I gazed upon his face before this night and saw nothing short of a paragon of healing staring back at me. Staring at him now, the differences were so subtle, I should’ve known. I should’ve known. I was so hungry for everything Braedan gave me, I didn’t allow myself to see the truth.
The ability to speak was stolen from me. I was encased in concrete and unable to run like my mind screamed at me to do. It wouldn’t have mattered, he caught me with his deception, and the strong emotional entanglement was etched in stone.
The man of my nightmares smiled at me as though he knew how much he’d splintered me…and might’ve reveled in the knowledge.
“Shiloh?” My voice cracked and shook with sadness and outrage.
He adjusted his hand underneath my chin and rubbed his thumb against the swell of my trembling bottom lip. “Even underneath your anger, I can see in your eyes what you wanted to wait until the morning to say, and Keaton…” His mouth moved over mine, kissing me sweetly and eliciting the sensation he had always had when he touched me. His mouth opened, depleting me of my will. His cold thumbs swept across my cheeks, removing the tears, increasing my tremors. Separating his lips partly from mine, he gazed down at me with his naturally heavy eyelids halfway down his eyes. “…the feeling is intensely shared.”
“Keaton, are you out here?” the sound of my mother’s assistant rushing out into the snow-dressed garden pulled me from staring at the man in front of me. “There you are. Your mother has been looking all over for you.” Pacey paused and blushed when she saw Shiloh.
Releasing me, he put the smoking cigarette down on the pavement and ground it against his heel before shifting his foot and kicking it into the snow.
“She’s been looking for you as well,” Pacey gazed at Shiloh. “She would like to see you two together before you leave, if that’s okay with you.”
“I’m sorry, but I’m going to have to turn in early. Apologize to her for me and tell her I will see her at the dinner tomorrow.” He leaned forward and the scent of his cologne dizzied my senses. “Your mother invited me to dinner at her home tomorrow. I couldn’t decline. I would never pass by an opportunity to be with you. I…can hardly wait to see you again.”
He ran his hand over his hair, pulling it back into a neater style off his face. Very gently, he kissed my cheek sending an excruciatingly painful fever down my spine. He stood up straight, but left very little room between us. “I never gave you the answer to your question about my intentions: You were mine once,” he whispered, thumbing my bottom lip as it remained detached from the top, “and you were stolen from me. I came back to reclaim you.” Turning to the assistant, he began to walk way. “Have a pleasant evening, Pacey.”
Pacey watched his exit and began to fan her neck despite the frigid temperatures. “Are you ready to come inside?”
My body remained frozen, unable to tear my eyes away from the trail leading to the monster who hid underneath a cloak that contained everything I’d ever wanted in a man I could love and shepherded me.
“Keaton?” Pacey stepped forward, her brow lifting in concern.
“I-I have to go,” I told her quickly, picking up my phone.
My thumb hovered over the number for the local authorities, but I was unable to initiate the call. I had no idea what to do when my tormentor became my hero and the man I had grown to love showed absolutely no signs of the man I once knew.
There could’ve been clues, and it could’ve been that I was so enthralled with someone who gave without taking that I ignored them just like I excused the blinding truth held within the features of his face.
I had no one left to protect me, because I couldn’t protect myself from my own stupidity.
“You haven’t scratched at the surface of it all, and because your vision is obstructed, you may never see what’s right in front of you.”
“…there is a lot of truth to Reven’s story and a hint of truth to Noah’s. If you were smart, you’d know which parts of each story to believe. Put them together and you’ll find out the real deal behind all of it.”
-THE SECT
The knock on the door vibrated through my head. The mirror was clouded with two lines of white China, waiting to take me up to a place out of my down. The knocks on the hotel door became more persistent.
“No, I don’t need any fucking towels,” I shouted.
“It is I, your god and master who has come to make his right hand return to the path from which he strayed.” When I didn’t answer, Shiloh dropped the act. “Open the fucking door, Noah.”
