: Chapter 58

Briony places her hands on top of her head, the gun pointing to the ceiling. She curses in disbelief. She’s breaking, and I can’t fucking stand it. I need her strong. Need her to put that blind faith in me and me alone.

“Why don’t we all calm down and have this discussion elsewhere? The church, perhaps?” Bishop Caldwell suggests, nodding nervously.

“No,” Briony demands firmly. “No, we’re going to have it right here. Right now.”

She turns to face me. I see heartbreak beneath the tough facade, and it was exactly why I didn’t tell her. Not until the moment was right. This moment. When she could face him herself.

“Both of our fathers are in this room right now,” I say calmly. “But you already know that.”

Her gaze is intense as her mind works.

“He killed your mother!” Saint cries out. “He killed your real mother, Briony. My father told me. Beat her to a pulp in an alley. It’s why he was in prison. You can’t trust anything he says!”

Alastor shifts on his feet beside me as I sit in silence. This is the moment. All the past few weeks, the biblical messages, the exposure of truths, the training, the pieces of this puzzle formulating into one image before her. Look at his face, baby. See it in his eyes. She knows my story, my disturbing truths, and now she has everything she needs to make her own decision about the men before her.

“I’ve always tried to protect you,” Saint continues.

She raises her hand to stop him. The silence holding this room together has an energetic fog all its own as everyone waits for her to talk.

“How many students were in our catechism class?”

Callum and Alastor share a look before both focusing back on Saint.

“W-what? Why are you asking about that right—“

“How many students?” she asks again with her eyes closed.

“Twenty-three,” he answers quickly, breathing hard.

Her eyes open and fall upon him, a sinister grin growing across her blood-splattered face.

“Precisely.”

His face contorts, and he peers nervously at his father and then back at her.

“See, you fucked up, Saint,” she says in the sweetest tone. Her innocence shines through in her sweet smile as she casually leans back against the table facing the room. “I’m not nearly as stupid as all of you assume. You see, I’ve used it for my benefit, of course, the naivety, but I’ve figured you out.”

She shifts her focus back to him.

“You called me early that morning, ensuring we went to the school together, arriving at the same time. Do you remember?” She tilts her head to the side. “You knew exactly how many students we had. You knew there weren’t enough catechisms. You knew I’d need to get more. You also knew Jacob Erdman was in that closet, waiting for me.” She chuckles lightly. “Convenient, don’t you think?”

“Not true,” Saint retorts before reeling in pain as his hands move beneath the items pinning him. “Whatever he did was on his own!”

“In fact, the more I thought about it, the more I remembered.” She leans closer to Saint while her eyes stay focused on mine. “Some of Jacob’s last words were that he couldn’t believe a girl as calculated as me got it all wrong, and that he, meaning you, said I’m not supposed to mess up your face, but I will if you give me a reason to.”

Saint sways on his feet, a look of pure, cold-hearted hatred emitting from his eyes. She got him.

“Aero killed him! Murdered him!”

“Before he could kill me,” she counters. “You just couldn’t get it done. Not with your buddy Jacob, not by yourself in your attempts to incriminate me in my bedroom. Poor Saint couldn’t prove to daddy he was more than just a piece in his chess game.“ She clicks her tongue. “A true tragedy.”

Briony pushes off the table, slowly prowling in her sexy little outfit towards where I’m seated. Alastor presses his gun into my temple again at her proximity.

“Another step and it’s over for him,” he warns, distress in his shaky tone.

Her eyes light up with amusement and she tips her head.

He fears her. She’s feeding off it. My sexy, disturbed little doll.

“I know who you are.” She shakes her head with repugnance, looking at him from head to toe. “Margaret Moore was my real mother. You tried to erase her from existence because she got pregnant and chose to have me.”

There’s only one way she’d know of that name. The missing documents from his safe. The documents she’d discovered at my place after I’d forced her to steal them. The names. I admitted to her in our little knife game in the woods that Veronica Fields was my mother. She pieced the rest together herself. I guarantee Alastor’s expression is revealing every trace of his fears coming to life.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Alastor denies. “I have no idea who that is.”

She stares at him for a moment, the silence clearly eating away at him.

“That’s funny you say that. Am I not the eternal stain of condemnation of your past?”

I hear him swallow above me.

“Cut the cords that hold us back,” Briony continues. “Did Alastor a real favor with that one. That woman was ready to risk everything to bring him down for their baby.”

“Fuck,” Callum curses from across the room, hitting himself with the end of his pistol.

She’s quoting him. She must’ve heard this conversation of Callum’s about the set-up to have me framed for murder, and now she’s doing exactly as I’ve taught her, staring down the man before her, studying his face as he lies.

“It’s over for you, darling,” Alastor interjects. “Your fun ends here. For you and your sick little lover.”

