Page 7 of Begging for Mercy
I doubt I can trust the word of a murderer, but it’s a start.
Sliding down the dirt wall opposite me, Reaper slumps, tossing his legs out in front of him the moment his butt hits the ground. “One year,” he murmurs, staring at me as he wipes the blood from his face with his wrist. “You better get out of here before Zane wakes up. He won’t be happy when he learns about our agreement.”
Swallowing hard, I nod. “Okay. How—how do I find you?” I can’t very well win the game if I can’t interact with the other players.
Reaper’s smile is full of charm once again, nearly knocking me off my feet. “Don’t you worry about that, beautiful. We’ll come to you.” He doesn’t help me climb out of the pit, but he doesn’t ask for the knife back either.
I’m halfway home before I realize that Skinny Jeans still has my parents’ photograph in his pocket.
Chapter 3
Zane
My brother is a goddamn fool.
If burying Forty-three wasn’t bad enough on its own, Kane started humming a melody heswearscame from his “Siren”—the girl who assaulted me with a shovel—while we walk back to the car. Like he’shappythat he left a loose end for me to burn.
“The game is stupid,” I say for the third time, unable to wrap my brain around the logistics. Because there aren’t any. “She’s going to call the cops. They’ll sketch our faces and put out an APB for anyone matching our description. It’ll be all over the news.” Anxiety claws at my ribs like a rat climbing a ladder, the tiny beast desperate to avoid dark sewers filled with nothing but the rot and stench of death. That’s what awaits Kane if this shit gets out—the death penalty.
Forty-three isn’t an arbitrary number I pulled out of my ass. It’s the number of kills we’ve made since we started this venture as undisciplined teenagers. Not that our first was intentional—it was self-defense.But still.That’s forty-three murders under our belts and forty-three missing persons cases within a few hundred mile radius of the city. Not to mention all the bodies we regularly disappear for the local bratva families.
Even the Baranovas’ influence can only go so far if this shit hits the national news.
We’re usually smarter than dumping bodies into fresh graves. Forty-three—Alejandro—was an exception on account of Kane’s soft spot for the man. He insisted that we bury Alejandro with his family sincethey mean everything to him.
I never should have allowed it.
Dragging a hand down my face, I make a sharp turn onto the next road on the right, the one headed for the outskirts of the city—what’s known asOld Town.The historic district, home to the city’s oldest houses, is set against the mountain range to the north. The richest settlers chose to live opposite the beach, so their houses stood longer against the test of time. Only families whose names date back centuries still reside there. The Baranovas, I’ve been told, even have land hidden among the towering evergreens.
My brother and I have no such claims to property or fortune, but a certain curious little kitten does.
Kane idly peels layers of paint off his hands and wrists while I drive down a long stretch of road. The sun will be rising soon, its colors already peeking over the horizon. The scent of salt on the ocean breeze gives way to earth and pine the further from the cemetery we drive. It takes a few false turns for my memory to kick in, but once thick, wrought-iron gates come into view right where the slope of the mountain begins, I know we’ve found the right address.
Morningstar Mortuary.
Slapping his hand on the roof of the car, Kanewhoopsloudly. “Hell yeah, I knew you didn’t get enough of a taste. Let’s go.” He sits up in his seat, leaving paint strips to flutter to the floorboards.
Crinkling my nose, I smack his shoulder as we approach the gate. “Stay in the car. You’re peeling. It’s evidence.”
His brows lift beneath his bangs, finally flattened after a few hours spent digging in the dirt. “No way, you’ll hurt her.” He hops out of the car before I’ve cut the engine. “I gave my word. She has one year to live.” Squinting against the headlights, he covers his eyes. “Are you coming?”
It’s with the greatest patience that I watch Kane climb over the gate. We’re not even thirty seconds into this operation, and he’s grinning like a kid breaking into their best friend’s bedroom window on a school night. He always does this—getting too close to our targets, too invested, only to bleed when they do. It’s what makes his artwork potent enough to sell for hundreds of thousands of dollars each.
He feels things deeper than most people.
It gives me room to feel even less.
I scratch the prickle on the back of my neck and exhale through the nerves skittering across my skin. There’s no room for anxiety tonight, only action. I grab onto the iron bar and hoist myself over the fence—not as quickly as Kane, but fast enough. I jog to catch up with him on the gravel path. The sky lightens through the canopy of trees. Songbirds greet the morning with eager chirps, and Kane takes it all in with breathless wonder.
I’d thought he would be too enamored with our scared little kitty cat to appreciate the scenery, but apparently, he can make time to smell the damp earth and listen to the sounds of the forest preparing for daybreak. Although the weather’s been warmer on account of the blast of heat coming up from the south, the sweat on my skin chills me to the bone. I’m not as thick as Kane. He may burn a thousand calories fighting and fucking his way through the day, but not me. I don’t have the metabolism or the muscle mass.
Definitely not the libido.
I steal a glance at Kane while he’s preoccupied with kicking a large rock into the ditch beside the path. We’re not related, barely even brothers on account of us never staying under the same foster family’s roof. I try not to think about it. The past doesn’t matter as much as the present.
As the sun crests over the unseen horizon and flecks of the palest blues turn to vibrant pinks and brightest oranges, they paint Kane’s body in an iridescent shimmer, highlighting the artwork painted all along his body. The whites and grays turn to color, and it’s then that I can see the flaws along his back. Not the scratch marks from his nightly conquests—but the flimsy lines and incorrect proportions pretending to be arched ribs and blocky vertebrae.
He can’t reach his back to complete his masterpiece, so he enlists me to complete the picture every year, and every year, I fuck it up. In the dark, though, and with their thoughts on little more than his cock, Reaper’s victims don’t care that I miscounted the rungs of his ribcage or fucked up the shading on his spine. It’s not like they’re paying attention.
