Page 10 of The Saint

But this man wasn’t just anyone. He was someone I’d seen before.

Someone I’d never forget.

The tattoos inked across his skin snaked up the collar of his shirt and colored his neck with black. Though it wasn’t that he was inked, or the sheer number of tattoos he had, that had the man committed to my memory. It was the gargoyle wound around his throat, as if a demon-turned-to-stone was trying to strangle him.

As a twenty-three-year-old, it was nothing. I’d seen worse things than scary pictures etched on skin. But to an innocent child only six years of age, that image had found its way into many of my nightmares.

This man had been here before, in this very room. He was the man who’d inked stars on my brother’s skin.

“Why don’t you have a seat, little sister?” Arik told me, gently pushing at me until my knees started to buckle. At my other side, Avi took my arm and helped me into a chair that hadn’t been behind me when I’d last looked.

The lack of stars on his left forearm had never seemed of importance. It was Arik who had them. Arik, who’d become D’Angelo’s lieutenant when I was sixteen. Arik, who took care of the family, while my father lived and worked overseas. It seemed only right that he would have them.

And it wasn’t until the man who’d given them to my brother when I was six approached me, a tattoo gun in his hand, that I felt the weight of them myself.

“You should be rewarded.”

It wasn’t a punishment, me being called to this office. It wasn’t a chastisement as it had been so many years ago.

It was a reward.

Queenie chuckled from the desk where she was perched, her voice carefree and light. Exactly what I didn’t feel.

“You’re not afraid of needles, are you?” she asked, tucking a stray curl behind her ear. “We wouldn’t want you passing out at the first prick of your skin.”

A breath I didn’t know I was holding burst from my lungs, the lightheadedness creeping around the edges of my consciousness clearing as I sucked clean air into my lungs. D’Angelo’s head tilted to one side, and I immediately wiped the tentative smile off my face.

“No, ma’am,” I told her before cringing. She hated it when I called her ma’am.

Her lips pursed and she slid off the edge of the desk, coming my way. “Do you have any objections,” she asked as she bent at the waist in front of me, her finger sliding against the skin at the crook of my elbow. Her voice was quiet, and though I knew my brothers couldn’t have heard her, I hated that she felt she needed to ask.

Did I want the stars denoting D’Angelo’s syndicate inked on my skin?

Hadn’t I always?

Even with the nightmares of that gargoyle stringing me up by my throat, I’d wanted stars that matched my brother’s before his were complete. Though Arik was only ten years older than me, he’d done more to raise me than my own father had. I wanted to be like him. I wanted those stars to prove to the world that I was.

I’d just assumed my arm would forever stay bare, the same as my other four brothers.

Queenie’s brow raised, and I tried to tell her the truth. Tried to tell her I had not a single objection. But instead, I asked, “Why me?”

“Because you’re the best,” she responded, so quickly it was as if she knew I’d ask. “You proved yourself to me, to my father, and to this entire organization, and there’s no one I’d rather have at my side.”

I ducked my head, closed my eyes tight, trying to fend off the constriction in my chest. My lungs felt like they would burst, like my chest was so full my body couldn’t contain itself. Queenie gripped my chin with her hand, forcing me to look back up.

“You belong here, Jael David,” she whispered. “Don’t you ever doubt that.”

My chin dipped in a tight nod, and she backed away with a smile so bright it lit up the room. She motioned to the man with the tattoos, then settled herself back on the edge of the desk.

Those pretty hazel eyes watched me the entire time, and I refused to flinch as the needles punctured my skin again and again and again. I’d wanted this for so long, and now, having those three blue stars permanently etched on my arm, I felt one step closer to the life I’d always dreamed I would live.

* * *

The full moon hovered overhead, raining down its silvery glow through the still warm air that sat thick and suffocating around me. It was sometime around midnight, but any tiredness I would have normally felt after a full day was nowhere to be found.

The bandage on my arm tugged lightly at my skin as I crossed my arms over my chest and stared up at the moon.

This was a dream.