The Deadliest Sin Series Complete Collection, page 65
If I had come along any later, the vultures would have gotten to them and I may not have even known who I was looking at when I stumbled upon them.
Kat sits up in the bed, resting her back against the headboard. “What? Who?”
I suck in a deep breath. “My mother and father.” I can barely say it without emotion threatening to choke my words. “We lived on a farm just outside Cali. We didn't have a lot of money, but my father had the land that had been in his family for generations. It was lush and beautiful; the perfect place to farm and raise children.”
At least, they thought…
If they had known what it would bring. The destruction. The betrayal. The blood. If they even had an inkling, things would have been so different. We could have made different choices. Ones that would have been difficult but necessary. But they loved it there. I loved it there. There was no reason to suspect the danger that lurked so nearby.
“Outside the city, they thought we would be protected from all the bad things in the world. Our own little eutopia, but instead, those things came to find us.”
As evil always does…
“What the fuck happened?” Kat’s question breaks through the fog of pain surrounding my past to bring me back to the present. She grabs her cigarettes off the nightstand and lights up. “Something tells me I’m going to need one for this story.”
I run a shaky hand back through my hair, the memories I tried to bury for so long racing to the surface faster than I can control them. “One of the cartels showed up at the farm one day, wanting to buy the land to use for their operations. Father wouldn't sell. Not even for the amount of money they were offering us—far more than the land was worth. Enough to make us rich even by American standards. The man who came in an expensive suit smiled at us on his way out…”
A shiver rolls through me, picturing it—sly and twisted, a warning not warmth. Back then, it wasn’t anything I had ever experienced. Not wrapped in my cocoon of love and faith. Yet, its message was clear.
“Even at that age, I knew it wasn't what it appeared. A sense of foreboding settled over me. Oppressive. The kind of things the priest at the church warned us about. It was evil, of that, I was certain. For a long time, I worried about what would happen, what the cartel would do to us for daring to reject their offer. But then…things went back to normal.”
I turn back to face Kat and lean against the wall for support. Talking about this after two decades of silence makes me feel physically weak for the first time since then. Like I can’t even hold up my own weight.
It isn’t how I want Kat to see me, but I don’t have a choice. I have to surge ahead with the story, no matter how painful.
“Normal, for me, was the church. I attended a Jesuit school run by missionaries. They taught us English and never let us slack in our learning. They wanted to ensure we were given excellent educations, even if it only returned to the farm with us. But one of the priests sort of took me under his wing. I was an altar boy, and people often joked about me becoming a priest one day. I thought that was my future. It was my safe place.”
Kat raises one of her dark eyebrows and blows out a plume of smoke. “And your brother?”
I snort and shake my head. “Quite the opposite. For as much as we may look alike, our paths diverged greatly years before I lost my parents. He started skipping school around age twelve, asking me to pretend to be him and cover for him so that he wasn't always the one in trouble. He would sneak into town and run around with some of the street gangs. Even then, he was making choices that would change our world forever.”
Choices that made me who I am today—for better or for worse. Perhaps both.
“What happened that day?”
The urge to tell her it’s none of her business, to end this conversation before it goes any further, strikes me so hard, if I weren’t supported by the wall behind me, I might actually fall forward in an effort to run. Away from her. Away from the memories. Away from the truth that still haunts me even twenty years later.
But I started this with a purpose—to open Kat’s eyes to the reality of where we are now. Stuck in Felipe’s crosshairs and now with the Irish and Russians also breathing down our necks due to her actions earlier tonight. We’re dangling over the precipice, about to tumble down into the abyss we created ourselves because we wanted it all and were willing to do anything to obtain it.
I push away from the wall and walk to the window to stare out at the driving rain, wishing it could wash away all the pain talking about this and even thinking about it has caused. “I had gone to morning mass to help Father Nolan and was on my way home when I saw the vultures circling the field.”
Until that moment, I had never understood the fear of them or why people considered them bad omens. They were just a part of the natural way of things, a common sight on the farm. I respected them, knew they were necessary. Until that moment…
“I assumed it was a cow or some other animal from the farm, but when I made it to that point…” I squeeze my eyes closed and swallow through the emotion clogging my throat. “I knew what happened immediately. That kind of violence could only come from the cartel. They had waited months after they approached us before they finally struck. Let us believe everything was fine to ensure our guard was down. Mama y Papa never saw it coming.”
Neither did I. I had ignored my initial unease, let myself believe things were actually safe, that they would actually let us continue on with our lives as if we hadn’t committed a sin by denying their attempt to purchase the land they needed.
A long, heavy silence permeates the air in the room for what feels like forever before Kat’s voice finally reaches me with the question I knew was coming. “What did you do?”
The hair on the back of my neck stands on end, and I rub at it absently, avoiding answering for as long as I can. That single moment changed my entire life, changed who I am. “I stared at the carnage for a long time, frozen in place. And then, I realized what it meant. I raced back to the house and found it in shambles, but there was no sign of Sofia.”
“Oh, my God! How old was she?”
