by Amo Jones
I chuckle to myself, shaking my head.
“Shut up, Trickster.”
“Just sayin’,” I joke. “Pretty sure that kid was your youngest. You’re getting savage with old age.”
We shove through the door, and by the time I’m there, the soldiers from the other side, including my old man and King’s, are standing in the lounge room, with motherfucking Kosta sitting on his chair.
There’s a small, blonde girl standing behind him, laughing.
Laughing? The fuck. Harley Quinn psycho looking bitch.
Everything slows as I turn my head to face Saskia, who’s perched on the sofa, unfazed. Her hair is long, dropping to her hipbones and her slender legs crossed.
“Fuck.”
They all poured into the room with guns raised. I knew this was going to happen, I’m pretty sure we all did.
“Well, if it isn’t the notorious crew…” Kosta grins around his cigar, blowing out a cloud of smoke. “Gotta say, you took long enough.” He glances down at his watch.
Lilith breezes past him, taking a seat on the sofa beside me. She leans into my ear. “Did you get to play with all of them?”
My jaw tightens. Contain yourself. “No.”
“A shame,” she whispers, her eyes flying between Killian and Kyrin. She settles on Kyrin. “A real shame.” I want to laugh at her.
“Don’t bother with him. He’s the Devil’s favorite pet.”
“Well, then call me the Devil.”
My eyes roll to the back of my head as I reach for my packet of smokes on the table. Placing one in my mouth. A Zippo lands on my lap with a heavy thud. I focus on the pattern that’s engraved into the metal. A distorted dragon. Knowing it was Killian who threw it at me, but not willing to face him yet, I flick it open and light the tip, leaning back into the couch with an exhale.
Killian, Keaton, and Kyrin walk to the back of the sofa Lilith and I are sitting on, giving them a direct view of Kosta. I can almost feel Killian breathing down the back of my neck. He will know by now. Know why I was put in Midnight Mayhem.
Movement shuffles behind me as lips brush the back of my ear, but he says it loud enough for everyone—including Kosta—to hear. “You deserve a fucking Grammy for your performance.”
My heart squeezes in my chest. I want to say that I didn’t know, but I can’t.
Delila takes a seat on the sofa beside us, closest to Kosta. “You’ve been quite the pain in my ass, Kosta. When will this shit stop?” She crosses her legs, flicking the rings around on her finger.
“Oh, D, still so naïve.”
She raises her finger. “Not so much anymore. I mean, here we are, ready to kill you with enough power to make you and all of your team disappear, and yet here you are, with your saggy nuts and loose morals. Raping girls? You are disgusting. I would say you’re the one who is naïve, not me. Patience has been doomed from the very beginning, Kosta, but now your clients are thinning.”
“Rape, huh?” Kosta grins, looking to me and then above my shoulder. “I’d hardly call it rape if the girls love it.”
My face pales, but my nostrils flare. Before I can say anything, Delila says, “She was thirteen. They were all close to her age.”
She knows?
My fingers twist on my lap. I don’t want to face this music.
“But your daughter, Kosta?” Delila says, unmoving.
I see movement out of the corner of my eye when the Four Fathers enter the room. The atmosphere shifts. Four middle-aged men in expensive designer suits, some tattooed, some not. A couple with longer hair, one with no hair. They stand powerful, strong, without even breathing a word.
I turn to face Lilith, watching as her face remains passive. As if the words don’t trigger any part of her messed up soul.
Delila turns to face me. “So, is anyone going to ask me why I brought in Saskia Dragavei to Midnight Mayhem?” Delila looks around the room, meeting every face that’s in here, before finally resting back on Kosta. “No? No one? Not even you? Did you not think that I damn well knew she was connected to Patience?”
Kosta stiffens.
“I mean.” Delila stands, chuckling. “You have to give me some credit.” She walks directly in front of Kosta, resting her hands on either side of his chair. “I do everything for a reason. But you, Kosta, being the biggest failure of The Fathers ever.”
