Raphael (Deadly Virtues 1)

Raphael made himself act normal and go straight to the coffee machine. “She’s already obsessed.” Sela smiled and nodded his head in approval.

“You tie her up?” Bara asked from the table. His feet were resting on another seat as he shoveled eggs into his mouth. “Did the bitch scream your name when she came?”

Lynn, not batting an eyelid at Bara’s crude words, placed more food on the table. Raphael dropped to his seat across from Bara and met his green eyes. “Many times.”

“And what name is that?” Diel asked as he brought his coffee to the table and sat beside Raphael.

“Robert,” Raphael replied.

Laughing, Uriel kicked Bara’s feet from his seat and sat down. “Did you cause her pain? Did you make the whore hurt?” His gray eyes were lit with excitement. No one liked inflicting pain as much as Uriel. His victims were the worst off out of them all when it came to pain.

“Leather straps. Wooden canes, and the strappado.”

Uriel’s nostrils flared as he nodded in approval.

“When will she die? This a long game, or short and sweet?” Sela asked. Michael took a seat beside Raphael and stirred his coffee, his eyes focused on the table.

“Soon.” Raphael shifted in his seat. He saw Bara frown and knew his brothers would question why he was being so vague when he normally explained and relived every single detail.

“Morning.” Gabriel entered the room. He was dressed in his usual black shirt, white dog collar in place. He wore black jeans, and his blond curly hair fell over his forehead. His brothers began talking among themselves. Gabriel sat down at the head of the table with his usual morning meal of toast and coffee.

“Raphael,” Gabriel said, smiling when he saw Raphael watching him. Raphael wondered what Gabriel would do if he knew he had a woman tied and bound in his closet. A woman he intended to kill on Fallen territory. Raphael tried to muster up some shame, a feeling of guilt. But he had none.

No one was getting in the way of his kill.

Needing a distraction, something to occupy his brothers’—and especially Gabriel’s—minds, Raphael reached into his pocket. He pulled out the rosary and dropped it in the center of the table. With the sound of metal hitting the wooden surface, his brothers stopped eating and drinking, and all talking stopped.

“Lynn, can you please give us a moment?” Gabriel asked and smiled at the cook. She left immediately. The minute she was gone, Gabriel’s smile dropped. Bara reached forward and took the rosary in his hands.

“Bastards,” he hissed and passed it to Uriel. When each of his brothers had studied the red beads and “B” emblazoned crucifix, it finally landed in Gabriel’s hands. Gabriel’s face was neutral as he studied the artifact.

“Where did you find it?”

“In the club. Last night.”

Gabriel’s blue eyes snapped up. They widened, and Raphael watched something like panic flash across Gabriel’s face. “Did you see any of them? Did they see you?”

“I found it in one of the private rooms. I never saw any of them. I don’t know if they saw me.” It wasn’t entirely a lie. The woman upstairs was associated with the Brethren somehow, but she wasn’t one of them, this Raphael knew. They refused entry to women. They believed them inferior and easily swayed to the side of evil. Weak and pathetic, and unable to be as spiritually pure as men. Women bled once a month, making them spiritually unclean. And in the Brethren’s eyes, they were the root cause of all evil. Eve and the Fall plunged mankind from paradise and out of God’s embrace.

Raphael didn’t know how they got her to do their bidding, but he knew one thing—they wouldn’t care if she died.

His little captive upstairs was perfectly disposable.

“You don’t go back there.” Gabriel dropped the rosary into his pocket. “This is the first time in ten years we’ve come this close to being discovered. We can’t allow it to happen.” He turned his blue eyes on Raphael. “Did anyone follow you? Tail you to the manor?”

“No.” That was true. He had kept his eyes on the road. He had been trained well in the early years by the experts Gabriel had employed to keep them all safe. He had mastered disappearing from plain sight. Sinking into the shadows that always welcomed him home. He’d been extra vigilant that night. He’d had precious cargo in his back seat. He’d made sure they’d got away unseen.

“I need times and locations of where you were. If the Brethren have somehow figured out where we are, we have to be diligent. The last thing we need is to have them back in our lives, coming for our blood.”

“Maybe we should let them,” Diel said. All of the brothers focused on him. He rolled his neck, the bones clicking under the heavy weight of his electric collar. “Maybe it’s time to face them. To show them who we are now.”