Page 52 of These Monstrous Ties
She sighs, taps her perfectly manicured nails on the table. “Mayhem is one of the Unsaints—”
“I know who he is,” I say, brushing off her explanation. She seems surprised that I know, but says nothing. I wonder what my brother told her about how he found me. “But you…then why the fuck are you here?”
She frowns. “Mayhem and I love each other a hell of a lot less than Jeremiah and you do.”
Which is to say, they must really,reallyhate each other.
I arch a brow, waiting for her to continue.
“He’s my older brother. I was always trying to follow him around to the Unsaint ceremonies. I went to Lover’s Death one night, when I was fifteen, he was seventeen. I snuck out, followed him to the park.” She trails off, working her lip between her teeth. I wonder if her story is as fucked as mine. “I got caught up with Atlas, took the Death Oath. But I wore a mask, covered my whole face. Atlas didn’t know it was me, his blood brother’s sister.” She shakes her head and sighs, looking at the ceiling. I marvel at how much my brother is rubbing off on her.
And then I realize why my brother is keeping her around. She’s probably a boon of information.
“When Atlas found out, after he, um, knocked my mask off, he told Mayhem immediately.” She closes her eyes. “Mayhem lost his shit,” she whispers. “Beat the fuck out of Atlas on that merry-go-round in Raven Park. His blood was all over it. Then Mayhem told my father. My dad…he kicked me out.”
I feel rage bolt through me on her behalf. I think of Ria’s story, about the merry-go-round. Turns out it was fucking true. “What?” I ask, slamming my palms on the table. “Why?”
“Girls aren’t allowed in the Unsaints. They’re like…the Masons, you know?” she asks, looking at me again. She brings her drink to her lips but doesn’t take a sip. “And for me to be tainted by one…”
“Tained?”I spit out, angry all over again. “What the fuck?” I see Monica glancing at us from behind the bar, where she’s rubbing down a clean spot. But what else is she supposed to do? It’s an empty bar. And I’m sure as hell not going to lower my voice.
“Look, Sid, I know you were…anescort…” she says it like it’s a dirty word. “But my family, the Astors, we don’t…it’s just not done for girls. They’re old school.”
I swallow back the angry retort I have for that, trying to empathize. I find I can’t. “But wouldn’t that be agoodthing, for you fuck one of the Unsaints? I mean, it’s a super-secret club for naughty rich boys. Your brother wasin it. What’s the problem?”
“The problem is no one fucks anyone’s family in there without permission. I forced Atlas to break his own oaths to Mayhem.”
I see tears glimmering in her eyes. This shit is fucked. It makes no sense. But I swallow back all of that. It won’t do any good for me to say it now. Either Brooklin gets it, or she doesn’t. But there’s no use arguing with her on some shit her family did to her.
“Where does my brother come into this picture?” I ask quietly. That’s what I really want to know. I get the Unsaints are fucked. I know they like blood oaths. I know they’re misogynists. I just want to know how Jeremiah Rain ended up running with them when he’d been born on the other side of the country. “I mean, they’re all old school families from Alexandria, right?”
She nods, wiping at her eyes with the back of her hand. “Yeah,” she sniffs, taking a sip of her drink then setting it down, spinning the glass. “Yeah, they are. But your brother’s last foster family was from here. They were richer than everyone else, save for Lucifer’s family.” Her eyes flick to mine with his name. I don’t comment. Of course, Lucifer would be the wealthiest fuck among them.
“Did he really kill them?” I ask. Because if my brother killed a familythatrich, I have no idea how the fuck he isn’t in prison.
Shocking the shit out of me, she nods. “He killed them. And the blood kids.”
My mouth falls open. “What.” It isn’t really a question.
“When he was seventeen. They’d left him locked up for two weeks at that point,” she explains, and my blood grows cold. “But not their kids. They just didn’t like him. Maybe because he was always getting in trouble at school. Bad attitude.” She laughs a little at that, and I do too. I don’t even know why. It’s not amusing. My heart is hurting for my brother, but I can’t stop the laugh anyway.
“One of the girls—both of them were older than him, by the way, a nineteen-year-old and a twenty-year-old—let him out, and he grabbed a gun from his foster dad’s bedroom and shot them all.” She shrugs. “The will deemed he got the money, because the family was fucking stupid and never updated it. It just went to the remaining kids, him included, evenly distributed. He was the only one left. He hired a good lawyer. Self-defense. It didn’t even go to trial. Because that’s what that kind of money can do.”
“And the Unsaints just let him in after that?”
She laughs. “Are you kidding me? They would’ve killed to have him. I was already out on the streets then—”
“On the fuckingstreets?”I ask her, bewildered. I knew she said her dad kicked her out but…
She nods, lip trembling again. This is clearly a sore spot for her. I can’t blame her. “Yeah,” she says, “they wrote me out of the will and gave me a few thousand for a hotel, and that’s about it.”
I let loose a breath. “Wow,” I say, shocked. “Continue.”
She frowns but does. “The Unsaints wanted him. They all more or less hate their parents. They thought what he did was cool. But obviously, he was always on the outside looking in. Even though he’d been in for a few years by the timeyoucame into the picture, he still wasn’t fully one of them. These kids had grown up together. They’d started the Unsaints when they were just kids, and their parents supported it. Encouraged it, even. So Jeremiah didn’t quite fit in. And you…well…when he saw what Lucifer did to you…” She lowers her voice, as if that’ll take away the fucking hole in my heart. “He couldn’t stay in it anymore. He left, after that night. He had nothing to do with them. He already had this place, already had his people who were loyal to him and not the Unsaints. He became the Order of Rain, and,” she shrugs, “here we are.”
I sit in silence, letting it all digest.
It doesn’t make sense.
