Page 4 of No Small Sin

It had been just the two of us for a long time before that. My dad was around in the sense that he held custody and we lived in the house he owned, but he’d always cared more about drugs than anything else despite the fact that they always seemed to find a way totake.

Everything.

Including my mom.

Rue was fifteen. We took care of one another in the only ways we knew how. I don’t think either of us felt any kind of real affection toward the other. We’d never been shown any to learn what it was like.

We’d also never been shown proper gun safety, yet our dad left handguns lying on seemingly every available surface of the house.

I couldn’t count on one hand the number of times Rue pointed a pistol directly at my head, laughing that it was fine; the safety was on.

The memory of exactly what happened that day always seemed to be just beyond my reach. I'd only done what I’d seen him do again and again.

It was fine.

The safety was on.

Except… this time it wasn’t.

And when the hollow-point bullet blew apart the frontal bone of his skull, something deep within me also fractured beyond repair.

I felt nothing and everything all at once.

The blood.There was so much of it.

And it called to me even now.

The day went by in a blur until there was a knock at the door. With Rue’s lifeless body still cold on the floor, I answered.

I’d seen Ijah around before. He was young, nineteen or so. My dad always seemed so on edge when he dropped by for a visit.

It clicked for me at that moment — another living, breathing body on my doorstep — that I needed to do something. I needed help. He’d seen my predicament, the subsequent emptiness behind my eyes, and I think somehow that was enough for him.

Looking back, it probably made his job easier to only have one kid to deal with knowing now the reason for his visit.

He’d needed someone willing to get their hands dirty, a protégé of sorts. I needed an outlet. A way to sate the barely-contained violent craving that had only just manifested outside my mind for the first time.

My dad owed Ijah a debt that he’d never be able to repay, so when he came home later that night, Ijah splattered his brains against the dining room wall.

The fear rolling off of him in undulating waves when he saw Rue’s body at his feet, recognizing that he was next, fed something in me I hadn’t realized existed.

A small taste of what was out there waiting for me.

I watched, unflinching, and with the blood spray still wet on my face, I flicked a match on the kerosene-soaked house and walked away from the life that made me.

I’ve chased the high that came with the taste of that fear every day since.

My day job slakes the need for the most part, but sadistic bastards who know you’re coming for them are nothing compared to those unsuspecting, random acts ofkindness.

Which brings me to the south side of Fate Trace.

ToAlexander.

He lived in a townhouse-style apartment complex, which made things trickier. There were likely added layers of security that most homes didn’t have despite the fact that the place was more or less a dump — typical for south Fate Trace. I would also need to be sure he didn’t have anyone else inside before I moved forward, which was harder to do without the ability to see in all of the windows.

But the risk was part of the fun.

He entered the lower level front door of an end unit as I watched from the street.

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