Poor Lilith. She doesn’t give a fuck about her father’s lack of love. She replaced love with insanity. A long time ago.
“Did you not think that both myself and your nephew would do something about that?” She tilts her head.
My eyebrows pull together.
Kosta doesn’t have a nephew. He only has Lilith.
Delila runs her perfectly manicured finger down the side of his face. “We knew she would fall in love with him.”
Someone steps out from the side, and I watch as Killian flicks a knife around his fingers with a cigarette hanging from his mouth. He looks over at me and winks before walking closer to Delila and Kosta.
Killian grins, taking the smoke out of his lips and blowing it out. “When Delila finally told me who Sass was, I knew that her mind had been touched. I killed her father, I ruined her life, there was no way anyone was that good of an actor, and above that, I could never tap into that pretty little head of hers. Not completely, anyway.” He continues to puff on his smoke as my throat constricts. “Makes sense now. You trained her to be strong, to not give in to the impulses of Coercive Persuasion. Smart, I’ll give you that, but you’re still a sick bastard. Ever so dark about you not being born into The Four Fathers.”
“Never claimed I wasn’t,” Kosta snickers. Kosta is Kallisto’s brother?
Killian’s eyes come to mine. My heartbeat flips around in my chest as my cheeks flush with heat. “I’ll ask you again, Little Dragon.” He licks his lips and I subconsciously draw my tongue out to wet my own. “Do villains have hearts?”
Everything comes back to me at a hundred miles an hour. It was all there in black and white. He dropped breadcrumbs for me, but instead of picking them up, I trampled all over them.
My chest tightens from his burning gaze. “I don’t know…” My gaze clouds, distancing in and out of view. My thoughts freeze.
My eyes connect back with him, and I see it. The flash of uncertainty in his vision. He killed my father. Ruined my life.
“Yes.”
I watch slowly, the corner of his mouth tips up, curving around his teeth. No one knows what that question means. Only us. Him asking if villains have hearts is him asking if I’m still in there. He knows that I didn’t know what was happening. He knows that I didn’t know I was being a rat.
“You have one issue,” Kosta mutters, leaning forward to flick the ash off his cigar. “You can’t kill me.”
Killian finally drags his eyes off me, taking his heat with him. “Oh really? And why’s that?”
Kosta’s wrinkles press around his cheeks, showing his age. My stomach churns in aversion, conflicted with my thoughts. “Because if you kill me, I have someone ready to take every single one of you out.” Kosta’s eyes drop to the center of Killian’s chest, where a bright red dot is aimed. “I knew you would come here, did you really think that I’d come back to Patience to run from you all? Patience is close enough to Kiznitch to not do that anymore. You underestimate me.”
“Enough!” Kaius snaps, stepping forward and into the firing line. “I can and will kill you, Kosta, but for right now, he’s right. We can’t kill him, which is exactly why I told Delila to hang back until I drew orders.”
“And when would that have been?” Delila asks, an eyebrow cocked judgingly. “When it was too late?”
“Wait!” I raise my hands, clearing my throat in annoyance. “Which is it? Am I the villain, or am I the damsel, because I’m confused.”
Killian comes closer to me, until we’re toe-to-toe. Louboutin to combat boots. He raises his hand and brings it to my cheek. “What do you wanna be?”
I
bring my eyes up to his. “Free.”
He freezes, his body vividly turning rigid. I watch as he slowly turns to face Kosta. “I say we kill him and go with our chances.”
“To answer your question,” Delila murmurs, moving to me. “You were part of the plan. I’ve known about you since you were a child. I’ve known where you were all along.”
“Is that right?” Kosta stands from his chair, coming closer. “They’re forgetting one other person that they stole from you, Little Doll.”
My breathing picks up as a tingling sensation forms over my flesh. “What?”
His lips curve around his gold teeth as a grin beams from him. “Hope.”
I freeze. The room changes.
“Hmmm, really?” Killian moves Kosta out of the way. “You really thought you could play that card on her.”
