PROLOGUE
SIX YEARS AGO
SEBASTIAN
“You can’t be serious.”
Ashton’s voice is shrill as he paces the room, his shoulders tight with coiled energy, muscles twitching. Alec watches him from where he leans against the wall, eyes hard.
“We can’t do this,” Ashton continues. He threads his fingers through his hair and tugs, pulling at the roots. “This, this isfucked. You can’t seriously be asking us to go through with this.”
“These are Dante’s orders. Not mine,” Alec responds coldly. “So, if you have a problem with?—”
“Dante’s fucking orders!” Ashton spits the words out and turns to Alec, throwing his arms wide. “Do you even hear yourself right now? This isn’t… This is fucking monstrous, you know that? This is human fucking trafficking. Some of them arekids, for Christ’s sake! You can’t be serious about doing this, Alec!”
“I follow my orders,” Alec reminds him. There’s a sharp edge to his words, a warning of how close he is to losing his temper. Ashton doesn’t seem to notice. He shakes his head with a scoff and resumes pacing.
“No. Not this time,” Ashton says. “This is too much. This isn’t us… This isn’t you.”
“Youwon’t have to do anything,” Alec insists. “Dante specifically requested Viper for this job and?—”
“And Viper is fucking insane!” Ashton shouts, gesturing to where Viper currently lounges in an armchair, cleaning under his nails with a knife. “He doesn’t understand right from wrong. He’s not capable of it anymore!”
“Rude,” Viper counters, pointing the knife at him.
“And you don’t think it’s extra fucked, to be makinghimdo this? After what he’s been through?” When Alec doesn’t answer, Ashton turns on me, striding over to jab his finger against my chest. “And you! You’re supposed to be his moral compass, aren’t you? So where the hell areyou? You know how fucked up this is.You fucking know it. You’re supposed to tell him where the line is with shit like this. This is a big fucking line in the sand, Doc!”
I grind my back teeth together but don’t say a word, not even when he pushes me again, practically shoving me, trying to get me to react. I don’t. I can’t. It’s not my place to go against Alec’s orders.
Even when I want to.
I ignore the bile rising in my throat and keep my face perfectly blank, eyes fixed above Ashton’s shoulder. Because he’s right. We’ve done a lot of horrible things, and we’ve broken a lot of laws together, even before we joined up with Dante and his organization. But this? This is different. This is evil.
And there’s no coming back from it if we do this.
I keep my thoughts to myself as I watch Alec, waiting for his final decision. If he asks this of us, we’ll do it. My brothers would go to hell and back for each other.
Only this time, it’s looking like that’s exactly what we might have to do.
“Sebastian follows orders,” Alec tells Ashton, his biceps flexing as his arms tighten across his chest.
His words hit unexpectedly hard, and for a moment, my mask slips. Is that what I am now? A monster whose only excuse is that I was following orders?
Is that what I’ve become? What we’ve become?
We descended into hell so slowly over the years that we never even noticed until we found ourselves surrounded by devils.
“I won’t do it,” Ashton insists, shaking his head. “And I won’t let you do it either, Alec. I won’t let any of you do this. This isn’t about territory or money, or…or anything. This is evil. This is wrong. And I won’t let it happen.”
“And what do you plan to do to stop it?” Alec asks in a low and dangerous voice.
There’s nothing any of us can do, and he knows it. Dante owns us. He holds us by the leash. And when he says bite, well…
We’re nothing more than his rabid dogs, now.
“I’ll leave. I’ll disappear,” Ashton says, finally coming to a stop. He squares his shoulders and turns to stare Alec down, a determined look on his face.
“You think Dante won’t find you and kill you for that?” Alec responds.
