Page 287 of Forged in the Fire
“Go around the left side of the house, find a window you can get through. I’ll go in on the right.” Silas’s instruction curled through the crawling night. “Be fucking careful.”
“You, too, brother. It’s time.” He could feel the intensity of Phoenix’s stare burning into his cheek.
Silas gave him a clipped nod, and they broke apart, both stealing across the deserted road.
A thick fog covered them, the night deepened by the gloom.
The closer he got, the more he felt it.
Agony.
Agony.
Ignoring it, he gripped onto his purpose.
It wasn’t so hard to find a way inside. Half the windows had been broken, anyway. He found one near the back where the glass was completely missing except for a single shard still clinging to the top of the frame.
Angling to the side, he slipped through, the leather of his cut protecting him from the razor-sharp tip he felt drag across his Iron Owls patch.
He remained crouched as his boots hit the trash-strewn floor, and he checked his breaths, ensuring that he didn’t make a sound.
He doubted by the voices that any of them would notice, anyway.
Their own bloodlust saturated the suffocating air.
Vileness the only oxygen by which their depravedness was sustained.
“Gonna have her one more time, boss.” A voice cackled, amped up, both from drugs and the perversion that reeked in the air.
“No, this is sufficient to send the message I need. That and her body on his doorstep.”
Sickness rolled in Silas’s stomach. Bile climbing his throat. His heart shifted into overdrive.
A riotous thunder that battered at his ears.
Everything spun.
Hands slicked with sweat, twitching with the need for revenge.
All while something else pressed into his conscience.
Retribution was right there.
He could have them.
But there was something that drew him forward. A call he couldn’t help but heed.
He crept forward, cringing when his boot crunched against a sliver of broken glass on the floor.
But it wasn’t enough to penetrate their barbarity.
“Pick her up and toss her into the back of the SUV. You’ll slit her throat once we get there. I don’t want her bleeding out in the back of the Rover. Isius, get rid of her car.”
Silas peeked around the doorway and into what was the house’s living room. It was nearly pitch, and he was barely able to make out the outline of three men standing in the room.
Except Silas could see only one thing.
The stripped, battered body of a girl on the floor. An indistinct silhouette held in the pall.
