Fractured Minds (Rebels of Sandland 3)

“You’re fucking dead men,” he snarled, pointing at them from over Ryan’s shoulder as he and Zak held Brandon back.

I just stood there frozen to the spot, praying that this whole nightmare would end. I had nothing left in me to fight anymore.

“We knew you’d come through for us.” Adam Noble smirked at me and reached into his pocket then pulled out a wad of cash. “Your little stunt earned us a fuck load of money tonight. Thanks for that.”

“It wasn’t a fucking stunt,” Brandon snapped. “You’ve been blackmailing him and tonight I put a stop to it. Do you hear me? This ends now.” Brandon looked ready to rain hellfire down on every one of them, but Adam wasn’t fazed at all. In fact, he had the balls to laugh at Brandon’s reaction and the other four followed suit, cackling like a pack of hyenas.

“You should’ve made a few bets yourself. The odds on Hazel winning were ridiculous.”

“Is that what all this is about? Money?” Ryan looked between Brandon and Adam Noble, trying to suss out what was going on between them.

“Isn’t everything about money?” Adam replied, not

taking his eyes off Brandon. “Don’t pretend you’re different to us. You get blood on your hands and get paid for it. Only difference is, we’re smarter. We don’t get our heads kicked in for a pay day.”

“No, you just do the kicking you fucking psycho freak.” Brandon tried to get past Ryan again to show Adam Noble how he really felt, but the wall of Zak and Ryan weren’t budging, and Adam cackled out a laugh, taking a step back and folding his arms over his chest.

“I think you’ll find we kept our end of the bargain. We are men of our word, after all.” Brandon scoffed, but Adam ignored him, turning to face me, and his grin turned to an evil glare. “Check your phone. I think you’ll like what you find on there. We might be sadistic fuckers, but we step up when we’re needed.” He turned back to glare at Brandon. “Unlike some.”

“What the fuck is that supposed to mean?” Brandon was like a rabid dog trying to escape his cage. “Your word doesn’t mean shit. Do you actually think you have honour when you fucked with my mate’s head like that?”

Adam chuckled to himself and shook his head, then walked right over to where Ryan and Zak were holding Brandon back. His eyes were demonic in the way he stared at them all.

“I did what you couldn’t. I took out the paedo scum of Sandland. I cleaned up your mess.”

They didn’t call him psycho for nothing. This guy had balls of steel to stand up against us and talk like that. I moved to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with my brothers, completing our unit. They were always there for me, so I wanted to show the soldiers that despite keeping their game a secret, that hadn’t changed. But when Adam saw me, he sneered and side-stepped to stand in front of me.

“You think you’re a big man now you’ve got these three next to you?”

“I’m not scared of you.” I held my nerve and looked him dead in the eyes, but nothing fazed him. He pushed his face right into mine, grinning from ear to ear.

“Like I said before,” Adam hissed. “You should be. In fact, you should be thanking me. After what that paedo fucker spilled to us about you when we gutted him like a fish, you should thank your lucky stars we took care of him. Filth like him doesn’t belong in Brinton.”

“But filth like you do?” Ryan butted in, stepping forward.

“We look after our own,” Colton King piped up, moving closer to Ryan to exert his dominance. “If scum like his uncle come onto our manor, we deal with it. You should take notes. You might learn something.”

“We don’t need to learn shit from you,” Ryan spat back, looking Colton up and down like he was dirt.

“Then shut the fuck up and let us finish this,” Adam snarled, cutting Ryan off. Then he snapped right back to calm mode like the psycho he was and looked at me with a smile on his face, like he was telling me I’d won the fucking lottery. “We won’t say a word. Not about Alice, you, or any of the others.”

The rush of adrenaline that shot through me when he mentioned others made me falter where I stood. My ears buzzed with white noise and sparks danced across my eyes, making it difficult to keep my balance. I felt truly sick to my stomach. In my heart, I always knew there might’ve been more victims, but I’d hoped and prayed there wasn’t.

“We feel proud of ourselves,” Adam carried on like he hadn’t just shattered my soul. “If we hadn’t seen you that night in Brinton, lurking around in the shadows, we’d have never known to go looking for the filth that was hiding close by. And just so you know… he was dead before we’d even sent you the first message.”

The final stab to my heart.

They were even crueller than I’d realised.

“You fucking bastards.” Brandon lurched forward, and this time, it took all three of us to hold him back. Not that I wanted to protect them, but I didn’t want Brandon starting something that could end in tragedy.

“They’re not worth it, mate,” Ryan growled.

“Think of Harper,” I added.

“Yeah, Mathers. Pipe down. We did the job you couldn’t. Get over it. It’s done.”

Brandon’s nostrils flared like he was ready to breathe fire. Adam stepped back to join his boys, and then with an evil glint in his eyes, he said, “Enjoy watching the video, Knowles. Colton gets a little carried away at the end, but I think that added to the overall effect. Who’d have thought a neck would spurt so much blood like that? I thought the films were exaggerating.” He spoke so flippantly. Taking another man’s life, despite who that man was, was obviously nothing to him.