“He had my hatred for you, and that was enough.”
Drew’s knee rose, hitting Owen under the chin and sending his whole body flying backward until he was laid out on the floor like a star-shaped sacrifice. When Drew moved to step over him, his feet straddled on either side of Owen’s hips, he looked to his father, and his face turned impossibly colder.
Eric shook his head slowly, answering some silent question the rest of us couldn’t decipher from one look alone.
When Drew dropped his gaze back to Owen, he let out a long stream of breath from his cheeks. “If there’s one thing I’ve learned since getting out of prison, Sinclair, it’s that letting hate make all your decisions for you is like walking yourself to your own slaughter. You’re proof of that. Here you are, lying beneath me, waiting for me to just stick a bullet in your head and relieve you of your duties. Your hate for me is something I’ll never understand—”
“You’ve made a mockery out of this club,” Owen hissed, his teeth clenching together.
“But it wasmyclub to make a mockery out of. Not yours. A club born from my father’s name. A club built by the man standing beside me now. And I’ll be damned if I let a weasel like you dictate to us what the fuck we make of the Hounds on our backs.”
Owen stared at Drew, his chest rising and falling rapidly, all his words stolen or lost.
With one last glance at Slater, Jedd, and Eric, Drew began to lower himself down until he was hovering over Owen, with one hand pressed against his chest, while the other reached into Drew’s boot and pulled out a knife.
“Hold him down, boys. It’s time we cut the club out of him.”
Slater and Jedd both held down an arm each, descending on Owen like vultures on road kill. He’d fucked them over, and they were more than happy to be a part of the cost of his betrayal. It took the first cut of the knife into Owen’s flesh for my mind to realize that Rubin didn’t need to bear witness to this.
Tugging on his hand, I held him to me as the sharp bowie knife slid under the layer of flesh at Owen’s shoulder. The blood hid the hideous yellow-white of the fat and muscle under the tissue, but my eyes stayed glued to the slow peel of the pink flesh that had The Hounds printed into it. There was nothing I could do to hide the screams from Rubin, and I felt him tremble just for a second before his back went straight and his eyes focused on something behind me.
Owen’s wails of pain matched every slide of Drew’s knife as it cut through flesh. His legs kicked out, and blood oozed and slid over the surface, making the floor of the training room look like a butcher shop, but I still couldn’t drag my eyes away from the scene. Not until I felt a vibration rise from Rubin’s pocket.
Moving slowly, he pulled the phone out, the source of light now making his face glow as we both glanced down at the screen.
Mom Calling…
I didn’t need to tell him that answering was a bad idea. Another round of Owen’s deafening screams seemed to ignite the air around us and draw our gazes back to the center of the room where Jedd took a swing at Owen’s face as he tried to buck Drew off.
“Ayda,” Rubin whispered after a second, holding the phone out to me.
Glancing down at the screen my heart froze. There was a text message from Rubin’s mom on the screen. It wasn’t long, and it wasn’t detailed, but it was enough to make my breath catch.
Cops and ATF dispatched to The Hut, Rubin. If you’rethere with your friend, please get home NOW! Your father is out for blood.
Rubin and I looked at one another as another scream pitched from Owen and rang around the room with an almost deafening tone.
“Drew! We’ve got trouble headed our way.”
Chapter Thirty-Eight
DREW
Iwas too lost in the gritty cries of Owen beneath me, enjoying the power of removing the one thing that was sacred around here from his bruised flesh. Maybe I was sicker than even I had come to understand. Blood poured from him, sweat too, but the thing that made the hairs on the back of my neck rise in victory was those toe-curdling cries of agony. I enjoyed those the most.
Never fuck with The Hounds of Babylon. That’s what I wanted to paint on a banner and hang across every border of our small town, right alongside a picture of this vision lying beneath me. A reminder to all those who thought we—I—were soft. A reminder that love didn’t make you weak, it made you motivated. It gave you purpose. To save those you love, you’d do unimaginable things to those you never thought you’d have to punish.
We’ve got troublerang through my head again in the distance, the echo of her voice bouncing off the walls of my brain until her urgent call made me blink and focus, my head snapping in her direction.
I stared at her, and I waited.
“Cops and ATF are on their way.” She held up a phone. “Mrs. Walsh was warning her son.”
I turned my attention back to look down at Owen, whose eyes were rolling in the back of his head, sweat dripping from his forehead into his ears and his skin now pale and deathly.
“Fuck,” I hissed.
“We need to get him outta here, Drew,” Slater told me calmly.