by K. V. Rose
Copyright © 2019 by K V Rose
All rights reserved.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
For more information, please contact [email protected]
Cover design © Arijana Karčić, Cover It! Designs
Interior formatting by K.V. Rose
ISBN: 978-1-9991947-7-2 (paperback)
ISBN: 978-1-9991947-6-5 (ebook)
For everyone with a monstrous secret
Playlist
16 - Highly Suspect
Psycho - Brooke
Ghost - Badflower
what you need - Bring Me the Horizon
Hear Me Now - Bad Wolves ft. DIAMANTE
Through Ash - Moon Tooth
Upperdrugs - Highly Suspect
The Old Me - Memphis May Fire
Every Time You Leave - I Prevail
Starlight - Repair to Ruin
Your Mother Was Cheaper - Two Feet
My Name is Human - Highly Suspect
Proceed With Caution
This book contains adult content, including language, violence, and sexual scenes. Only suitable for those 18+. It is a dark romance.
There will be content that is upsetting to some readers. It doesn’t get lighter. I recommend staying away from this book if you’re apprehensive reading this.
It is not your typical romance.
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Epilogue
Afterword
Pray for Scars Sneak Peek
Pray for Scars
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Also by K V Rose
Chapter One
Present
I don’t think this is fun anymore.
Jeremiah spins me round and around and I’m going to be sick, but I can’t tell him to stop. He doesn’t listen. He never has.
The night blurs around me, my stomach churns. The crisp fall air doesn’t help. It hurts. Because it reminds me of Lucifer. Of the Unsaints. It reminds me of hell, of his demons in the woods.
It reminds me of living.
Nearly one year ago, I planned to die. Halloween night I was ready to do it. Then Lucifer showed up, kept me alive long enough to ruin me, and then he left.
It was Jeremiah that had found me.
I start to heave.
Jeremiah’s deep laugh rumbles in the night but finally, mercifully, he stops. Slowly, the miniature merry-go-round comes to a halt, too. I close my eyes, swallowing past the bile in my throat. My pulse starts to slow a little. But I know better.
Jeremiah isn’t merciful.
Strong hands haul me off the pink pony and throw me to the ground. I land in the wood chips of Raven Park and scramble to my feet. I’m unsteady, dizzy. Nauseous. But Jeremiah won’t stop until I fight back.
He’s grinning at me as I try to hold my gaze on him. I want to puke.
“That’s all you got?” he taunts me, hands in his pockets. He’s tall, broad shouldered. I swear to God, even in the night, his pale green eyes glow.
We’re only three years apart. He’s 23 to my 20. But in moments like these, I feel we’re lifetimes away from each other. I don’t want this. I never would’ve asked for it.
“Fuck you,” I spit at him, the world slowing around me. I can see clearly again. I’m not going to fall. Not yet. It’s two weeks until Halloween and I know Jeremiah is going to make every single one of these two weeks hell until the grand finale. It’s his way of punishing me. For what he saw.
He whistles, then runs a hand over his short brown hair. His jaw is lean, his body muscular. I know he boxes. I know he trains. I do too, but I still know he could take me anytime, any day, whether he’d just spun me around in circles or not. I know it and I hate it.
“That’s all you got, Sid? ‘Fuck you’?” he mimics my voice. He shakes his head. As if he’s disappointed.
I steel myself. Straighten my spine. I know what’s coming next.
But he waits. He waits a second longer than I think he will, and in that second, I start to relax. I start to lower my hands, clenched into fists in front of me. I start to breathe again. Maybe tonight he will be merciful.
Maybe he’ll give in. Maybe we’ll go home. And just when I think that, because I’m nothing if not optimistic about my brother, he tackles me.
My head hits the ground with a thud, and I gag, my stomach convulsing. He wraps his arms around my head, almost as if he’s cradling me. I feel every inch of his body pressing into mine. The world spins again.
I don’t move. Now it’s too late to fight back. Now it’s better to give in.
“Shh, baby,” he says. “I’ve got you.” He holds me tighter. My stomach heaves underneath him again. “It’s okay, baby.”
But it’s not okay. It’ll probably never be okay.
Then he whispers in my ear, “Why do you make me do this to you, Sis? Why do you want to hurt?”
Chapter Two
Halloween, One Year Ago
It’s going to be tonight.
Halloween has always been my favorite holiday. I like wearing masks. I like being in disguise. Baring my body for a living for the past year, since I left my latest foster family after a disappointing string of them, it felt good putting on something different. Something strange.
It seems fitting, for what I plan to do.
