The Cruelest Chaos (Unsainted Book 3)
Page 1
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
A Letter
Epilogue
Afterword
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Also by K V Rose
Copyright © 2020 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 authorkvrose@outlook.com
Cover design © Arijana Karčić, Cover It! Designs
Interior formatting by K.V. Rose
ISBN: 978-1-9992752-6-6 (paperback)
ISBN: 978-1-9992752-5-9 (ebook)
To my brother.
Ōdī et amō. Quārē id faciam fortasse requīris.
Nesciō, sed fierī sentiō et excrucior.
I hate and I love. Why I do this, perhaps you ask. I know not, but I feel it happening and I am tortured.
Catullus 85
Playlist
Also available on Spotify
Lock It Up - Eminem, Anderson .Paak
HIGHEST IN THE ROOM - Travis Scott
Tapping Out - Issues
Erased - Essenger, Kazukii
Hop Off a Jet - Young Thug, Travis Scott
Don’t You Dare - Zeal & Ardor
Money in the Grave - Drake, Rick Ross
Love the Way You Lie - Eminem, Rihanna
I Think I’m OKAY - Machine Gun Kelly, YUNGBLUD, Travis Barker
Snow White - Highly Suspect
Airplanes - B.o.B, Hayley Williams
Bounce Back - Big Sean
casual sabotage - YUNGBLUD
You should be sad - Halsey
Life is Good - Future, Drake
Devil - Fight The Fade
Power Over Me (MEDUZA Remix) - Dermot Kennedy, MEDUZA
Only You - From Inside
Where Did It Go?/Hyro Mash Up - Asking Alexandria, Hyro The Hero
Exorcist - Mav Ov God
Hate Me - RVNT
down - Nevertel
Slow - SHY Martin
MoodSwings - Kamaara
Flesh - Simon Curtis
Farewell - Eminem
929 - Halsey
11 Minutes - The Animal In Me
Purple Lamborghini - Skrillex, Rick Ross
Come Thru - Zero 9:36, No Love For The Middle Child
Linger/Stripped Back - Stuck Out
Proceed With Caution
This 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.
From childhood's hour I have not been
As others were; I have not seen
As others saw; I could not bring
My passions from a common spring.
Alone, Edgar Allan Poe
Chapter One
I pull through the gates at Liber, one hand on the wheel, other on the burnt orange center console of the 720S.
There are cars already parked around back of the stone mansion, a guard pacing the length of the building, pulling on a cigarette as he does his rounds. I see Lucifer’s black M5 and I’m surprised he hasn’t left yet to come find us. Ezra must be doing his part to keep him here, just like I asked him.
Not for the first time tonight, I wish I was high. But Sid exhales loudly from my passenger seat and I remember why I’m not.
I park the car, turn to face her in the glow of the dash lights. It’s nearly midnight. A new year is almost here. I have a feeling it’s going to be bloodier than this last one.
Sid’s silver eyes lock on mine. “You’ve got some blood,” she says in that low voice of hers, “there.” She touches her cheekbone.
I reach up to grab the skeleton bandana around my neck to wipe it off, but Sid shakes her head, leans across the console. She sticks her thumb in her mouth, then plops it out and swipes her wet thumb over my cheek, right under my eye. I don’t miss the X carved into her palm, now a pale white scar.
I try to feel nothing at her touch. I try not to see that the silver of her eyes is the same color as the circle around my blue ones. I would know; I’ve stared at myself in the mirror more lately than I have in my entire twenty-four years, trying to find the similarities. Trying to convince myself that Sid really is my sister.
But right now, I want to feel nothing. Know nothing. Especially as Sid’s touch lingers, even though I’m pretty damn sure she’s got the blood off of my face. She just stares at me, still touching my skin, her eyes searching mine.
I wish I could know what she’s thinking. I wish she could know that I’m happy we did this together.
I hope she knows Lucifer is going to lose his shit when he finds out. I hope she doesn’t care, because I sure as fuck don’t.
I wonder if she sees the change in herself. Before tonight, she had dark circles under her eyes. Her olive skin was pale, her cheeks hollow. She’s thinner than she was when I first met her, and that’s saying something, because she’s always been on the small side. That hasn’t changed, and she still does have circles under her eyes, but she looks...alive.
She’s made for this life.
I hope she knows that, too. I hope she can read all of it on my face.
She pulls back, dropping her hand. I exhale a breath I didn’t realize I’d been holding. She rubs her hands down her thighs, over her black jeans, blowing out a breath. She stares out the windshield at Liber, towering over us.
“What do we tell him?” she asks in the silence of my car.