“Just a baby. Barely a year old.” Despite the current topic of conversation, a smile pulls at my lips, picturing the tiny, sweet baby she was then. Her feistiness and desire to constantly argue with me only developed later in life. “She had been quite a surprise for my parents when she arrived fifteen years after we did.”
A joyful one. She brought so much life and love into the house—the kind I haven’t felt since then.
“What did you do when you couldn’t find her?”
I turn and lock my gaze with hers, my hands fisting at my sides. “I went to get her back.”
A full-body shudder rolls through Kat where she sits against the headboard, watching me with a strange mix of fear and confusion in her cool-blue eyes. It's so unlike her to show any sort of reaction, to give anything away, but even hearing this tiny portion of the story, she's already shaken, the hand holding her burned-down cigarette vibrating uncontrollably.
Good. It's time she understood what we’re really up against.
She reaches over to the nightstand and snubs out her cigarette. “Did your brother go with you?”
I shake my head and flex my hands, the rage and pain of that day heating my skin and tightening it to the point that it’s practically suffocating me. “No. I didn't know where he was. He would disappear for days, sometimes a week at a time, off getting into trouble in the city. I can't even count the number of times my parents had to pick him up from a police station. If we weren't so young, he might've been in prison already. I knew I couldn't try to wait to find him. Not when I knew what they would do to Sofia. So, I went to the home of the man who had offered to buy our land. I didn’t even know his name…” It floods back to me as if I were standing, looking at that house now instead of out at a wet, dark Chicago. “A beautiful home set up on a hill surrounded by half a dozen armed guards. But they let me walk right in. They knew me, had been watching us since the day they decided they wanted our land. They knew I wasn’t someone to be threatened by.”
Not back then.
“They had no idea the wrath burning through my soul after seeing my parents and what it was doing to me, what it was turning me into in almost an instant. I walked in, walked right up to the man who ordered the hit on my parents, and stabbed him in the jugular with a letter opener on his desk.”
“Good God…”
I whirl back to face Kat again. “No.” Shaking my head, I take a step toward her. “God wasn't there that day. Maybe el Diablo, but certainly not God. I don't even think I was human at that moment, just possessed by something straight from Hell. I kept stabbing, even as his life spurted out of the side of his neck and all over his desk. I stabbed so many times, I lost count. There was so much blood that it covered me practically head to toe.”
And two decades later, the feel of it all over my skin still lingers—hot and sticky. The metallic scent still invades every breath I take. No amount of penance or water could ever wash it away, could ever cleanse my soul of what I did.
What I continued to do.
“And then, I took a knife and gun from his desk and I laid waste to his guards before they could even react…but not before I did the unthinkable.”
Kat clutches the sheet against her naked breasts, but whether she can even fathom the true depths of my depravity remains to be seen. There are days I can’t believe I did it even though my own hands still tingle with the memory of their actions. Even when I can still hear the screams.
“I heard a baby crying. Only when I followed the sound, Sofia wasn't alone. She was in the arms of the man's wife.” I clench my fists at my side, the vivid image of the woman smiling down at Sofia as if she were her own still seared in my mind. “I had assumed the man would sell her to some puto enfermo who would abuse her, but the truth was even worse. He intended to raise her as his own. To use her to appease a wife who could not have her own children. When I realized the truth, I went into a frenzy.”
A flashing silver blade.
Sprays of red.
Cries of pain and fear.
They overwhelm my senses, and I bury my face in my hands and grit my teeth. All these years of pushing the past into a dark recess of my mind have been undone in a single moment. Because of Kat. Because of what she means to me. Because it had to be done.
“What about Sofia?”
Her question makes me drag my head back up, but I can’t meet her assessing gaze, instead choosing to return to the window, to the rain that chills the air as much as the memories do.
“The only reason Sofia wasn't harmed during the attack was the woman had the good sense to put her down as soon as she saw me covered in her husband's blood. But I didn't give her time to try to get away. I slit her throat open with the knife I had taken from him, probably a gift from the very woman I was killing with it.”
Killing. The word seems so wrong for what happened. It was so much more than that. Something darker. More sinister.
“I left her unrecognizable as even human, repayment for what happened to my parents.” I press my hand against the windowpane, but the chill permeating from it into my skin can’t quell the heat of my anger even now. “When I was done with her, I took the guns I found and laid waste to his men before they knew anything was wrong. Then I went back upstairs and grabbed Sofia. She was screaming by that time, and now, being held against my chest, she was covered in the bloody evidence of what had just transpired. Where my presence had once soothed her, now it only made her wail louder.”
Her frantic screams still echo in my ears, mixing with the deluge pounding the windows and roof outside to form a sound loud enough to make me wince.
“I started to leave the room and noticed a vase of fresh roses. The thought that this man could murder my parents, steal my sister, and go on with his life, buying his wife roses as if none of it happened…” I close my eyes and shake my head. “It was more than I could handle. I grabbed them, broke the petals free, and dropped them around his wife's body.”
