Page 65 of Taint My Soul

Darkness floods in so quickly, even though every part of me tries to fight it. And the last thing I see is Mason buckling beside me. Then the shadows take me with them.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

SAINT

Inever thought I’d run into Cyrus again. The last time I saw him was about twenty years ago, after the death of his only child. He was a part of the family although not blood related. Cyrus and my father formed strong bonds while growing up together and working side by side, and he loved our family. But his love for us couldn’t withstand the weight of my father’s atrocities.

It was Cyrus’ son I had kissed.

My first kiss.

My first kill.

My first haunted nightmare.

Seeing him show up after all these years has ripped open the memories of our past. A past I filed away a long time ago. A past that haunted me for months.

I still recall everything that happened. It was just a misplacement of our cargo. I hid it from my father, but he eventually found out. And what had broken him wasn’t that I was protecting another soldier. I was protecting a lover. My father hates that feeling. Love was the one thing that brought him and my mother together. The same feeling tore them to irreparable pieces. It almost drove him insane. Almost made him lose sight of his priorities.

When he saw me, hands firmly wrapped around Cyrus’ son, lips touching in a velvet, consuming kiss.

Something had broken in him.

My father learned that day that I was protecting him from his wrath because he was my lover. The first boy I had kissed. The first man who had touched me.

I had never seen my father so wrathful. So infuriated that he kept me locked up in the Red Vault. For weeks. Day after day. Night after night. Sunrise to sundown. Long enough that it broke my spirit. When he visited, he asked me one simple question. “Who is he to you?”

At first, my answer had been inconsistent with my pleas for mercy. Not just for myself. But for him.

I begged like a madman. I begged like a dying man.

But he never listened to me. He didn’t even look at me. When he saw that he couldn’t break me, he stopped showing up at the Red Vault. He left me all alone in the darkness. Day after day. I was alone. Lost track of time. Until the day he showed up again, asking the same question. “Who is he to you?”

“Nobody. Nothing!” The words fractured out of me, driven by the intolerance of the hours of loneliness. “He means nothing to me. Nothing.” My chest aches through the confession. I tried to touch his shoes, but he removed his gun and slid it over to me.

“Prove to me, son. Prove to me that nothing comes before our family.” He squats to my eye level and lifts his hand to my head, cupping the base of my skull.

I had picked up the gun and killed him. I remember the bullet hole in his head. The pool of blood beneath his statuesque body. But it didn’t end there. He made me write those horrible words. Said it was to build my character. To make me ruthless. To make me strong enough to be his successor.

Because I was a fucking coward.

And I have regretted that single action since that very day. The persistent nightmares were a testament to my frustration. Seeing Cyrus point a gun at me with the men he hired to find me ripped the old wound open.

I have to face the consequences of what I did.

And Cyrus wasn’t the type of man who gave death so easily. My father didn’t name him the Gravedigger for no reason.

I’m not making it out of this place alive. I’m not sure if we both are. And Mason wouldn’t be here if I’d left him at Kingston City. If I wasn’t worried about someone else hurting him. If I didn’t want him close.

Emotions. Emotions. Fucking emotions.

Over the years, I realized emotions make men weak. The less you’re attached to something or someone, the more likely you’ll survive in this world.

I wasn’t raised to be anything other than my father’s ruthless successor.

The next King of the Black Viper Syndicate. Nothing less.

And if Tobias King found out that I was disregarding his teachings. That I was being reckless or entertaining what I felt for Mason. He’s as good as dead. And I’m kissing the steel walls of the Red Vault again. Probably for years.