Deliver us from Evil: A Reverse Harem Dark Romance Series (The Sinners of Saint Amos Book 3) Read online

  Deliver us from Evil

  A Dark New Adult Reverse Harem Romance (The Sinners of Saint Amos Book 3)

  Logan Fox

  Copyright © 2020 by Logan Fox

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise without written permission from the publisher. It is illegal to copy this book, post it to a website, or distribute it by any other means without permission, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author's imaginations. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

  Blurb

  Forgive, and you will be forgiven. Luke 6:37

  Gabriel

  No daughter of mine should be so easily misled by wicked boys.

  Trinity's naivety is shocking, but that will change.

  I will teach her the ways of the world, just like I taught Monica.

  Soon she will love me.

  Just like Monica.

  I will start a new life with Trinity, away from judgmental eyes.

  But first, she must repent.

  Deliver us from Evil is the third and final book in the Sinners of Saint Amos dark bully reverse harem romance series.

  Contains strong language, violence, and sexual situations some may find triggering.

  This is the last book in a series. Cannot be read as a standalone.

  No cheating. HEA guaranteed.

  Theme Song

  everything i wanted — Billie Eilish

  Playlist

  Dangerous — Son Lux

  Ma And Pa — London Tewers

  See the Light — Sofa Surfers

  Temple Priest — MISSIO

  Repeat After Me — KONGOS

  Serpent of Old — Seven Lions

  Lake Of Fire — Nirvana

  Poacher’s Pride — Nicole Dollanganger

  Joan of Arc — In This Moment

  Check out my Deliver us from Evil Playlist!

  Chapter One

  Trinity

  It’s amazing, the things you don’t notice the first—or the hundredth—time around.

  She kept you, Trinity. She kept you because you were special.

  When I first came to the bell tower with Apollo I never noticed the stale, chalky smell inside this small room.

  Do you know why you were special, Trinity?

  Gabriel is a handsome man, especially with his warm brown eyes. But I never noticed the spots of bronze in his eyes before.

  Because you’re mine.

  I never noticed his shaggy eyebrows. The shape of his nose. How similar his eyes are to mine. Suddenly, it’s impossible not to notice.

  I wouldn’t let her.

  Gabriel—my father—scans my face like he has so many times before. But this time, there’s hidden meaning in his gaze. He’s not checking to see if I’ve finally found God. He’s staring at his daughter’s face. Picking out his likeness, or perhaps my mother’s.

  He brushes his thumb over my lower lip. The intimate gesture sends a surge of panic through me that freezes me solid.

  But only for a moment.

  Then self-preservation kicks in.

  I shove Gabriel away and whirl around, bolting out of the tiny room. But I barely take two steps before he grabs my hair and yanks me back.

  I fly into him, and we both crash backward into the wall. He slips an arm around my waist and drags me back. When I realize he’s taking me further into that tiny room, I put everything I have into my struggles.

  I grab the door frame as I pass. Gabriel makes an angry sound in his throat, then he rips me free with a hard tug that leaves behind some of my fingernails.

  I scream again, as loud as I can.

  He throws me away from him, and I catch a glimpse of the enraged snarl twisting his face before I hit the wall.

  Bright pain lances through my head.

  Gabriel crouches at my side, face disturbingly blank even after our scuffle. I groan and try to sit up, try to move away, but that makes my head hurt even more.

  He touches the side of my face. “I didn’t want it to be this way. I wanted to tell you. I wanted you to know the truth. But they fought me on it. Both of them. Said it would confuse you.”

  Gabriel shakes his head, breaking eye contact for a second. “I should have fought harder, child. I should have insisted. But…”

  When he looks at me again, there’s something terrifying in his eyes.

  Despair.

  “I loved them, Trinity. Both of them. I know it’s impossible to understand, but it’s the truth.” His voice goes hoarse, and he runs those same fingertips down my cheek. “I did it for them. And I’d do it again.”

  He smiles, but it’s faint and more sad than happy. “They’re gone now. It’s just us. But we can start again. Me and you. We can be a family again.”

  He wants me to be his daughter? If I could have, I would have laughed in his face. How the hell can he think I’d want a sick, perverted man like him for a father?

  But I can’t even stand, let alone argue. “Please, just let me go,” I whisper. “I won’t tell anyone.”

  He grabs my shoulder, squeezes it. “Shh.” He shakes his head. “It’ll be perfect, you’ll see. Now you wait here. I’ll be back with something to help you sleep. And when you wake up, it’ll be a new day. A new life.”

  It’s amazing, the things you don’t notice.

  I’d always thought that tiny spark, that delightful little gleam that Gabriel got in his eyes was a kind of righteous joy.

  Now I see it for what it truly is.

  Madness.

  Gabriel leaves, locking the door with a finality that makes my skin crawl. I have to get out of here before he comes back. But there’s no way I can open that door and this room has no windows.

  My heart starts knocking in my chest.

  I’m trapped.

