Page 88 of Pray for Scars
Ria said she didn’t think Jeremiah and Sid were brother and sister before my father confirmed it. Said the documents she got her hands on before Unsaint’s Night one year ago seemed to allude to the fact they’d been sent to California separately. Of course, that was before she knew who Sid was. Before she knew her name. Just a girl implied in the paperwork to be a sister of Jeremiah Rain. This was before Ria was close with Mav, but she was interested in history. And interested in Mav’s dick.
Sent to California.
But why, from who…no one knows. There were just birthdates—Sid’s just passed—their names, their flights.
I scrub a hand over my face. I had hoped the depravation room would bring out the memories. Click something in Sid’s head, so I could fix this.
But there’s no fixing this.
I’ve seen the 6 do enough bad shit to know that she might be better off dead. I’vedoneenough bad shit to know it. I know people have ended up fucked because of the 6. Important people, too. People that should’ve been untouchable. Like a CDC scientist that was on the verge of a breakthrough that would have cost the 6, the government, and the other, real untouchables too much grief. He ended up face-down in a shallow river.
The Unsaints was my idea, when I was a kid. I thought it was cool, a way to mimic our parents.
Little did I know I just created another leg of the monster. The Unsaintsarethe 6, but I see now that our parents thought it made us feel more independent, having our own title. They fed us jobs that way: murders, blackmail, extortion. I’ve broken into the houses and offices of wealthy fucks with my brothers by my side so many times, we know each other’s every breath when we work together.
I get it.
I know my father. I know the shit him and his wife are capable of. But still. Sid is twenty-one, and just barely at that. What could a twenty-one-year-old have on them?
“Why did the Forgues want Jere-fucking-miah?” I counter. They should’ve hung him in that cage.
Cain shrugs. “Fuck if I know.”
My jaw clenches. “But what do you think? What do you think they have on her? Him?”
Cain is quiet a minute. “I don’t know.”
The way he says it…I turn to glare at him, dropping the cigarette and grinding it out with more force than is really necessary. “What do youthink?” I press him.
He locks eyes on me. “Ria had to sign an NDA.”
“Tell me something I don’t fucking know.”
“Because she was going on about that bullshit to Mav, about the 6 and your dad and—”
“And because she talked to Sid Rain that night, and—”
“And the 6 don’t want Sid Rain to exist.”
We’re going in circles. I know all of this. I just don’t know why. Ria doesn’t either. But a legal contract, a gun, and a not-so-subtle threat in regard to her parents’ lives will keep her quiet for a long, long time. The little historian in the making, she might’ve been on to something.
But Mav had told me about that shit. None of it explains Sid. It was all bullshit anyway. Wild speculation like the Masons get.
Unlike the Masons, you can’t defect from the 6. The Hellfire Club. The Beggars Benison. You might survive if you leave them.
But the 6 is for life.
And that’s another piece of the puzzle. Why has my father let Jeremiah Rain live, this year he’s been gone? After he fucked us up?
I clench my fists, close my eyes a second. I can hear the guys now, and a girl’s giggle. Soon enough, they’ll find us, and this temporary sanctuary I’ve found with Cain will disappear. Not that this is exactly what I had in mind for a sanctuary, but it’s better than being around all of them. Pretending none of it matters. Pretending I don’t give a shit.
Pretending I’m not wanting to gauge my own eyes out, crawl out of my own skin for what’s to come tomorrow.
Sid’s blood will be all over my hands again. But in the way I want it? I don’t know.
I don’t care.
I don’t.