I grip the steering wheel for something to do with my hands. I’m feeling restless, which is just another reminder that something is seriously fucking wrong with me. All this chaotic energy, it should be out for the night.
I’ve got blood on my hands—and my face, apparently—after all. But I’m still unsettled.
“You tell him what you want, Angel.” I glance at her out of the corner of my eye, but she’s still staring straight ahead. “And if he gives you any shit about it, put his dick in your mouth and make him shut the fuck up.”
She tips her head back and laughs, and despite myself, I do too.
She hits me with the back of her hand, pretty hard, on the shoulder. If she’d been just a few inches back, it would have really hurt. But I force myself not to think about the state of my back.
Instead, I catch her fingers in my hand.
She stills, her smile faltering as she stares at me, her lips parted. I wonder what she’s feeling right now.
I wish she wasn’t who she was, just for a few minutes. I wish she wasn’t Lucifer’s wife. My sister. A girl still putting herself back together.
For a little while, I just wish she was mine. Because she’s the type of girl who would let me do what I wanted with her, and she’d fucking like it.
Then it occurs to me that Lucifer probably does exactly what he wants with her every damn day, and I drop her hand.
She’s not mine. Not mine.
“Let’s go, Angel.”
But neither of us move.
“Mayhem?” she whispers my name in the dark, even though she doesn’t need to get my attention. She already has it.
I just look at her, waiting for whatever it is she really wants to say.
“Thank you.”
I swallow down the lump in my throat, keeping my gaze on her even though I have the strange urge to look away. “Thank you, too, Angel.”
And then she fumbles with the button to open up the doors of the McLaren, muttering something about excess, and the cold late December air of Alexandria sends chills down my spine.
Or maybe those chills are from the way her small hips move as she walks to the rear entrance of Liber, a guard hurrying over to get the door for her. The way the bitter wind blows her shoulder-length brown hair away from her neck, and I catch a glimpse of her own black bandana. Think of the way she wrapped it around Pammie’s throat, choked her while I used the hammer.
My back aches with that memory. Swinging a hammer nearly a hundred times isn’t good for someone with a good back. And someone with open wounds down their spine? Pretty fucking miserable.
I hang my head, consider going home. But I don’t want to leave Sid, just in case Lucifer becomes...too much. I wish we had talked about him more. Them. I wish I had asked her about her life, instead of just giving her a pep talk for Murder 101.
Too late for that now.
Too late for so much now.
I blow out a breath, wonder why in God’s name I left my weed at home. I guess I should cut myself some slack. Murder requires a little prep, even if I do have the resources for someone else to clean up after me.
I decide to fuck it all and go inside. I could really use a distraction. The anger crawling under my skin makes me want to kill someone…again.
It hasn’t always been this way. For a while, it was dulled. And then with Sacrificium, and Sid, and Lazar and my fucking father…
Some things never really go away. They just live inside of us, like a dormant virus, waiting to fucking strike again when the time is right.
Guess learning your father sold your own sister to a pedophile ring is just the thing to feed life into the virus.
The guard gives me a nod as I head in through the back door and I stand in the empty corridor a second, eyes closed, blowing out a breath. It’s loud, and I didn’t expect anything less. New Year’s Eve is big anywhere, and for the Unsaints, it’s a time to get lost: we don’t celebrate Christmas, and this is the only holiday break we have in between Sacrificium (which went to hell this year) and Noctem (eight weeks away and already too close).
I don’t want to think about Noctem.
I want to get high as fuck and let a girl I don’t know and don’t give a damn about suck my dick.
But first I guess I should make sure I don’t have any more of fucking Pammie’s blood on me.
The third floor is quiet, the music nothing more than a dull thud. I head toward my room at the end of the dark hall, but halfway there, I freeze, my blood running cold as I hear a familiar voice ask, “You think you can make me cheat on my wife, huh?”
My hands clench into fists as I stand outside of the only door that’s slightly ajar on this hallway.
A girl’s laugh. “It’s not cheating if you don’t touch me.”
Oh, but I’m gonna touch you. I’m gonna fuck both of you up. My shoulders are sore from swinging that goddamn hammer, and my back is on fire, but I don’t care. If he dares...
But I give him a chance. Because he wouldn’t.
And then I hear a whimper. And I think I’m going to kill the very man I just killed for.
I slam the door open with my aching shoulder, and hear another familiar voice say, “What the fuck?”
I’m about to lose my mind when I walk into Lucifer’s bedroom and see him sitting on a chair with his shirt off, feet on the floor and cigarette in hand, and Ezra completely naked on the bed with a girl I’ve never seen before in his lap, straddling him.
