Page 18 of The Ecstasy of Sin (Brutal Brotherhood #1)

My eyes follow Wren as she disappears into the darkness, and with a scowl I stare at the name on my screen.

Torin.

Remembering his most recent episode, I don’t hesitate to answer the call .

“Yeah?” I don’t mean to sound as fucking mean as I do, but I hate that I’ve lost sight of Wren at this hour of night.

“Mind if I stop by later? I need to talk to you about something.”

The conflict I feel is making my skin itch.

Wren just disappeared in the shittiest part of town, but my brother might need me.

I could kill two birds with one stone and follow her while I talk to him, but that would definitely alert her to my presence, and I’m not ready for her to know that I’m stalking her yet.

“What’s going on?” I ask, my eyes lifting towards the sky as a flash of lightning breaks through the dense cluster of clouds.

“Nothing that can’t wait until later, I just want to make sure you’re gonna be home if I swing by.” His voice sounds normal, which helps to alleviate some of the tension thrumming through me.

A few drops of rain had fallen earlier as we walked, cold taps against the skin—like warning shots from the sky. But now the sky has split open, unleashing a torrent of rain over the night-soaked city.

“Yeah. Stop by around one.” I pull my hood down tighter, shielding my face from the worst of the downpour.

“See you then.”

The line goes silent, and I tuck my phone away, already heading in Wren’s direction. I fucking hate walking in the rain, but at least it’ll mask my footsteps as I follow her through the quiet side streets she’s chosen tonight .

I break into a jog to cross the street, slowing down again once I hit the side of the church. When I round the corner, I hear voices. One I instantly recognize, and one I don’t.

Wren’s outline is the first thing I see. Then lightning strikes across the sky in a wicked web of bolts, weaving through the thick clouds, and the scene explodes into clarity.

A man has his hand on Wren, gripping her wrist and tugging her toward his looming form.

An unholy rage detonates inside me, and not even the consecrated ground beneath my feet can keep my demons at bay.

Bloodlust takes over, shifting my vision to red, focused entirely on the motherfucker that thinks he can touch what belongs to me.

Wren is fucking mine!

They fall to the rain-slick concrete, and another flash of lightning brightens the scene. His hands, which I intend to cut from his fucking body, are wrapped around her throat.

She’s fighting him; kicking, thrashing, and clawing.

I black out.

The last thing I can remember is breaking out into a run as my mind devolves into a primitive beast with a singular focus: protect what’s mine.

The next thing I know, I’m kneeling on the motherfucker’s chest, delivering hit after brutal hit to his fucking face.

I’m lost in the madness of my obsession, burning with rage and pleasure. I need to kill him. He touched her, hurt her, and he tried to kill her .

The bones of his skull are shattering beneath my fists, what teeth he has left in his mouth are coated in red as his lips split in a dozen cuts.

My hands are aching so profoundly, but I can’t stop. Not when his face caves in, and thick blood runs like someone turned on a faucet. Not when discordant sounds and gurgling emit from the mess of a human face beneath me, and definitely not when pleasure settles at the base of my spine.

The chaotic mixture of earned violence and euphoria rides me so fucking hard, it clears the fog of rage from my mind and centers me.

My breathing steadies, and that’s when I finally stop hitting the man who tried to kill Wren.

Fuck. I want to drag her over and lay her out in this carnage. I want to spread her thighs, and force myself inside of her. I want to make her come all over my cock until she understands what all of this means.

Until she understands what I’ve become for her.

I reach behind me, blood-slick fingers wrapping around the hilt of my knife beneath my sweatshirt, and draw it free.

My head turns just as lightning splits open the pitch black sky, and I see Wren sitting upright, one hand to her throat and the other helping to push herself across the ground, away from me and the horror I’ve wrought in her name.

My voice is eerily calm, nearly unrecognizable, as I call out to her. “Run, little lamb.”

I don’t wait to see what she does. I lift the dagger up, twirling it in my hand, then drive it down into him .