“I don’t need to.” Kosta smiles in triumph. “She’s already mine.”
Chills break out over my flesh as flashbacks fly through my brain. I’m conflicted. My head pounds as the two sides of myself battle with each other. My stomach sinks as my focus flashes between Killian and Kosta.
Someone who did despicable things to me, to us all, but also conditioned us to make us feel important. Wanted. Is that what abusers do? They violate not only your body, but your mind. Hope said it was normal. Everyone said it was normal. Everyone I trusted.
“She was the bug that you planted in Midnight Mayhem…” King whispers to himself, and I turn to face him as he seethes at Delila. “You can’t just overrule the Four Fathers and expect there to be no consequences to your actions.”
Kosta’s eyebrows draw in, his stance becoming restless, as he slowly stumbles back to his chair. “No, this was my plan. I needed you all here so that I could finally take over the business that was mine to begin with. Saskia was my weapon, not yours,” Kosta sneers at Delila.
Delila smirks, lighting a smoke and blowing out the cloud. “Wrong. She was mine, and now I get to kill you for what you did that day to Kyrin, Kosta, and for what you do to all of the children of Kiznitch. I brought her in with the intention of bringing Patience down. This has been planned for years, but I had to wait. Always wait until the right timing. In order to have the Dragavei back in her home, we knew we had to get her in a different way than we usually do. We knew she wouldn’t just leave you, so we decided that we would make you think that you had her.” Delila smiles. “We made you think that it was your plan, but really it was ours, so the seven-point star is complete again. Aside from that, you were the reason why we had to close down Mayhem in Kiznitch. There’re years and years of bad blood between us, and finally, I get to fucking spill some. Patience will be no more after tod—” A gun fires and I flinch, shooting up from my chair.
Silence rings out loudly. In slow motion, my eyes fly to Killian and his to mine. I did a quick search over his body as his eyes dropped down mine. Spinning around, I grab onto Lilith’s hand, pulling her down to take cover on the ground.
I flinch when I see Delila on the ground, blood spilling out of her ear. I quickly spin around to face Lilith, just as shots fire off behind us in fast waves. I start crawling toward Delila when someone grabs me by the ankle and yanks me backward.
Killian is glaring down at me as I lay flat on my back. “If you fuckin’ die, I’ll kill everyone here. Don’t fucking move.”
I pull away from his touch. “You killed my father.”
“I did.” His lips curl.
“You killed Hope!” I yell, right in his face.
His nose presses against mine slightly as his eyes frantically move between mine. “I fuckin’ did.”
“Why?” I choke out. My throat is tight, unwilling to let any other words through. You will not cry. You will not cry.
He brings his hand up to my cheek. “Because they’re fucking bad people.” The shots firing off in the background and smell of spilled metallic blood soon drifts into the background and it’s just Killian and I having an argument in the middle of a damn war.
“You’re a bad person, too,” I whisper, as a small tear slips from the corner of my eye.
“Fuck,” he grunts, catching the tear with his thumb and bringing it to his mouth to lick it off. “Yeah, babe, I am, I’m the fucking worst. But to beat the monsters, one must become one.”
“Killian! Get them out!” Kallisto screams from the background.
I spin around to see Kyrin throwing a feisty Lilith over his shoulder.
“Get up,” Killian murmurs, but I don’t. I have to check on Delila. Spinning around to face her one last time, I see she hasn’t moved, and there’s more blood on her face.
“She’s gone, baby. Get up. We need to get you out of here.”
I pull away from him. “I don’t trust you.”
“I don’t trust you either.” He glares at me.
“So why are you helping me? I’m a lost cause.”
He pauses, searching my eyes. “People are only lost because they don’t have anyone willing to find them.”
“I’m so lost, Kill. I’m—I remember everything, Killian. What he did to me. I’m stuck with him. This is all I really know.”
Killian presses the cushion of his thumb to my lips. “Fuck what he did to you. You were a victim. Just like all the others, which is why we needed to bring them down. You think you’re the only one who has been on the end of his dick? You’re not, and he’s had younger. If he’s not selling them at his shows, then he’s got them under him.”