I stepped over the coffee table and opened the door to my hotel for Shiloh. “I told you no, and my answer hasn’t changed.”
He pushed past the door, winning me over strength only because I was aching to get high. The rare times I was around him, I could always kick his ass to keep him in line…or away from me. It became a routine: He’d annoy me and I’d fuck him up. Eventually, he grew tired of it and left me alone.
He had our parents, he didn’t need me. To my mother and father, Shiloh was everything. He was a perfect model for good at the school in our community, and he always did whatever he was told.
I was the outcast, and I proudly owned the title. I ran away from them at every chance. I returned when I needed money from what my father thought was his secret stash and let it sustain me while I lived on the streets. Eventually, they tried to send me away to a Catholic military school. It was completely unheard of in the community, and it’s why they chose to do it in secret by telling the community members I was ostracized. It didn’t matter what they did or didn’t do; they could never control me.
“You belong at my side as my right hand,” Shiloh said, walking over to the couch and curling his lip at what he saw on the coffee table.
“Drop the character. It’s me and you here. I don’t want to talk to Reven, and I don’t want to talk to you.”
“It’s intriguing that you hate the guy you created. I’m playing it like you wanted me to. You seem to forget I didn’t want to do this in the first place. I have to admit, I thought it was a psychotic idea and no one would buy your”—he smiled and gestured in the air—“doctrine. I was wrong, because look at us. We were vigilantes, making the world a better place by eliminating the miscreants with karmic retribution.”
“You gave the character a life of his own,” I told him. “And you and I both know who inspired him.”
Shiloh’s eyes began to water and he looked down at the ground. “We were doing well. We—I wasn’t like him.”
I laughed, making his face redden in anger. “We are exactly like him.”
“This isn’t about me. It’s about Nadine. You always had a soft spot for her. While I wouldn’t call it love, you care about her.”
“It’s about all of us,” I replied. “It’s getting to her head, and it was getting to yours. I didn’t like who I saw you two becoming.”
“I am the character you wanted to be, and now it’s not good enough? Why am I not surprised? Nothing is enough for you, and you tend to destroy people who fall short of your expectations.”
He was trying to get to me by passively aggressively mentioning the reason I left. I obliterated someone who claimed to love me. No matter how hard they may have tried, they never satisfied me. What happened when they were broken…was unexpected.
I dug into my bag of tricks for the words I knew would hurt him the most. “You were living, breathing Magnus Oliver as if he rose from the dead, and you know it.” I’d hurt him. I could tell. I hid the fact I was feeling very smug in the moment and shrugged at him. “You wanted out of my life once. You have the keys to the kingdom, do whatever you want with it.”
“Don’t do that,” he snarled, showing a little bit of the strength I didn’t know he had. A strength I watched him build while he played the face of Rebirth.
“Do…what?”
“Pretend like you’re the innocent one between us both. If I was channeling our father, it’s because you wrote the charact
er that way. You being here, sulking, is about something else. I question if it’s jealousy over the attention I received. Your brooding isn’t about altruism. You hated me. You have always hated me. I’m doing everything I can to be a brother to you, even things I’d rather not do, to earn your respect. I’ve pushed aside all the things you’ve done to me to start anew. We are all we have left. Come back to Rebirth and finish what we started.” He threw a file on the table, knocking the lines of coke around.
I stepped over and looked down at the file. I remembered the name. I had her file first. After I perused her file, I discarded some of the things I found because I knew it would pique Shiloh’s interest. I handed it off to him and gave him a firm no answer on her. Her name was given to me by Gregory Mitchum, who specifically wanted her for his final act of atonement.
She was a scared runaway who probably couldn’t have handled one day at Rebirth. Secrecy and discretion were important. She’d try to run away and involve the authorities in what we were doing. She read as weak and ungrateful. She had parents who loved her and would’ve done anything for her. What did she decide to do? Live on the street with some asshole vagrant. I had a very low tolerance for people who couldn’t appreciate what they had.