I don’t bother locking the door to my shithole apartment when I leave. I won’t miss this place.
Instead, I stand at the railing of the stairwell, looking out at the darkening sky over Alexandria. The lingering scent of cigarette smoke and the promise of a wild night is on the air. Alexandria is a college town. I know all about the wild parties, the crowded bars, the rich pricks that are abundant in this place.
But I know nothing about the college.
I dropped out of high school.
Being an escort has paid the bills, and a college degree was never really in the cards for someone like me.
I run my hand over the gun strapped on my thigh over my fishnet stockings before I take the steps down two at a time.
People will think it’s fake. No one really wants to look behind the mask tonight, anyway.
Mine is only heavy white makeup, white textured horns attached to the headband over my brown, chin-length hair. It’s disguise enough.
When morning comes, it might be hard
to recognize me anyhow.
I take a breath, steady my nerves as I walk along the sidewalk leading out of the apartment complex. I taste the rum on my tongue from the two shots I downed before I left; I didn’t think I’d be scared of this.
I’ve been afraid of a lot in my life. From foster families, strangers, my mother when I was a child. My brother when I was a child. A brother I haven’t seen since we got pulled from Mom’s after she caught the house on fire when she fell asleep with the stove on. Fell into a drug-induced coma is more like it. I was five when Jamie and I split up. He was eight.
Fourteen years have passed since then, and I think of Jamie every day. I don’t miss him, exactly. He’d been a terror in my life, from what I could recall of my earliest memories. Pinching me, kicking me, dragging me into his room during the night, locking the door. I thought, looking back, he might have done some of it to protect me. But he was as loving as my mother had been. Which is to say, not at all.
I shiver against a gust of wind and glance up at the full moon as I make my way down the sidewalk on the main road. Alexandria—halfway between the beach and the mountains in North Carolina—is a big city, but my little pocket of it is like a small town in itself. There isn’t much traffic, although I smell a bonfire on the breeze, hear someone howling like a wolf somewhere down the street.
I wait at an intersection past my apartment, watching two cars roll off almost lazily down the road. I could cross now. No one is coming.
But I like the waiting.
It’s the last bit of it I’ll do in my life.
Someone’s shoulder brushes against me, startling me out of my revelry. The light hasn’t changed.
I jerk my head around, frowning.
And some asshole blows smoke right in my face. Real smoke, not from a vape.
I cough, covering my mouth with my hand.
“What the fuck?” I hiss. I’m patient. I’m going to be dead soon. But for the love of all that is holy, that was completely fucking unnecessary.
When the smoke clears, I see him.
Deep blue eyes, a cigarette in one hand, a smile on his full lips.
His face is painted like a skeleton, long lashes raking against the black and white makeup below his dark brows. He has curly black hair, and a strand of it falls over one eye when the wind blows.
“Sorry,” he drawls, not sounding sorry at all. “But I think you’re supposed to come with me tonight.” His eyes snake down my frame.
I don’t blush. I’ve been checked out thousands of times for my job alone. It comes with the territory. But I steel my spin, shake my head.
“You just blew smoke in my face,” I point out. I take him in: Tall, lean, wearing black joggers that hug his thighs, a black hoodie rolled up at the forearms, corded muscle visible beneath.
He’s probably a few years older than me, maybe mid-twenties. But with the skeleton paint, it’s kind of hard to tell.
“Isn’t that something Lucifer might do?” he asks, tilting his head. Then he nods in front of us. The light has changed, the stick figure man is flashing.
I start walking.
He takes my hand in his when we’re in the middle of the street.
I try to jerk mine away, but he holds firm.
“Don’t fight me,” he says, voice husky as we reach the other side of the street. He brings the cigarette to his lips and inhales, then exhales as I stare at him, equal parts awe and anger. “I’ll win.”
I try to pull my hand away again, my eyes darting around us. There’s no one out here. This little section of Alexandria is dead. But I have a gun on my thigh. I don’t need anyone to rescue me.
“Who the fuck are you?” I ask.
He winks, one midnight blue eye twinkling for a second. “Lucifer,” he answers coolly. “And you’re my Lilith.”
I’m in shock he knows who I’m supposed to be.
His hand engulfs mine, his fingers calloused. I don’t pull away again as I stare at him.
“You’re in skeleton paint,” I point out. “Where are your horns?” I glance at his all-black outfit. That could pass, I guess.
“Lucifer doesn’t have horns,” he says, eyes finding my own horns. “That’s for his lover to do.”
I frown. “Do?” I repeat.