“The truth is undeniable,” Briony continues. “And now, thanks to Saint, the very institution you’ve worked tirelessly to control is crumbling around you. You’re not needed anymore. No money. No power. No votes.”

“Truths are what we men in this room make them. You can only get so far in our world before we cut you out.” Alastor laughs, hitting the side of my head with the gun again. “Impure blood limits your future, no matter how hard you fight it. Ain’t that right, Aero.”

“Touch him again,” Briony says calmly, raising the gun in an outstretched arm aimed at Alastor’s head.

The men exchange nervous glances around us.

“C’mon, touch him again,” she urges. “Give me a reason to take off the top of your skull.”

Briony’s grin is as wicked as they come. She’s playing a dangerous game with him. I bite down on my bottom lip, the smirk spreading across my face at the familiar words I’d used protecting her in this very club.

There’s a certain confidence she holds in our fate. One I’ll blindly trust her with.

We’re crazy, psychotic, and filled with a disturbing desire for the fear these men built and are now being subjected to. This is our game now. They’re in our court, receiving their atonement.

From the corner of my eye, Alastor looks down at me before facing her again, his hand shaking as the gun pushes my hair around. He presses the barrel against my head and pulls the trigger, and I hear the silent click against my skull.

Briony’s smile drops. “You actually did it.” Her gaze falls to mine, and my haunting laugh cuts through the silence. “You fucking touched him again.”

“You emptied it?!” His terror-filled tone brings out Nox’s devilish laugh from the corner.

“You know we check all weapons at the door,” Nox comments with a toothy grin, smiling proudly at us. “Men like you, clean guys who have others do their dirty work, don’t even realize when the weight of their guns change.” He laughs hysterically, gazing admirably at Briony and me. “Fuck, I love these two.”

My man, Nox. He really came through for me. Yes, he thought I was crazy when I’d suggested the entire plan, knowing they’d need a place to take me that was off limits once they finally caught me. It was a setup they never saw coming.

Callum appears light-headed as his hand meets his forehead, and his eyes dart around the room with pure panic at the realization. He checks his gun, noticing it’s empty as well, and Nox winks, holding his weapon to his head.

Alastor throws his gun at Briony, sending me into another fit of rage as I attempt to free myself, but she dodges it with a quick dip of her head and a hauntingly beautiful smile.

“You worthless waste of a good fu—“

The explosive sound of the gunshot interrupts his sentence. Briony pulls the trigger, effectively blowing off the top of his skull as promised. Alastor’s body hits the pole beside me before dropping hard to the concrete behind me. But my eyes remained focused on the delectable magnificence before me. Ethereal and decisive in her actions. My intellectual, yet ruthless King. God is most certainly a woman scorned.

Nox’s mouth drops open, a beguiled gaze taking over his face. He’s enjoying every bit of this show she’s directing, just as I am. Baret’s numbed stare peers on from afar as Bishop Caldwell’s eyes swell to horrified saucers.

“He talked too much,” she shrugs. “And yet, had nothing worth saying.”

After grabbing the handcuff keys from his limp and bleeding corpse, she uncuffs my wrists. Helping me to stand, I stumble into her, and she catches me, attempting to hold my weak body upright. Her hands mold to my shattered and torn face, and her loving gaze finds mine.

“Learn to do good; seek justice, correct oppression; bring justice to the fatherless, and please the widow’s cause,” she quotes eloquently from the Bible.

My heart hammers in my chest for this woman. Whenever she’s in my presence, I feel it like a gravitational pull, siphoning two lost souls together with formidable strength. I see my past, my present, and the future I’d never known in those blue eyes. The same eyes I’d promised my life to all those years ago in that alleyway. I see the faces of traumatic horrors erased by her captivating beauty. Her selfless love, eradicating the hatred from my bones entirely, cleaning me of the past that haunts me.

She fills me with what they could never take away.

Faith. Hope.

Love.

Everything. All at once.

“You allowed me my voice, Aero,” her soft, angelic tone cuts through my thoughts.

I nod in her hands, embracing that gentle touch I once denied myself.

Her eyes cut hard through mine, and the strength within her being empowers me with a feeling of worth like nothing ever has.

Her gaze drops to Alastor’s corpse behind me, then to Callum and Nox, and finally to a quivering Bishop Caldwell on the floor beneath Baret, behind us.

I gave her the revenge she didn’t know she needed, and in this moment, she’s giving me mine.

She faces me, her vision gazing down at my lips before that dark, devious look rises to find mine again. She pulls a knife from beneath her shirt between us, tucked into the confines of her bra.

It’s the knife I’d gifted her. She’s kept it all this time. For me. An exchange of power from the one I’m on my knees, offering my life to.

Her lip pulls at the corner into a vicious little smirk, and my eyes light up with cruel fascination.

“Now take away theirs.”