Page 23 of Divine Violence
The only difference was, neither one of them was a villain—that role belonged to me. And fuck if I cared what name they called me once everything was said and done. I could quiet down those miserable and weak parts of my soul that wanted to weep for three fucked-up men sitting in front of me.
Anger simmered beneath my skin, swallowing the light breaking through the windows, cast by the moon. These fucking idiots had no idea what this night meant for me. But they would learn.
They all did—eventually.
“We can’t do this,” Kairos said from behind me, irritating me almost immediately. “We need to do the ritual.”
“Fuck the ritual,” Dominic growled, pulling me closer to him. “We don’t need a ritual to know that she belongs to us. I don’t want them to see her. I don’t want them looking at what’s ours.”
I was theirs? Interesting.
“Dominic,” Alexander tried reasoning with him. “We need to do it by the book. You know what they said. It has to be done properly.”
“You and your motherfucking rules,” Dominic hissed, gripping me tighter than before. “We don’t need them to make this work. You know we don’t.”
“Stop it!” Kairos thundered and jumped up to his feet, towering over us. “We spoke about this. You know what needs to be done. They need to see her. We have to get their approval, or—”
“Or what?” Dominic asked, turning me in his lap now. “They’re going to kill us? Destroy—”
“Not us, you stupid idiot!” He came to us and pulled me out of Dominic’s grip, and up to my legs. “Her! They’re going to kill her!”
“Well, they can fucking try,” Dominic argued and stood up seconds after me. “They’re not taking her.” He grabbed my hand, trying to pull me away from Kairos, but Kairos wasn’t having it.
“Dom, you can either get in line or get the fuck out, but we are doing this properly. The Society knows why they’re doing things this way. I don’t want this to bite us on our asses, when we’ve worked so hard to repay the debt owed to them.”
My eyes volleyed back and forth between them. If this continued, they wouldn’t need me to fuck shit up. They would be their own downfall, and my job wouldn’t be done.
But you promised, Echo. You promised you would take care of this as well.
I did fucking promise, but this incessant feeling in my heart wouldn’t go away, even though I knew that these three wouldn’t be suitable for the life they wanted to have.
Three little princes, fallen from their graces, trying to play the game of big boys and miserably failing. I was the perfect person for this job, but I didn’t think it would be this hard to get on with it.
Pretending was the easy part, but actually standing here and getting my heart aligned with my brain was what had me fucked up and torn over what I needed to do.
I ripped my hand away from their grips and stepped aside, trying to think without their voices messing with my mind. I looked to my left, ignoring what was going on in front of me. My eyes zeroed in on a sign I had seen before.
It almost looked like a pentagram, etched into a headboard of the bed, but where the pentagram had five points, this one had six, with one pointing toward the top and the one toward the bottom with two on each side.
“What is that?” I pointed at the symbol, stopping their fucking bickering. My feet led me toward the bed, my hand already stretching to touch it, to feel it beneath my hand. “I’ve seen this sign before,” I murmured, before turning toward them. “What does it mean?”
They kept quiet, uncomfortable even, but I would get my answers tonight.
“My father had this symbol in his study,” I bit out. “What. Does. It. Mean?”
“It’s an Aquarian Star.” Alexander spoke first, earning glares from Dominic and Kairos. “What? She has the right to know.”
“Not yet,” Kairos hissed. “She still hasn’t been approved.”
“Oh, fuck off, Kai,” Alexander said and came closer to me. “It's a unicursal hexagram, representing great power.”
I gawked at him, still not understanding what it was doing here. “I might be an orphan, Alexander, but I still know a hexagram when I see one. I didn’t ask what it was in math, I’m asking what it’s doing here?”
“It’s a symbol of The Society,” Kairos finally said. “A secret society not many are a part of. An underground Mafia if you wish, existing in the darkest parts of the world. We are a part of it.”
“That’s impossible.” I chuckled. “My father was a good man. A great—”
“Your father was a monster,” Dominic said without looking at me. “Just like mine is, just like Kairos’s father is as well as Alexander’s. They’re all monsters pretending to be good people.”