“I went to a show a few times—” My eyes close as images flash through my head. “There was this one time, when someone asked if I was for sale.”
“Yeah?” Killian asks, his eyebrows raised. “Tell me what you remember about that night…”
“I—” I chew on my lips.
“Dig deep. Tell me what you remember. The red light? What else…” Gunshots pound off in the background as my mind slips back into a memory…
I walked down the long corridor, the cold, damp walls leaking with mildew and the smell. The smell would be something that I would remember forever. Like damp concrete and fermented flesh. Squeezing my hands into fists, I knew what it was that I was supposed to do—play with fire. I was thirteen years old, but I had been practicing for years now, almost having the poi and staff down to perfection, but this would be the first time that I would be performing in Patience. Hope said it’s okay and that it’s normal. I wasn’t for sale, I was a child of Patience and we’re not for sale. We put on a show with the people who are to be sold. Hope said that they’re willing, wanting this life. I chose not to listen to anything and to keep to myself.
I was Kosta’s favorite, and he liked to share me out whenever the right time came.
“Saskia, you’re up!” The doors opened, and I was met with a dark room and a single red light bulb hanging from the center of the ceiling. It allowed me to see the audience, to an extent. The audience is the same, with them all wearing a masquerade mask to hide their identity. Each person is assigned a pager. If they want to bid on one of the girls or boys, they page in and a waiter comes to them to take their bid and order.
Picking up my torch, I light the end and slowly swish liquid around my mouth before blowing harshly against the end. Flames react to the area, lighting up the crowd. A big one. I go through my steps as girls and boys walk across the stage to Marilyn Manson “Kill4U.” I flipped the staff around and go through my routine like a robot, manufactured by Patience. When I’ve finished up, I drop down off the stage as Jessika, one of our waitresses, waltzes over to me.
She nudged her head to the back of her shoulder, leaning into my ear. “Got people asking if you’re for sale…”
My eyes followed hers, to see four men all wearing different masks. The bone curved around their eyes and nose, allowing their jaws and mouths to remain on display.
I rolled my eyes. “Of course you told them I wasn’t, right?”
Jessika snorted, snatching up a glass near the front of the stage. “Of course. Just d
on’t know if they bought it…”
“You…” I murmur, searching his expression. “You were all there? Why?” I had hundreds of questions, and although this wasn’t an ideal place to be asking them, I was desperate to hear the answers.
“You trust me?” he asks, tilting his head.
“No. Do you trust me?” I shoot back, inching up onto my elbows.
“Would you two please not start fucking in the middle of a goddamn war!” Keaton yells out just as the shots die out.
“I don’t,” Killian admits. “But I don’t have to trust you to save you.”
“Save me?” I ask, not sure how those words taste on the tip of my tongue. “I’m messed up in the head, Killian. The girl you knew for the past few months is a little different to the one I am now, now that I have my memories back.”
Killian licks his lip. “What you went through, Saskia, it was fucked up. I know that. Just because you were abused, fucking raped and taken advantage of, doesn’t mean shit up against what you mean to Mayhem. Like it or not, we’re your family, and that’s not just because you’re a Dragavei.”
“Why else?” I ask, wanting to know his answer, but subconsciously knowing that again, right now is probably not an ideal time.
“I’m not doing that with you right now.” He pulls me up to my feet, just as my eyes land on Kosta.
“I don’t want to do this,” I whispered as Kosta and the two men he keeps close to him turn on the lights. “It’s going to hurt.”
Kosta smirked, unzipping his pants and walking into the middle of the room. There were cushions set up, scattered everywhere.
“Lay down, Little Doll. I promise it’s not as bad as you think.”
The two other men who were behind him, stalked toward me, too. One was holding a metal object that had two clamps on either side.
“Why?” I asked, because I always asked questions.
“Because this is when your training can start.” He kneeled down to my level, stroking himself through his pants. “This is where your life starts.”