Page 11 of Executing Malice

The biker flashes through my mind and is immediately dismissed; he has no idea where I live, and I would notice a giant, black bike following me home. And why would he? Our brief interaction wasn’t so drastic it warranted a bloody apple on my porch.

The Rowes.

As quickly as the panic had set it, it dissipates in a cloud of annoyance.

Jeremy and Logan Rowe are twin eight-year-olds who live down the road and love this kind of crap. Last October around this time, they put a silicone finger in the church collection tray dripping with red corn syrup. It had nearly given Pearl Danvers a heart attack.

I exhale and stuff my phone back into my purse; no point calling Reed for a childish prank. I shove open the door, stalk out, fully prepared to chuck the thing. Only...

It’s gone.

The apple.

The razor.

The blood.

It’s been cleared away like it was never there, which is incredibly impressive. I wasn’t gone that long, not nearly long enough to give them a chance to scamper out, scrub away all the evidence and hide again. But I guess kids are resourceful when necessary.

I purse my lips and squint up into the darkened tree lines. Searching and scanning for two little faces peeking through the foliage.

I don’t see them, but they’re there somewhere, lurking like a pair of troublemakers.

“You two better knock it off or I’m telling your mom,” I threaten loudly.

I don’t expect a response, nor do I wait for one when turning on my heels and marching back inside.

CHAPTER FOUR

DANTE

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I wasn’t always like this.

Growing up with parents who saw children as nothing more than pawns to be used, I had a bleak outlook on life. I never liked my parents or my siblings. I didn’t like the other children that were dumped off on our porch with their garbage bag of things and emptiness in their eyes. I crawled through each day only to see if the next would be better.

It never was.

Fourteen years of terror and torture, of lying awake in the dark, counting the screams and wishing I wasn’t so weak. I was created from violence and born into violence where I was taught to trust no one and believe nothing.

Then she arrived.

This tiny, fierce creature with the biggest, greenest eyes and a fire that seemed infinite. She slipped over the threshold with the defiance and calm rage of a feral cat.

It wasn’t love.

It wasn’t even admiration.

Seeing her, knowing what was about to become of her, I was filled with dread. Grief even. I was overcome with panic knowing that she would not leave that place whole. Even the toughest kids never outlasted my dad, or my brother. The two were cut from the same sadistic slab of rot. Twins to the core. The evil that oozed through the bulging veins of my father coursed through Everett, and we all knew it.

But she stepped into the dingy mess of Mother’s kitchen in her torn jeans, black hoodie and a single backpack slung over one shoulder and did what every kid under that roof knew to never do.

She looked straight into my brother’s eyes like she couldn’t care less about him. No fear. No resistance. He could have been an abandoned spoon forgotten on the sidewalk.

And, boy, did that piss Everett off.

He didn’t show it where the tired social worker could see the slip in his mask. As the eldest, our parents depended on him to help them put on a good face. The rest of us were too young, but Everett knew how to charm the pants off a duck once he set his mind to it. Even with the devil in him, Everett had the face of an angel, but I knew my brother. I knew he would not let her disrespect slide. Even when he grinned back at her and motioned that she“follow him up to her new room,”I knew he would make an example out of her. He would make it hurt.