I blamed Shiloh for my view, and then I couldn’t blame Shiloh. He wasn’t exactly the worst little brother I could’ve asked for. He knew something was going on when the situation with Father Corrica reached a head and told my parents. My parents took me out of the school and threw me into another military academy the last time I decided to return home.
When that didn’t work out, my lifelines were gone and I had to fend for myself. So I entered the Marine Corps. That didn’t last long, either. After my parents died in a plane crash, I dabbled in drugs and was kicked out. I stayed with Shiloh for a short while, but he was behaving like a weak, fragile man over their deaths. He wouldn’t go anywhere, often behaving like he thought if he had gone out, he’d be struck by lightning. He started drinking heavily and being careless. We fought with each other daily, and I wasn’t going to take care of him while he was too busy being less than zero. The street became my home because I didn’t have a choice.
The woman whose file Shiloh brought back to me had a choice. She was given a second chance to live and with all the money her parents had, they could’ve sent her away where Gregory would’ve never found her. She never had to leave her lap of luxury, and I could never understand why she did.
“Why are you pushing her?” I asked, stressing my annoyance. He came to me about her before with his eyes as big as a puppy and his tongue wagging, salivating for her. I thought I preempted it by removing everything from her file that would’ve enticed him, but I guess it wasn’t enough. Shiloh’s happiness wasn’t something I ever wanted. “Why the hell is she so special?”
He sat on the couch and fingered her picture. It was a picture of her at some superficial beauty contest, wearing a silly smile. She was the kind of woman I stayed away from. The kind I kicked out of bed the next morning. The ones that became clingy after you gave them their first orgasm.
“I want her.” He looked up at me, his eyes like a pleading puppy dog.
There was something off about the look in his eyes. It was different than before. It was clear that he wasn’t beneath begging for this woman, and I couldn’t figure out why he had to have her so badly. All I knew was right then, I didn’t want him to have what he wanted. “Why?”
“You wouldn’t understand the reason.”
“You think you can relate to her? You can’t.”
“You don’t know that,” he said, slanting his eyes at me.
“Let me rephrase that: You cannot relate to her as Reven, and you cannot break character while you’re at Rebirth. Any partiality to any of the members will be considered a weakness. In fact, because you’re looking starry-eyed when you talk about her—and I’m sure others will notice—if I help you get her and decide to return, you better be harder on her than you have been on anyone else.”
I could see the frustration take over his face. He wouldn’t stop fingering and staring at her picture. “It’s a good thing you’ve decided to spend time in D.C. I have to make a showing as Reven at a local soup kitchen. I have a feeling she will be there.”
“Feeling…or did you do something to make sure she’d be there?”
Simpering, he shrugged. “Let’s suppose I motivated someone to indirectly lead her there.” He clasped his hands over his lap, staring at me with a stone-face. “I’m serious, Noah. I want her.”
I was mildly impressed he actually took the initiative to trap a member for a change. For a while, I thought I had him securely on a short leash. He wouldn’t do or say anything as Reven unless he was given permission. “And what about Jayme? She’s still your pet, isn’t she? Why do you want someone else when you have her?”
He sat back. “She loves Reven, or think she does. She doesn’t truly know who I am.”
“Is that what your deal is? You’re lonely? You have dozens of people looking at you like you’re a goddamn god because I made it so. The women at Rebirth would fuck you with a snap of your fingers, and you want more?”
“You can’t understand what I’m going through. As a leader, you have to adhere to certain practices to make people follow you. I understand why I had to adapt a character. Being myself, no one would follow me. By being this way, I’m…isolated.” He sat up. “I want her at Rebirth as an elite. After she kills Gregory…or we coerce her into killing Gregory, I’m done. I want to shut down Rebirth. When he’s dead, I’ll show her who I really am and then we can be together.”
