Page 39

Cole’s entire body turns to iron. The casual, relaxed sprawl vanishes. Every muscle fiber beneath his skin locks down tight, his spine turning rigid. The predatory energy he usually channels into the sawdust ring floods the small bed.

I ignore the shift, keeping my gaze pinned to the worn paneling on the opposite wall.

“He started coming into my room when I was fifteen. He controlled the house, the money, my mother. I endured it until I was seventeen, then she sent me off with three hundred and forty dollars from a coffee can, and I got on a Greyhound bus. I found out I was pregnant in a free clinic in Lexington.”

I drag a ragged breath into my lungs.

“Raymond had secrets. Creepy, twisted things he kept locked in his study.” I look back at Cole. “I used to pick the lock. I found ledgers. Pamphlets marked with a burned tree. Binders full of photographs showing hollow-looking children in weird, institutional clothes. And men in suits with dead eyes at something called the Sanctum of Ash.”

Cole stops breathing.

The color drains from his face, leaving his sharp cheekbones stark and pale. He stares at me, his dark eyes wide, his jaw slack.

“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.” His voice comes out as a harsh, rough whisper. He drops his head back against the mattress, staring at the ceiling, his chest heaving. “Makes all the fucking sense in the world.”

I frown, my brow furrowing. “What are you talking about?”

Cole sits up. He throws his legs over the edge of the bed, planting his feet on the linoleum. He rests his elbows on his knees, dragging both hands through his messy black hair, and stays like that for a long moment, the silence stretching tight enough to snap.

When he finally turns his head to look at me, the chaotic, provocative knife thrower is completely gone.

“The commune where I grew up. The place Elias broke us out of.” He gestures sharply with one hand. “It was a religious cult. Completely off the grid. No birth certificates, no social security numbers. They called it the Sanctum of Ash.”

The air leaves my lungs in a violent rush. My hands grip the quilt, my knuckles turning bone-white.

“The men who ran the place called themselves Prophets,” Cole continues, his voice devoid of inflection. “They bred the women like cattle. Kept them locked away. Raised the children inside dormitories to use as their personal toys. Obsessive punishment. Purity through pain. That was their entire doctrine.”

Sickness churns deep in my gut. The photographs in Raymond’s binder flash behind my eyes. The hollow, empty stares of those children.

“Me, El, Silas, Jonah, Logan, Rowe, Marek. We aren’t blood. Well, not all of us. We’re brothers in circumstance.” Cole rubs a thumb over his jaw. “We escaped when we were boys. Elias stayed behind to distract the Prophets. Logan set the place on fire. A five-year-old kid named Zach bled to death in Logan’s arms during the run.”

He turns fully on the mattress, facing me, his eyes burning with a dark, homicidal fire.

“We didn’t just build a carnival, Sloane. Seven Sins Entertainment is a front. We hunt them. We track down the Prophets who escaped the fire. We travel state to state, town to town. We find their names, we find their new communes, and we butcher them. Elias keeps a map with pins tracking every single target.”

The revelation slams into me like a physical blow.

Raymond wasn’t just an isolated monster in a suburban house in Tennessee. He belonged to a massive, organized network of predators. The ledgers I found. The quarterly meetings. He participated in the exact same horrors Cole and his brothers survived.

A cold nausea twists my stomach, followed instantly by a massive, blinding spike of rage.

Raymond did to other children exactly what he did to me. He ruined them. He broke them down to the studs.

“My thoughts have been violent lately,” I admit. The tremor in my voice has absolutely nothing to do with fear. “Ever since June died, the anger just festers. I dream about finding him. I dream about killing Raymond with my own hands.”

Cole hums, a low, vibrating note in the back of his throat. He tilts his head, assessing me with the exact same predatory focus he uses to line up a throw.

“What if you could?”

I blink.

“What if Seven Sins tracked Raymond down?” Cole leans closer, the heat radiating off his bare chest. “We find him. We drag him out of his perfectly manicured suburban house. We truss him up, drop him in a soundproof room, and hand you the tools. What if we give him to you to torture and kill?”

I freeze.

The immediate, instinctual reaction is revulsion. I am a mother. I am a knife catcher. I am not an executioner. I don’t possess the capacity to slice a human being apart, watch them bleed, and listen to them scream.

But the revulsion fades the second the image forms in my head.