The man’s chest heaves beneath me, his lungs full of blood, desperate for a breath that will never come. I twist the dagger to open the wound, dropping my free hand to slide it along the edge of the blade and feel the rush of thick, hot blood as it flows around my fingers.

I groan, dropping my head and soaking in the feel of him dying beneath me. My knees sliding on blood and rain, falling to either side of his torso.

My cock is straining against my zipper, and the intense need to fuck Wren in the pool of this man’s blood has me shuddering.

Wren.

I glance to the side, relieved to see that Wren obeyed me and fled like prey into the night. I spot her backpack nearby, and narrow my gaze at it like it personally wronged me.

She needs that.

I rise from the corpse, peel off my soaked sweatshirt, and start wiping the worst of the blood from my hands. I’m still a fucking mess, but I need my phone. I scrub just enough gore off to dig it from my back pocket and make the call.

Ryker answers on the second ring. “What’s up, Daddy?”

I snarl, the sound so deeply inhuman I’m almost shocked it came from my mouth. Almost. “Don’t fucking call me that,” I spit, unable to mask for him after everything that just happened.

My goddamn foster brother is not who I want to hear referring to me as Daddy.

Wren, on the other hand …

“What do you need?” Ryker’s tone shifts instantly, all traces of playfulness gone. He knows which version of me he’s talking to—the one my brothers handle like a bomb with a hair trigger.

“Body. Clean up. Behind St. Augustine's Cathedral. Now, Ryker.”

“Leave the scene. We’re coming.”

The phone line goes silent, but I’m already moving. I snatch up Wren’s backpack and run.

My DNA is definitely all over that fucking corpse. I lost my goddamn mind, and that made me messy.

Ryker’s men work fast, thank fuck. It helps that we’ve got ties with one of the higher ups on the local police force—but that’s worst case scenario. We’ll pull that card if we need to.

As much as I hate sloppy kills, I don’t regret it for a second. I almost lost Wren, and that piece of shit deserved everything he got.

Wren is mine, and I’d do it a thousand times over again if I had to. With a smile on my fucking face. Nobody touches her but me. Not anymore.

With Wren’s backpack in hand, I slither through the city streets like a fucking viper. I’m coated in blood, looking every bit the deranged serial killer that I am. The rain isn’t working fast enough to wash away the gore and make me look human again.

It takes longer than I’d like for me to make it all the way back to my bike, and thankfully by the time I do, the rain isn’t pouring as heavily.

Riding in the rain isn’t ideal, but I didn’t exactly plan this day as meticulously as I would have had I been able to track Wren’s whereabouts from the start.

I need a shower and a change of clothes before I drop her backpack off with security at the shelter.

I mount the bike and tear off into the wet streets, taking the fastest road home.

***

I’m stepping out of the shower when my phone rings. I can hear it from the kitchen table, where I left it after wiping it down.

“Hunter, grab my phone, please,” I call out, watching as he lifts his head from where he is curled up outside the bathroom door. He trots off, his tail wagging.

I towel myself off while he figures out how to get up and nudge the phone to the edge of the table so he can pick it up.

Of course he succeeds, because he is the smartest dog alive.

I smile when he trots back over to me, stepping into the foggy bathroom and delivering it right to my hand. “Good boy,” I tell him, giving him a scratch behind the ear as I take the phone from his jaws and answer it.

“Yeah?”

“What the actual fuck, Dom?” Ryker snarls. “That was the worst fucking mess I’ve ever seen, and in the middle of the goddamn city? ”

A twisted smile tugs at the corner of my mouth, remembering how savagely I destroyed that man’s face. “He got what he deserved.”

“Well, he’s food for the pigs now.” The sigh that comes out of him makes me feel a little bad for telling him to clean up after my kill, if only for a moment. The feeling is fleeting, unlike my desire to get back to stalking Wren.

“Thanks.”

The line goes quiet. Then, another sigh. “Yeah. You’re welcome, you sick fuck.”