Ezra’s dark hazel eyes are on me, his hands on this girl’s ass, and Lucifer is grinning at me from ear-to-ear, which is coincidentally how I’m going to slit his throat with the knife in my back pocket.
He exhales a cloud of smoke and I lock eyes with him as he asks, “Where have you been?” as if nothing at all is wrong with this situation.
It smells like cigarette smoke and sex but something about Lucifer’s smile and the girl’s sudden fit of laughter makes me think all three of these assholes are on another drug entirely.
I meet Ezra’s gaze, his fingers hooking under the girl’s lacy underwear. “What in the ever-loving fuck are you doing?”
Ezra raises a brow. “You told me to distract him.”
Wow.
I realize the girl is staring at me. “Hello,” she says teasingly, “wanna play?”
Do I wanna play? Bitch, do I fucking look like I want to play?
“Get out.” I point toward the door, trying to control that simmering rage.
I think about pulling a Lucifer, grabbing the lamp on the end table, the one that’s lighting this room, and ripping off the shade. Putting the base to his fucking throat.
Goddammit I need a joint.
Ezra and the girl ignore me and my outburst. He kisses the girl’s neck. She arches it back, and even I’m momentarily distracted by her exposed throat, her eyes still on mine. She’s got light blonde hair, gathered in a ponytail that grazes her low back. Her slim thighs are spread against Ezra’s waist and I feel my dick harden as I stare at her.
Fuck. Maybe I do wanna play.
I look to Lucifer. “No, you know what? You get the fuck out.”
He just keeps smiling, inhaling from his cigarette, his cheeks going hollow. Then he exhales from his nose and the girl groans. I hear the unmistakable sound of Ezra slapping her ass.
I reach down to adjust myself but don’t look away from Lucifer. “Your wife is downstairs,” I tell him, feigning a calm I don’t feel. “And so is London Hamilton.”
Probably true, but even if it isn’t, Sid is beautiful. It won’t be long before a drunk kid decides to try and fuck her.
Lucifer frowns. Gets his ass up from the fucking chair. “I thought she went home,” he mumbles. I see his fucking dick straining against his black jeans, and I wonder how far this would’ve went if I hadn’t stepped in. Would he have been content to watch? Would he have let this chick suck him off? What the fuck is he on?
“Get the fuck out,” I say again, anger making me feel hot all over. I’m going to destroy this girl. I hope she’s okay with that. If she’s not, I can teach her to like it.
Lucifer gives me a mock salute—I don’t think I’ve ever seen him do that before in my life—and stumbles toward the door, slamming it shut behind him.
I glance at the girl. Ezra hooks his thumbs in her underwear, pulling them down over her ass, past her thighs, exposing her to me.
I can practically smell her.
“You in?” Ezra asks me.
The girl is staring at me with a smile.
My heart is racing, dick throbbing painfully…but I don’t trust myself with any girl right now. Or maybe I just don’t think Ezra will let me do to her the things I want to do.
Fuck.
I don’t bother saying anything. I just walk out, slamming the door shut after me.
I take a scalding hot shower, letting it beat against the torn flesh of my back. The heat and pain are enough to bring tears to my eyes, but no way am I going to let myself cry. Crying is for people who deserve it; that release.
I don’t fucking deserve shit.
I stay in there until the wa
ter starts to cool off, and I’ve nearly dug a hole in the tile of the shower wall with my fingers, trying to stave off the pain. But I manage it. I change into a white t-shirt, ignoring the way it sticks to the open wounds on my back. I pull on a black hoodie, adjust the bandana. It’s probably got flecks of Pammie’s blood on it, but I don’t care. I’ve always got blood on me somewhere.
When I’m fully dressed, I glance in the mirror and run a hand through my blonde hair. It’s cut close to my scalp at the back, longer on top and it makes me look like the sinister fuck that I am so there’s that. Hopefully only a girl that just wants to die will talk to me when I walk back downstairs.
I glance at the side of my hand, examining it for blood.
Malachi.
I rarely see that tattoo. Rarely think that name. But there it is, in a barely legible script trailing from my wrist, over the edge of my hand, halfway down my pinkie.
I close my eyes, try to clear my mind.
Let it go.
Fuck a girl.
I hope my brothers are together tonight, and I don’t mean here. I mean in one spot, physically together. I need to be around people that can make me forget.
For once, God is on my side. It doesn’t take me long to find my brothers, out in the forest adjacent to Liber. I passed men setting up real fireworks at the far back of the parking lot on my way out here, and the forest is a good place to watch the show.
Everyone is here, save for Sid and Lucifer. I briefly think about dragging them out here, think about confronting him in front of her, but what would be the point?