  Chapter Two

  Rube

  I open my eyes to darkness and cigarette smoke, a combination that never fails to give me heart palpitations.

  Triggers come like a thief in the night. Ambushing my mind, my body. I’ve stopped fighting them because I’ll never win. Same reason I stopped fighting my Ghost.

  As if my sudden panic wakes him, Cass fumbles a hand down my arm. “Jus’ Zach,” he murmurs, still half asleep as he laces his fingers through mine. He squeezes my hand, and then he relaxes, already asleep again.

  In the basement, sleep was our oblivion. I was always exhausted and Cass was fucked on heroin more often than not, so it was easy for him to slip away with me.

  But I’m wide awake now.

  Trinity is gone.

  I shake loose Cass’s hand, tugging on my shirt as I step out from behind the curtain.

  Zach is sitting in the armchair, smoking a cigarette.

  Darkness and smoke.

  “Where is she?” My voice is still raspy from sleep.

  “Probably halfway to Sisters of Mercy by now,” he says, and then takes a long drag at his cigarette without looking up at me.

  “She left without saying goodbye?” I inch closer as I wait for his response. Because I’m pretty sure it’s going to piss me off. And if that’s the case, I might go for his throat.

  I consider myself calm. Reasonable. I think thin
gs through a hundred times before I act on them. But when I’m triggered it’s like a switch inside me flips. All that calm, all that reason…it’s decimated by rage. Like a town flattened by the shock wave of a nuclear bomb.

  Zachary can trigger me at will. He’s had that power ever since I found out who he really was. I couldn’t reconcile the fact that he’d been living a normal life above us while we hunkered in the dark waiting for our next visit.

  I spend a lot of time dredging up memories of the Utopia that had existed above us. Replaying them. Wondering if the sounds I’d so often heard were made by him. A patter of fast, light footsteps—was that Zach on his way to school? A faint thump—Zachary sitting down in front of the TV, eating a PB&J sandwich while he watched Sesame Street? Sometimes we’d hear voices, but only if the Keepers shouted. And then the words were usually unintelligible because they’d made sure to soundproof the basement as much as possible.

  All except one. A name.

  Mason.

  “Didn’t want to wake you,” Zachary says.

  I have no way of telling if he’s lying. He’s had years to perfect the art of twisting the truth.

  Fuck. Why did I let myself sleep that deeply?

  Because I was happy for the first time in a long time. And it felt good. And it felt safe. And I let my guard down.

  This is what happens.

  “And she said she’s going to Mercy?”

  We can fetch her when we’re done with Gabriel. I know a few of the sisters who work there. Shouldn’t be too difficult to find her if she wants to be found.

  Zach takes another drag before replying. “She’s an orphan. Where the fuck else would she go?”

  So callous. But I knew him when he was still vulnerable. When he was still human. The first week he was down in the basement with us, he’d been crying for his mother. Begging his father to open the door and let him out. That he didn’t belong down there with the ‘other kids.’

  He eventually realized he wasn’t special. Not to them, not to us. He was exactly like the ‘other kids.’

  We’d been planning escape long before he arrived, but we were suspicious of each other because we were each treated differently. Cass had a regular dose of drugs to keep him warm and fuzzy while abominable things were done to him. Sometimes he even seemed to be enjoying it. Apollo only had two ghosts, and they only ever spent time with him on the weekends. Zach and I? Our Ghost treated us like scum. We were kicked and bitten and had foreign stuff shoved in us all the fucking time. We were tools—objects of pleasure for a sick man. Sometimes he would visit us together, make us watch what he did to the other one. Or he’d take us away to one of the upstairs rooms. Play us against each other. We’d get treats when we were alone with him, while our brothers in the basement starved.

  That shit really messes with your head.

  Other boys came and went. So many we didn’t bother finding out their names. Weak, shattered, hollow. Nameless shapes in the gloom, some of who never made a sound, despite how brutally they were used.

  Some who, after a few days or a week, would stop moving altogether.

  We don’t know why they brought the boys there to die. Not until we’d escaped, anyway. Then it became so clear.

  A lot of things became clear after we were free.

  But that would never have happened without Zachary. We wouldn’t have been able to get out of there without his help. He knew the layout of the house. He knew his parents’ schedule. And he had a solid plan. But it would take four, possibly even five kids to pull it off. He sat and watched. Chose us, because he saw strength and resilience.

  If Zachary hadn’t come to the basement, we’d have died there like the other boys.

  If we hadn’t been there, Zach would never have escaped.

  Everything happens for a reason. Trinity’s arrival only strengthened that belief. She came to Saint Amos—to us—for a reason. It wasn’t a coincidence.

  I thought it was a sign from God. A reminder that there was more to life than revenge. That love could exist in a void. Until we discovered who she really was.

  She wasn’t a Godsend.

  She’d been sent by the Devil.

  There’s movement at the partition—we woke Cass. He moves aside, letting Apollo into the room.