And you can’t have her. I’ll make goddamn sure of it, even if I have to rewrite the script of the man you have to be to make her hate you.
Not only that, he will never be the one to shut down Rebirth, I will. And I’ll use his weakness and complete cluelessness when it came time to make sure of it. He didn’t deserve what he wanted. No one deserved it. No one truly appreciated anything they were given anyhow.
I glanced at the lines waiting for me and then back to him. “I’ll go to the soup kitchen with you and play the part again. If I see her, and I change my mind, I’ll come back.”
“He (Shiloh) was never a monster. He was never responsible.”
-THE SECT
I never responded well to physical suffering, the pain seared through my tolerance. My face was tight, weighted. My breaths were strained as though they were regulated by something or someone else. I attempted to open my eyes, but they felt glued shut. Underneath the rushing sound, filling my ears, I heard muffled voices resounding, trapped inside a tunnel.
It cleared as though someone had been tasked with erasing the dense cloud of fog.
“Mr. Michaels? Please, remain calm. The doctor will be here soon to remove your breathing tube.”
Mr. Michaels? Who is Mr. Michaels? I attempted to make sense of the senseless words.
The sights of a hospital room were the first to clear.
I tried to recall how I’d gotten there, but my closest memory was of me dying; my last sights weren’t ones I’d prefer to remember: The look of hatred on the face of the woman I desired. The look of love and adulation from the woman I couldn’t bring myself to truly desire.
My interest in Jayme waned the very instant I happened upon Keaton, and there was no point of return. It failed in preventing Jayme from adapting to what she assumed were my needs. Try as she might to be everything I needed, she fell short for one reason alone—she became the woman Reven demanded she become.
Our needs were remarkably different. I needed Keaton and Jayme needed me. I ceased bedding other women entirely when Keaton stepped foot off the plane, and I hadn’t been able to sleep with anyone else since.
I had a taste of what it was like to be inside of her, to be draped in her warm desire. I couldn’t push it out of my mind. Actions were set in place to ensure we could be together. Careful planning meant very little. I remained a helpless spectator
, unable to control the cataclysmic events that caused everything I had built to ignite and burn into ash.
My ineptitude to the ways of the natural world were my faults. My upbringing insured my naïveté. All of my knowledge was derived from two—what I later discovered to be broken—communities. My vulnerabilities were exploited. I was driven by rage and fear—two things most detrimental to a man’s ability to see reasonably. My clarity was regained at the twelfth hour, but it came much too late.
I felt the ripping and the pressure. My facial movements no longer as restricted as they once were, I could freely move my jaw. My face…it felt off as though I were wearing a mask of someone else’s skin. My throat felt as though I had sucked down an object lined with barbed wire. I could better hear the noises around me and listen to the symphony of the machines, some of which were attached to me.
“Braedan, can you hear me? It’s Dr. Moore.” A plastic piece was pushed to my lips. My mouth was pried open—a cold ice chip melted on my tongue. The doctor hovering over me looked around skeptically. He turned back at me, greeting me with a grimness cloaking his face. “Shiloh?” he asked with a whisper.
“Of course I can hear you,” I groaned and tried to sit up.
Dr. Moore sprung into action and pushed me back down on the bed. “Please, lay down, you’ve been unconscious for quite some time and need time to adjust.”
On the word unconscious, I recollected more of what I thought to have been my last moments. The look on my brother’s face shortly after he had shot me. The vitriolic words full of his delusions were all he left me with before turning his back on me and expecting me to die.
If I’m still alive, he meant to make me bleed out and die at a slow pace—perhaps, burn to death.
Fire. I remembered the fire.
“I’m afraid I don’t have the best news for you,” Archie said, shifting in his position perched on the seat in the corner of the chair. I hadn’t laid eyes upon him since I made the decision, one I now regret, to trust my brother and passively agree with his idea to start a cult.
The Rebirth of Sin (Wicked Trinity Book 2) Page 24
