Oh, she plays her role so well. But I see right through her.
Trinity grits her teeth.
The belt whistles down.
Cass grunts and squirms against Reuben’s grip.
A cloud of weed smoke creeps around me like a nefarious fog. Behind me, Apollo murmurs, “Fuck me,” with the utmost respect.
My admiration is fleeting, and leaves me feeling hollow inside.
I watch deadpan as she strikes the final blow, only mildly surprised it doesn’t make Cass come or bleed.
Then she hurls the belt away from her like it’s a viper and spins on her heel.
Her cheeks are red. Her eyes bright, zealous.
“There,” she says, pushing the word through her teeth. “It’s done. Now tell me what you found.”
Trinity Malone isn’t the innocent little girl we’d all assumed she was.
Does that mean we won’t enjoy breaking her?
Not at all.
It just means we don’t have to hold back.
Chapter Forty-Two
Trinity
It’s obvious Cass is in pain, but he’s not acting like someone who’s just been punished. In fact, the longer he stays as he is, breathing hard and holding onto Reuben’s waist as if he’d fall over if he let go…the more I’m starting to wonder about all of this.
I know they were waiting for me, but why? Just so they could show me words have consequences?
And even after all of this…I have a feeling Zachary is still not going to tell me what I need to know.
“Zacha—”
He lifts a hand, the first two fingers raised, for all the world like a priest about to bestow a blessing.
“There was a file,” he says. His lips part, but then he hesitates. “Apollo, you tell her.”
“He hid it in the system directory,” Apollo says.
Ice blows over my skin and settles deep in my bones. I’m dimly aware of Cass moving behind me, making soft, pained sounds as he dresses. I can’t imagine how much pain he’s in—I only got a handful of lashes from Miriam and I could barely stand the agony.
How long has Zachary been beating him? Why do Reuben and Apollo allow it to happen? Do they always watch like tonight? Does Reuben always hold him down?
Suddenly I don’t want to be here anymore. Not surrounded by these four twisted men.
I thought I liked Reuben. Hell, I thought I could learn to love him, even, but not if he lets Zachary push him around like this. But can I blame him? I wouldn’t want to be on Zachary’s bad side either.
And that’s not the only reason I want to leave. As much as the Brotherhood terrifies me…it’s also the look in Apollo’s eyes.
Sympathy. Pity. I’m not sure.
He feels sorry for me and I’m not sure why.
“Clever, but not clever enough. He encrypted it, renamed it, and hid it around a bunch of other system files so it would blend right in.”
Apollo slips off the couch and stands to his full height. When he comes closer, I have to crane my head back to keep his gaze.
“See, he disguised it so well that I almost gave up. But I got a hunch. Ran a system check. Replaced all the standard files. All except a handful were overwritten. That file of his, it was one of them. One of the outliers, the ones that didn’t fit.”
“Any of this sound familiar, my little slut?”
I nearly jump out of my fucking skin when a hand lands on my shoulder. Cass’s voice is right by my ear. I want to slap away his hand, but…it was because of me that he was punished. And more brutally than I’d ever have considered necessary. I could at least hear him out.
Hear them out.
Even though I just want to run out of here with my hands over my ears.
Because even now, after I’d yelled at Gabriel and told him I believed the Brotherhood…I don’t want to be on their side. I want to be on my side. I want to live in a Utopia where there’s no such thing as pedophiles and sex trafficking and men with psychological issues caused by the kind of trauma normal people can’t even wrap their heads around.
I guess that stopped being an option after Lucifer was thrown out of heaven. Not that I ever believed in God and the Devil. It sounds like a story used to drive home common sense in a world where it’s somehow not obvious that you should love thy neighbor.
But after meeting the Brotherhood?
I don’t know if I can afford not to believe.
“What was inside it? What—?” I swallow hard to dislodge the knot from my throat. “What was he hiding?”
“We don’t know,” Reuben says.
His hand is on my shoulder too, now. Warm and big compared to Cass’s smaller, cooler hand. But both grip me equally tight. Both hold me just as firmly in place.
“It needs a password,” Zachary says. My eyes flicker to him as he steps closer.
Now that I’m surrounded by three of the four brothers, the room isn’t that cold anymore. Apollo stands a little way off still, watching.
“I’m running a decryption program on it, but unless I get my hands on a server farm or some shit, it could take months to crack.”
“So you don’t know,” I say, and the words come out with a laugh of relief. “It could be anything.”
The hands on my shoulders tighten. Cass begins stroking the side of my neck with his pinkie finger.
Zachary takes my chin, but almost gently this time, tipping my head up. “We don’t have to know what it says to know it’s what we want. What we’ve been looking for.”
I grab his wrist and slowly, carefully, pull his hand away from my face. “Gabriel’s not perfect.” I nod a little, glancing at each of them, even the two standing behind me. “But neither are any of us. We’re all sinners, right?” I face Zachary again. “What if it’s all in your head? Maybe it’s time you stopped looking for ghosts in the shadows.”
The moment the words leave my mouth, I know it was the wrong thing to say.
Zachary twists his hand, grabbing my wrist and tugging it down.
Before I can pull away, he’s forcing me to grab his hard cock right through his jeans, his fingers folding over mine. He makes me squeeze him, and that only makes him harden even more.
“Does that feel real to you?” he says.
I try to pull away, but he just grips me tighter. I can feel him pulsing beneath my hand.
“Stop,” I whisper.
“Never,” he says, his lips peeling back in a snarl. “We’ll never stop. Not for you, not for Gabriel. No one can stop us, Trinity.”
He presses against me, sandwiching me between him and the men behind me. Apollo stalks closer, for once not looking like he finds anything about this situation remotely humorous.
“Not even your father.”
I can’t fight one of them. Definitely not four. Begging has proved useless. So, instead, I scream.
But that just makes them laugh.
And then everything goes to shit.
Reuben’s hand slips around the front of my throat. The other, around my waist. He drags me over the floor and sits on the couch, pulling me onto his lap.
When I try and kick his shins, he wraps his legs around mine, pinning them to the couch.
And then drags them apart.