  “She’s gone?” Apollo asks. The disappointment in his voice hits me harder than it should. Apollo has changed so much since Trinity arrived. I don’t know if the others see it, but he’s started interacting more, not just sitting quietly in the corner absorbed in whatever toy Zachary lavished on him. When Zachary isn’t around, he starts talking about what we’ll do after we’ve found our Ghosts and ended them, as if he’s obsessed with starting a new life.

  Before, he’d been drowning in the past. Trinity had brought him to the surface. Had breathed life back into his cold, dead mind.

  “Yeah,” Zach says, “and we should get going too.”

  How often he’s sat like that. Slightly hunched, cigarette dribbling smoke from one end as it dangles from his fingertips. He’s lost weight again. It happens when things come to a head. He stops eating, and his body takes sustenance in any form it can—even if it’s from his own flesh.

  He locks eyes with me. Green to my green.

  Green…but outsiders only see black. My Ghost liked my eyes. Forced me to keep them open. Forced me to watch. And then told me how pretty they were when I cried. So, like Cass shaves his head, I hide behind colored contacts. I’ve worn them for so long, so religiously, that I hardly notice them anymore.

  “Now how about we get a move on?” Zach stands and crushes out his cigarette in the designated mug.

  “First, coffee,” Cass mutters. He doesn’t seem that pained that Trinity’s gone. I guess she was just a piece of tail to him. It’s easy for him to pick up girls. He simply has to look in their direction and smile.

  “I’ll bring you some,” Apollo says. “I need to grab my stuff.”

  “Yeah, me too.” Cass stretches. “I’ll walk with you.”

  Zach turns on them with narrowed eyes. “The fuck you will. We’re sticking with protocol until Gabriel’s tied up in that fucking cabin. Got it?”

  Apollo nods, even dropping his gaze. Cass scoffs and gives him a dismissive wave. “Fine, whatever.” But there’s a shift in his eyes I’ve seen too many times not to know what it means.

  The moment they’re out from under Zach’s watchful eye, they’ll meet up. They might even walk together anyway, despite what he says. Because although he’s taken command, Zach doesn’t control us.

  I guess, after going through what we did, we’ll never let someone have that much say in our lives.

  Apollo and Cass leave, and I make to go after them, to warn them. Because they might not like it, but Zach’s right. We have to be careful. If Gabriel slips through our fingers again…

  But a hand catches my arm, squeezing my bicep hard, almost cruelly.

  And I have to let the other two go.

  I glance over my shoulder. Zach’s face is stone.

  “Gotta run some things by you,” he says.

  Code for “I need you.” Always has been.

  So I stay.

  We smoke a cigarette together. We have a shot of whiskey. And we listen to each other recite exactly what we’ll do to our Ghost the day we find him.

  Chapter Three

  Cass

  Where the fuck is Apollo? I’d have stuck with him after we left the library, but he said he needed to take care of some shit. I thought he was being literal—I wasn’t hanging around for that. But that was ages ago, and he’s not answering my calls.

  I need to make sure he’s okay, and that’s pissing me off.

  I hate needing things.

  Sleep.

  Sex.

  Coffee.

  Sleep replaced the heroin. Coffee replaced the adrenaline. And sex replaced…Huh. I guess it didn’t replace anything. I suppose my brothers need things too, but they’re not addicts like me.

&n
bsp; The least I can do is fucking own that shit.

  Denial’s for pussies.

  I could slip into the kitchen and make myself a cuppa. That wouldn’t raise too many eyebrows for Cassius Santos, the Hall Monitor. After, I’ll track down Apollo and find out why he ditched me.

  The kitchen’s pretty bare. Can’t even find a kettle. Looks like everything’s been locked up for the big exodus. Guess then there’s less stuff to dust off when everyone gets back after summer break.

  One of the kitchen guys comes out of what I assume is the pantry with a bag of what could only be potatoes and calls out, “Hey, man,” when he sees me.

  I walk over. “Hey. You seen that blond guy who works here?”

  The kitchen guy frowns. “Apollo?”

  “Yeah, him.”

  Kitchen guy shrugs. “Nah, man. He was supposed to be here to help me with this shit.” Kitchen guy cocks his head to the bag of potatoes.

  “’Kay. Thanks.”

  “You tried his room?”

  “Yeah,” I call back without looking around. Idiot. Why wouldn’t I have—

  “Bell tower?”

  I stop walking. Turn back. “Bell tower?” Why am I suddenly in a modern-day remake of the Hunchback of Notre Dame?

  The kitchen guy puts down the sack of spuds. “Yeah. He goes up there to smoke a spliff.”

  Well fuck me sideways. And here I thought I knew all there was to know about twinkle toes.

  “I’ll take a look. Thanks, man.”

  Kitchen guy nods. “If you find him, tell him Dave says fuck him.” He shakes his head, picks up his sack, and heads off to wherever bags of potatoes are destined during summer break.

  It takes me a few minutes to find the stairs leading up to the tower. Another few minutes to climb them. And Christ, I’m fucking done when I reach the top.