The Sinner (The St. Clair Brothers 1)

Fifty-nine days. It couldn’t come soon enough.

2

The next time we meet on the ice, I’m going to bash that fucker Rocco Calloway’s brains out. And why shouldn’t I? It’s not as though it would be the first time I killed a man.

Seb

“Seb. You gotta stay calm.”

I pulled the phone from my ear and stared at it as if it might come to life and take a bite out of my face, which wouldn’t be all that surprising. Technology and I are not friends.

“This is calm,” I hissed at my younger brother, Rémy.

Dammit.

Everything around me shone with a hazy shade of red, a clear sign I was getting precariously close to throwing a fit. Then, as if I weren’t already furious, one wheeze from Rémy and I nearly lost my mind.

“That’s it. I don’t care what you say, the only way that prick is going to live through the next game I play against him is if you insist that I drop what I’m doing to be with you at the hospital. Management will probably say no, but I can try and persuade them to let me fly to Charlotte, then meet up with the team later in DC. It’d be a tough sell, though.”

Gritting my teeth, I snatched a paperweight off an end table and tested its weight in my palm.

A muffled moan floated through the receiver and my left eye did its thing. Twitch, twitch, twitch… Near to bursting with barely contained rage, I cracked my neck and paced in front of the windows in the main living area of my Atlanta condo, a slick modern unit on one of the upper floors of the W Hotel. Outside, the roof of the new Mercedes Benz Stadium caught my eye, its odd octagonal shape, all shiny metal and glass, sticking out from the skyline like a billion-dollar sore thumb.

My stupid eye continued to twitch, so I closed my eyes and focused on taking deep breaths. Oh, and not putting the paperweight through the window. Yeah, I put the heavy projectile back down before I actually did it.

“Seb…” Rémy paused for so long I nearly bit my tongue in half in anticipation. Patience isn’t one of my virtues. In fact, I don’t have any virtues to speak of, and if it weren’t so tragically true, I’d laugh. U

nless beating the shit out of opponents on the ice counts for something. That’s a pretty handy talent considering my line of work, but hardly virtuous.

When my little bro continued, his words were punctuated by ragged, noisy breathing, a result of the cracked ribs, courtesy of Rocco Soon-To-Be-Deceased Calloway.

“I don’t… need you to come here… I need you to play… your game and… stay away from… Rocco Calloway.”

My grip on the phone tightened and I turned my back on the windows. Honest to god, I feared I might actually go ahead and punch the glass. “I can’t do that, Rém, and you know it. He broke your fucking rib!”

“During a game, Seb.” Rémy sighed, or tried to anyway. The cracked rib made his breath hitch and the pained grunt that followed made me seethe. “Please, I know you’re upset, just… just don’t get… kicked out of the league… okay?”

“I won’t get kicked out of the league,” I snapped. Over the course of the conversation my temper had steadily risen until it hovered somewhere around nuclear meltdown. “But don’t expect that bastard to walk away in one piece.” I flexed the fingers of my free hand, itching for something to hit. “And I’m not upset, I’m fucking furious. What Calloway did was nothing more than a cheap, illegal hit and you know it.”

“And he got fined… for it.”

In my head, I plotted the many different ways to incapacitate a man during a professional hockey game. I’m a right wing, and since Rocco Calloway is a defenseman, whenever our teams played the two of us got up close and personal. Made it pretty easy to find an opportunity to, oh I don’t know, maim the guy, or at least inflict some serious damage. Considering the previous scuffles we’d gotten into and our antagonistic history, I wouldn’t even have to make up an excuse to stuff the business end of my stick up his nose.

We exchanged a few more words, me placating Rémy as usual, not wanting him to worry. Lying sucked, but I went ahead and promised not to do anything that would get me in trouble. It was for Rémy’s own good. Promise or not, I had every intention of doing whatever the hell I wanted the next time I set eyes on Rocco Calloway. Also as usual, before I hung up I told Rémy I’d call and check on him in the morning.

The second the line disconnected, I threw myself face first onto the couch and screamed into the cushion while punching the side of it over and over in an attempt to soothe the boiling fury. After ten minutes, give or take, most of it subsided, but the remaining agitation made my skin crawl and the muscles in my neck were strung tight enough to give me a headache.

My brother, who I vowed to protect, was hurt. Sitting in the hospital with a broken rib. Because of Rocco Calloway.

On instinct, my hand moved to my side as memories of my own broken ribs sent a sharp pain straight into my heart.

Twitch, twitch, twitch.

Ugh! Wonderfuckingful.

To top it all off, my shit-tastic left eye wouldn’t stop, which caused the anger to flood back into my body. It slammed into my chest with the force of a SWAT team with a battering ram. Knowing even as I did it, that I would regret my decision, I skimmed through my contacts and pushed Send. It took four agonizing rings before someone answered.

“Can I help you with something?”