he pissed himself. He had old bits of food in his scraggly beard, three teeth, and brown stuff caked on his fingers that could’ve been his own shit for all I knew. He damn sure smelled like it—that Brother Abraham guy.”

And now Sienna did laugh, busting up even amidst the seriousness of the situation. Wherever Brother Abraham was, he would not be pleased with this description.

“How worrying,” the reporter cried. “But then, how did you know this guy was dangerous, or that his threats were to be taken seriously?”

“Because he said he has more gifts to leave for the sinners of Cinco, and this was just the second stop. I was going to ask what the hell he was talking about, but then he dropped his tailgate and showed me what he had in the truck bed. Bombs,” Sunny rasped. “A whole bunch of fucking bombs.”

The call picked up. “Mackenzie?” Liam’s voice poured in my ear. “Everything okay?”

“Genny just called.” I told him everything she said.

He was moving before I finished. “Bane, get Sunny. Let’s go.”

Right there on screen, Sunny fished his phone out of his pocket, read the text, and ran off. “Hope you catch the freak. See ya!”

“Wha— Wait! Mr. Bell, wait—”

“Get back!” A loudspeaker-amplified voice ripped through the speakers, making half the patrons in Banana Tree jump. “A bomb has been located on the premises! I repeat, a bomb is on the premises. Calmly and safely evacuate this area immediately!”

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