He staged it to look ransacked or abandoned, swapping out the pictures on the wall to finish off the whole thing. It was morbid and fucking brilliant.
“I learned all I know from the master of debauchery. I’d be ass up without you, man.” He rubbed the inverted cross tattooed on the back of his neck.
I shrugged it off. I’d known Luther since I was twelve, a year less than I’d known Cobra. Grimm, I’d known my whole fucking life. The four of us, along with Dahlia, the only bitch we let in our inner circle, grew up together. We were as close as four fucked up degenerates who hated emotional attachments could be.
I was the one who turned his odd hobby into a tool for profit. Money would always be a powerhouse in its own right.
I forged the connection between him and a buyer, and next thing next, business was booming. The house was just a way to lure stock. It had yet to fail.
When I suggested he initiate his niece into the family business, the motherfucker almost pissed his pants in joy. That was all the motivation he needed to off his sister and her sack of shit boyfriend the next day. It all worked out in end. Annie was eight now, and had been happily acing her role for four years. The kid was a chip off the old block.
“We sure as hell have come a long way. We’re the best damn sinners and thieves in the Badlands now,” he reminisced aloud with a huge ass smile on his face. He was right, and we’d continue to be so for years to come.
That was the thing about sick fucks like us—our repertoires were endless. We took pride in all we did and we had our own ideologies about how the world should be.
It was that belief and with their backing that paved the way for my future. I took over a motherfucking cult at the ripe age of sixteen. We didn’t let where we were from or how we were raised cripple us. We were the rejected rebels who lived by our own set of rules.
The Badlands was considered hell on earth, and I had used it to build up an empire. Now it was time to ensure the motherfucker never crumbled.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
I’m not sure how long I petulantly sat with my back against the wall. With nothing to do but stew, I absentmindedly stroked the inverted cross I wore around my neck.
That fucking dickhead really left me ch
ained up.
I couldn’t confidently say I was safe considering Romero was my rescuer—again, as he so eloquently reminded me—but it was a fuck of a lot better than having my skin removed for who knows what reasons.
I didn’t trust him as far as I could throw him, but I wanted to.
I wanted to be able to confide in him and know without a doubt that he would never betray me. At first, I had just wanted to be understood. I’d been lost when I met him, having no idea who I was. I’d spent so much time hiding her from everyone that even I started to forget.
Things were different now. The twisted maze I always ended up lost in had finally presented a new twist for me to travel. It was a twist that led me straight into the arms of the devil, entrapping me in a devious dance that never ended.
I was no longer a prisoner of my mind. I was now a prisoner of my addictions and obsessions. It was his entire fucking fault. He changed me. He gave me something I couldn’t live without.
So much was up in the air between us but one thing would remain forever set in stone.
In the end it would always be him and I.
I jerked out of my dark thoughts when the heavy silence dilapidated into a barrage of sounds rolling in from different directions. Looking towards the house, I saw the robed followers of Romero. I had to have been pretty damn distracted to have missed their arrival.
As if conjuring him up, I spotted Romero walking towards me with the man who’d brought me here. The sky had a purplish-blue tint to it, signifying dawn. Where the hell had he been this whole time?
“Oh, look. She’s still here,” Romero jeered when they were just a few feet away.
I glowered at him, cursing him a thousand times over in my head.
The instant they reached me, Blue Eyes came to me with a bright grin on his face and quickly undid the chains around my wrists. “Sorry about your tooth, sweetheart,” he said softly.
I heard the sincerity behind his words but I didn’t understand why he was apologizing to me. He could have saved himself the breath.
I smiled back as sweetly as I could manage. “You can shove your apology up your ass.”
His dark brows rose to his hairline and he chuckled.
“Well, I’m Luther, and it’s nice to officially meet you too.” He grinned and then moved out of the way so Romero could take his place.