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“I have to… feed first. I can’t face them without eating.” The red haze has been riding me for years. I’ve been holding onto it, allowing it to build up. I need to exorcise it.
“Be safe,” she says softly. “And be careful. Pope isn’t going to let you go easily. He’s going to make you public enemy number one.”
I look back at her over my shoulder. “Pope isn’t my concern nor is he my enemy.”
I’ve always known of Fox’s plans to use me as his very own puppet. I knew it the moment he first laid eyes on me. But Fox isn’t my problem, he’s Priest’s issue. My job is to finish what Gambler started. It’s time I take down the Church.
“If Pope isn’t the enemy, then who is?”
“My enemy is higher up.” I continue walking.
That is all she needs to know. I’m thankful to Albany for all her help, but she can’t help me with this. Her concern now, should be Priest and Charlie.
“Who’s higher than the Pope?” She calls out behind me.
I stop, as I remember Gambler’s words to me that night five years ago. “When they broke away from the Catholic Church, they didn’t go independent, Beast. They aligned with something much worse.”
“God,” I say. Although, I still had no idea who God was.
Before I turned myself in the morning after I killed Gambler, I went back to his house and collected the information he had. The only thing I was able to take back to the dungeon with me were the three flash drives.
I had Lucien smuggle me in a laptop and cellphone my first week in confinement. All the guards were too scared to come into my space, so no one ever found the contraband. The rest of the info is hidden in boxes at my apartment.
I’ve studied those flash drives for five years, taking in all the information I could. Now, it’s time to clean house.
I leave Albany standing in the road. Her job for me is done.
***
Making it back to the brick apartment building I took Summer to that night, I use my code to enter the building. I smile at the reminder of her.
Stepping inside, I walk into the foyer. I don’t have to worry about neighbors or anyone disturbing me, the entire building is mine.
I take the stairs to my main apartment, not the one I took Summer to. I open the door and walk inside. The place has been cleaned and kept up by the cleaning crew I hired.
As soon as I walk in, I enter the living room. A dark gray sectional faces the wall that separates the living from the one bedroom. There is no other furniture other than a coffee table and a lamp. There are no pictures on the walls or decorations around the room. I only have the basics to survive. To my left is the dining room and kitchen, all open to the living room.
I place my duffle bags down and head into my bedroom. I make quick work of showering and getting dressed.
Not long after entering my main living quarters, I make my way out of the unit and down the hall to my tech-based unit. Other than the main living space, this is my second most used space in the building.
Opening the doors to the remodeled apartment, I’m greeted with a set up similar to my brother Lucien’s. In the center of the room is a round table. On top of the table are all the files I took from Gambler. They are still in the boxes he left them in. The rest of the room is one giant computer desk. Nine monitors surround the desk. Four on each side and one large screen in the middle.
Pulling out the chair in front of the desk I take a seat and sign onto my computer. I take the information from the smaller screens and move them to the big monitor.
Gambler spent years tracking down all the menus in Church files that didn’t add up. Either the person on the menu didn’t fit the crime, or the crime didn’t deserve a menu. He had thousands of files like this. However, nothing leads me to a singular person.
It seems that the cases were going through all the right channels to get approved. Bishops are getting the names of the targets; they get them signed off with the Cardinals. Afterwards they place them on a menu and hand them over to a Deacon. All standard practice.
I figured the best way to figure out how these cases are getting into the Church, is to start at the beginning, where the crimes begin.
A picture of a driver’s license pops up on my screen. Detective Dennis Chambers. Eight years ago, he found himself on a Church menu. His files said he was a crooked cop that was despised by his fellow policemen. He was charged with everything from abuse of power, to planting evidence, to battery, to wrongful deaths. At first glance it looked as if he deserved everything he got.
However, after reading up on him and the article written after his death, nothing was adding up. Not only did other cops praise him, quite a few civilians spoke on how kind and caring he was.
I decided to look into his last case. It involved the sexual assault of a sixteen-year-old black girl named Tiffany Williams.
A new license pops up on the screen. Jason Averil. The man suspected of raping and nearly killing Tiffany. Not only was Dennis killed before the investigation was complete, Tiffany recanted her story on the stand. While sobbing, she stated that she’d made it all up. She took a lot of heat for that and only six months later, she took her life.
