Page 77 of The Devil

Senna resumes his seat, the leather of the enormous armchair creaking as he does. He doesn’t waste any time. Instead, from a box set slightly to the side, he lifts out the thing that got us here in the first place.

My grandfather’s watch.

I look at his hand, at the scar on the inside of his wrist. A small thing. Something I’m not sure is real because I see it for only a second before he turns his hand over and I’m looking at that watch again.

I imagine Amal somewhere in this castle now. Is she afraid? She must be. They won’t hurt her, I tell myself. Senna is here to deal with us, not her. She has nothing to do with The Society. We do.

We did, at least.

When Sev went to him it was because he knew he had leverage. He had something The Society wanted. Needed. Silence. He could expose our grandfather’s abuse. Expose The Society itself. And when I killed my grandfather, when I finally took the ceremonial dagger he used to keep me in line and drove it deep into his neck, I solved a problem for The Society. I didn’t know it then, not in the moment. No, in that moment, I wasn’t thinking. There was too much pain.

Too much shame.

And just like that, seeing that watch in his old man’s hands, I’m back there again. In that basement room. Naked and freezing and scared. So fucking scared.

Our grandfather was a member of The Society. He had deep pockets and powerful allies. Wherever there’s too much money and no soul, there’s no shortage of perversion. Of perverse men. Or women.

It started on my eleventh birthday. I still remember the first time. The party my grandfather arranged for me to attend, a secret between us. Everything was always a secret. It had to be.

The party where the guests were masked so no one saw the other. They only saw me. I wasn’t only unmasked, but I was delivered to them naked and terrified. The only thing I wore were the marks my grandfather put on me when I would not cooperate, when I would displease. When I would hurt those bastards worse than they hurt me.

That’s where my rage comes from. It’s how the evil in me was born. I am a Devil because I dealt with devils. Because devils killed any innocence in me and in its place left a burning unquenchable rage, a fury that burns hot and ever more violent. Never sated.

I realize in that moment that is what Amal is. My mercy. My absolution.

A cleansing of all that shame.

When Severin found me, I was covered in the blood of the masked man who lay shredded in the bed I hated. Drenching it. Blood seeping into every fiber of it.

I knelt on the floor, the expensive Persian rug ruined, my grandfather spluttering his last breaths, the ancient ceremonial dagger buried deep in his neck. I always wondered if the fiery tip of it burned him before the sharp edge sliced into his old parchment-thin skin, causing a different kind of burn. I remember that thought being the only one in my mind when my brother entered the room.

I killed my grandfather.

I think if Severin had walked into the room even a minute later than he did he’d have found three bodies, not two. My plan was to kill them then kill myself. I needed to finish it. To end the endless pain of which the physical was nothing in comparison to what it did in my head. To the damage to my soul.

But Sev walked in and he took one look at them, at me, and just as I would have pushed my grandfather’s corpse from me and plunged the dagger into my own chest, he saved me.

Severin saved my life.

And then, when I was calm and all sharp objects had been removed from my vicinity, he took care of the problem. Made the bodies disappear. All that blood cleaned up and the room sealed forevermore.

That’s where The Society came in.

But nothing is ever done without a cost. A consequence.

Now we sit here side-by-side before the Councilor again and I see that watch my grandfather wore and I swear I hear the over-loud ticking timing my punishments. Although it’s not possible. It’s broken. I smashed it the day I killed him. I made sure it would never make that sound again.

“Gentlemen, we had an agreement.”

Severin doesn’t look at me. He opens his mouth, but I answer before him.

“Councilor.” Senna’s soulless eyes land on me. “My brother didn’t know I’d taken it. He was under the impression I’d destroyed it, as was agreed. Any consequence is my own.”

There’s a moment I wonder if he was ever one of those masked men. If he’d ever been in that room. I wouldn’t know. I’ll never know. But I shudder at the thought.

“Unfortunately, that is not how things work, Jethro.” He opens his folder, flips through some papers before closing it again. “You killed two of our men. You’ve been repaid in kind.”

Meaning he’s killed two of my men.