“Yeah,” he says with a throaty laugh, taking another drag on his cigarette. I take in his sharp cheekbones, the vein visible on his neck beneath his hoodie. He exhales, his beautiful face momentarily obscured by a cloud of smoke. “To stab anyone who gets too close to me.”
I sigh and shake my head, but don’t bother pulling away again. What’s a little more fun before I die? “I’m going to Raven Park,” I state. “Either you can follow me there, or you can let go of me. My plans can’t change.”
It isn’t my imagination that see his eyes flick to the gun. He furrows his brow, white and black paint smudging a little.
Finally, he nods. “Raven Park it is,” he says with a smile. “But I’m warning you…” Another drag on his cigarette. Another cloud of smoke. “You might die there.”
I laugh.
If he only knew.
Chapter Three
Present
I never have a problem with the blood. We’re made of the stuff, after all. When Jeremiah first started torturing me, he thought I might faint over the sight of it. He thought, scared girl that I was, it would be the blood that made me run.
Of course, it’s not like I can run very far. Jeremiah isn’t letting me get away again.
But it isn’t the blood.
It’s his eyes on mine.
He watches me, and I can feel him waiting for me. Waiting for me to cry. To hurl accusations his way. To run away. Or try to.
But I stare at the corpse at our feet, and I don’t move an inch. I’m still not sure, even close to a year after he started bringing me to these viewings, what it is I’m supposed to do here. I’ve tried everything.
The first time, a man’s severed head in a warehouse, I had puked. I had fallen to my knees and vomited, and he had had to drag me away with the help of his men, back to the Rain mansion. He’d tormented me once we got back there, too. Hurling insults, screaming in my face, shaking me by the arms.
The next time, it was just a gunshot wound to the dead man’s chest. I had just stood there, waiting for it to be over. I stood there for fifteen minutes. Then I couldn’t take it anymore. I’d screamed at him. He’d let me.
Then he’d taken me back to the mansion. More screaming. More grabbing.
Every time, I’ve gotten it wrong. I know this time will be no different. It’s strange. I can still feel him pressed against me, like he was an hour ago at the merry-go-round at Raven Park, even though he’s standing by my side. I feel the weight of him. I always feel the weight of him. Right now, he’s got one hand propped under one elbow, and it takes everything in me to keep looking at the ruined body.
We’re in the man’s house this time. A man who wronged Jeremiah in some way. But there are a thousand ways to wrong Jeremiah, each one stranger and more arbitrary than the last. There are a thousand ways to insult the Order of Rain, too. It’s funny, how I share his last name. But aside from keeping me on a tight leash, I don’t get any of the privileges that come with it.
Blood is oozing on the plush carpet, and the man is completely naked. There are more stab wounds than I could possibly count on his body. I should be appalled. I guess I kind of am, but what is there to do about it? The man is already dead. He was dead the minute he wronged my brother. A dozen times I thought he would be arrested. A dozen times he proved he was above the law.
With the amount of money he has, I’m not that surprised.
I can smell the blood, iron and bordering on rot. I don’t know how long ago Jeremiah did this; he never takes me for the kills. I don’t even know if he does them all himself. His right-hand man, Nicolas, is usually by his side. He’s in the shadows now, along with Kristof, his guard. I can’t see them, but I’m aware of their eyes on me.
Finally, I tear my eyes away and look at my brother.
“Jeremiah,” I plead, “I see it.” I don’t know what that’s supposed to mean. It’s not like I haven’t tried this before. It always ends the same way. Every fucking time.
His dark brows go up. He’s kept the lights on in this man’s living room, to better show the damage. I know that with the state of this body, he’s done this. There’s no one more fucked up than he is working for the Order of Rain. This is his work, and he wants me to know it.
“But do you feel it?” he asks me.
The hairs on the back of my neck stand on end. I slip my hands into my hoodie pockets, shift a little in my combat boots. I shake my head, confused. My heart is hammering in my chest.
“Do you feel it, Sid, that’s what I’m asking you?” Jeremiah smooths his hands down his grey collared shirt, cocking his head, staring at me. Waiting for an answer. Whatever the answer is, it’ll be the wrong one.
I’m so tired of this shit.
“What the fuck are you talking about?” I ask him. I’m used to striding these lines. Playing the meek sister. The weak sister. And then Lilith comes out to play, like she did that night one year ago.
He grins at me, white teeth flashing. I know that’s not a good sign. Nothing good comes from my brother’s smile.
“Touch him,” he urges me, slipping his hands in his pockets, nodding toward the corpse.
I shake my head without looking back at the guy. “No.”