Kat shifts on the bed behind me, the creaking mattress giving away her unease despite her being unable or unwilling to respond verbally.
I force myself to turn back to her and lock eyes when I tell the rest. “Then I walked out the front door with my sister and ran right into our dear brother on his way back to his boss’ house.”
“No!” Kat’s eyes fly wide as the pieces fall into place for her. The things I don’t even want to believe myself even though I know they’re true. “He didn't…”
I twist back to the window and smash my hand against the pane. It vibrates but doesn't break despite my best efforts to throw all my rage into it. All my hatred for him and his betrayal. Everything I felt in that instant, I saw him coming toward the house and knew.
“I hadn’t known until that point. None of us had known. But as I stood there, holding Sofia, covered in their blood, I looked at the boy who shared my own eyes, and I knew. I knew he had done it. I knew he had killed them to garner favor with the man I had just killed. I knew he had nothing left in his soul that wasn't dark and depraved, that wasn’t so twisted and black that it was dead to any form of light.”
“But I don’t understand. How did he end up a priest? How did you end up here, as the head of the cartel?”
And now, we’ve reached the crux of the story, the point where the truth will unravel everything she thought she knew.
Twisting back to her, I shake my head and run my hand over the scruff on my jaw. “That is the part you won’t believe.”
20 YEARS AGO
I stare into the same eyes I see in the mirror every day, only his are darkened with something sinister.
How can we look the same yet be so different?
It’s a question I’ve asked myself often. One Mama struggled with almost daily. Papa worried, too, but he held his emotions close and rarely let them show. Not like the tears that fell from Mama’s eyes every time he did something she couldn’t understand. It’s a question they died without answering. One I won’t be able to, either, not in a million lifetimes.
Because looking at him now, I’m confident he’s the epitome of evil. Everything I’ve been warned about and told to stay away from. Everything Father Nolan said we should turn from and watch out for. But he’s also the other half of me. Staying away has been impossible, no matter how much his actions may have diverged from my own.
Though, now that I’m standing here covered in the blood of all the people I just slaughtered so easily, without thought, perhaps we aren’t so different. If I’m capable of that, I’m really only one step away from becoming what he already has. Whatever it is inside him that allowed him to kill our parents so effortlessly also lives inside me, and now, it’s come out to play a deadly game that has brought us here.
Standing in the middle of the road, dark, ominous clouds billowing in the sky above us, it feels like everything has been building to this moment—this showdown between us. When brothers must face each other and what we’ve done.
Sofia wails in my arms, kicking and fighting against my hold on her, no doubt terrified by what's been happening around her even if she doesn't understand it. And thank God she doesn't. If she were any older, the trauma of today's events might have left a lasting impression on her, one that might scar her forever and twist her into something our parents would never have wanted. As it stands now, no matter what happens, she will forever be tainted by the blood of our parents and these people, but at least she's young enough I can do something about it, try to ensure her path remains the right one, protect her from the other dangers in the world—even the ones masquerading as her loving brother.
“What have you done?” Our brother’s gaze darts from Sofia, across me, then back to the mansion over my shoulder, panic written in his features as he pieces together what must have happened. “What have you done?”
“Me? What have I done?” My words come out more like a snarl, spittle flying to strike him in the face. “What have you done? You killed Mama y Papa!” They never stood a chance when the Devil was in their own home. “And for what?” I wave a blood-stained hand back toward the house. “To have a house like this? To have this kind of money and power? Is that all you care about?”
He steps closer, anger radiating off him in waves, that thing that has always burned just beneath his surface when he’s with me finally rising to visibility. “I did this for us so that we could have a better life than Mama y Papa could give us! Why can’t you see that?” He points to Sofia. “I did this for her! To give her a chance!”
The absolute sincerity in his words sends a shiver through me despite the warmth of the cloudy day.
“You killed our parents and offered our sister to a ruthless man to raise as his own and you really believe it was the right choice?” I shake my head, tears finally welling in my eyes for the first time and trickling down my cheeks. “They did the best they could for us. They loved us unconditionally, put a roof over our heads, fed and clothed us, made sure we got an education, and were taught God’s love. Why was that not enough for you?”
The sneer that curls up his lip sends ice through my veins. “Don’t spew your religious platitudes at me. The world outside those church walls you hide behind isn’t an easy one. Hard choices need to be made. I made one. You apparently did, too. And we need to make one now.”
He’s lost his mind. It’s the only explanation for what he’s saying, for how cold he’s being. He’s gone past the point of return to sanity. Lost to any argument that might make him see the error of his ways.
I shake my head, lightly bouncing Sofia in my arms to try to stop her fussing, which has only escalated with the tension and yelling between her brothers. “The only thing that’s going to happen now is we’re both going to prison for the rest of our lives.”
“No.” He steps forward and wrenches her from my arms. “I’m not. No one who knows what I did is alive…save for you. But there will be no hiding what you’ve done. You’re covered head to toe in the evidence. Everyone will believe you did it because he killed Mama y Papa. People will understand. But you will go, and I will stay and care for Sofia.”