I laugh—a low, maniacal sound I’m sure makes Ryker uneasy. For a man that owns an illegal fight ring, in a club that siphons the spilled blood through the floor like an unholy tithe, he’s the least deranged of the four of us.

“Get some fucking therapy,” he snaps, right before I end the call, but there’s no real heat to his words.

As I put on a clean set of clothes, memories start flooding in of the men I’ve killed in Ryker’s club over the years. The buckets of blood I’ve spilled, and the carnage I’ve left for his staff to clean.

Medication and therapy don’t work for men like us, and we sure as fuck won’t make it past the gates of heaven when the time comes for us to meet our maker.

Maybe the criminals on death row can find redemption in their final hour, but the four of us are sinners who won’t repent.

There’s no salvation awaiting us. No blood of Christ to wash away our sins.

Hunter barks, pulling me out of my dark thoughts, reminding me that I’ve yet to give him his dinner .

Ghost definitely showed up tonight to meet Ryker. They must’ve taken my advice and walked Hunter together, because the note they left on the whiteboard by my front door reads: Punched Ryker. He hits like a bitch. We both walked Hunter for an hour and a half.

Scribbled underneath it: FUCK YOU, WARRICK!

I imagine Ghost hit him again for taking his first name in vain.

I head to the kitchen, pulling out the container of homemade dog food that I prepped earlier this week. I grab Hunter’s bowl from the drying rack and start measuring out his meal, topping it off with three frozen sardines to balance the macros.

I place his food on his mat and leave him alone to eat, then wash my hands so I can dig through Wren’s belongings before I take it back to the shelter for her.

Opening it up, I’m surprised but really fucking happy to find her phone sitting on top of everything else.

I grab it first, relieved there is no pass code required to unlock it. That’ll save me some time.

The first thing I do is go through her gallery, finding pictures of animals, the books she’s read, random photos of applications and forms, and screenshots of things she’s saved from the internet.

Next, I dig into her messages. The only conversations I find are from various employers letting her know they received her application. There are no messages from friends or family, which surprises me .

I expected her to have a friend or two, but even when I check her contact list, I only find contact information for doctors, shelters, and public service lines. That’s it.

Good thing she has me now.

I program my name and number into her phone, then send myself a text message. I work between the two devices to install a tracking app onto hers, before deleting our messages from her phone so that when I text her tomorrow it comes with a clean slate.

I make sure it works before tucking her phone back where I found it.

Then I move around my kitchen and gather some things to add to her backpack.

I grab a handful of protein bars, a gift card for a local restaurant I had pinned to the side of my fridge with two-hundred dollars on it, and a large protein shake.

I tuck those into her pack before heading into my bedroom.

Inside the walk-in closet, I open the wall safe and grab a neat stack of cash. I slide it into one of the inner pockets of her bag.

Once I’m satisfied that I’ve filled every space I can find, I zip it shut and head out the door.

I take my car this time to avoid the lingering storm, scowling as I arrive at the women’s shelter. The security guard is standing at the door, glued to his phone. His fingers are flying, so he’s not just texting. Gaming, probably.

He should be watching the door and protecting the building. My future wife is inside .

I park on a side street and grab Wren’s backpack from the passenger seat. I jog up the steps, and that finally seems to fix the guard’s distraction.

“We don’t allow men inside,” he informs me, narrowing his gaze on my hand where it grips Wren’s pack.

“Good,” I snap, suddenly irritated by the thought that this guy thinks he can keep me from what belongs to me. “I’m dropping this off for Wren Holloway. Will you make sure she gets it?”

He eyes me curiously, but nods and takes the bag from my hand. I turn and walk away without another word, but instead of heading back to my car, I walk around the side of the building.

I don’t want to leave just yet. Even being close to her like this is better than going home and pacing the quiet rooms of my house until the sun rises and I can resume my stalking.

I’ve always been crazy, but this is a whole new level.

Might as well lean into it.