Chapter 1
one
SULLY
PRESENT DAY
From my diary: I had that dream again. The white-masked man was there.
And not only there, but he was the main protagonist. Tall, tenebrous, and ineffable.
His intense eyes were fixed on me behind his porcelain-looking mask.
He was spying from the shadows, studying, examining my sleeping body with thoroughness.
I wasn’t scared by his intrusive gaze and ever-looming presence; instead, I felt oddly safe.
And thrilled. Excitement was blazing under my skin as he continued to eye-strip me to my very soul.
I could hear his slow breaths in contrast with my thumping heart.
His dark figure was far away, and at the same time, so close it made my heart pound.
The dream was so vivid that when I woke up, I thought I saw someone outside my dorm room window.
I rubbed my eyes and pushed myself up, but there was no one, only darkness and silence.
He felt so, so real to me. Is it wrong to wish he was?
To want more from a figment of my imagination?
I loop the strap of my military-green messenger bag over my head, and as it slides down, it grazes my glasses, pushing the nose pads painfully into my skin. Ouch! I let the bag hang on my hip as I make my way out of the classroom with a silent curse.
Statistics class was long and tedious, but the predictable monotony actually helped slow my thoughts down.
A gust of wind howls around the corner of the white brick building, creating little vortexes of soggy dead leaves. Spring is taking its time—mid-seasons really seem to be disappearing.
I hear some students across the street hoot and laugh as I’m descending the building steps.
I suddenly feel my left shoe losing traction and my leg slipping forward.
I wiggle frantically, flailing my arms like a damn octopus until I regain balance, assuming a surfer pose to avoid a bruised coccyx.
A couple of people snort my way. I ignore them.
I’m used to being the object of ridicule.
Klutzy-Sully was my high school nickname.
It got worse the older I became. Luck doesn’t seem to be on my side.
A month ago, part of a scaffolding almost fell on me while I was reading and walking—I learned my lesson after that.
But someone had pushed me out of the way.
The man was wearing a mask. Possibly. Well, I might have hit my head when I was shoved to the ground, but I clearly remember a body against mine.
Big hands shielding me. A panted breath in my ear.
When I opened my eyes my vision was blurry, so I couldn’t get a good look at his face, but I felt eyes staring at me.
After I blinked, he was gone, but not the sensation of his hard warmth against me.
Since then, I’ve been dreaming about a man in a white mask looking at me. Protecting me. Am I going crazy? Possibly. A mental breakdown at the beginning of my twenties is not that improbable. Quite the opposite.
I crouch down to pick up the pens that must have fallen from my bag.
I used to think that maybe my clumsiness was a family trait, but my older brother, Ollie, is the picture of grace, which made me quickly realize that my incoordination was all…
me. I don’t remember my mother, but my late father was very dexterous, especially with his fists—I still have scars and a chipped molar to remember him by.
The dark memories of him still make my heart shake like a tornado inside my chest. They quickly shuffle to flashbacks from another time, equally painted with violence and pain.
I squeeze my burning eyes and ball my hands up around the bag strap, feeling the stiff fabric digging into my skin.
The slight sting oddly helps, rushing me to the present.
One breath at a time, one step at a time.
I force myself to focus my attention on the sight a few feet in front of me.
On the students with colorful hats and puffer jackets milling around the university grounds, the sound of chatter and footsteps, the smell of wet grass.
It all happened in the past. I got over it.
I’m safe now. Yes, I was kidnapped, and yes, I almost died.
But I didn’t. Ollie, his husband, Rague, and his brothers found me.
They saved me and protected me. They still do.
Nevertheless, after that day, I turned hollow by the conspicuous weight of all that I lost. I was strenuously struggling just to stay afloat.
Any vestige of faith and lightheartedness I miraculously still had was crushed the moment I found out my abusive father was the one who had sold me to be beaten to death in front of a live audience.
The sick bastard had already robbed me of my childhood, and more physical trauma to my still-bleeding mental wounds broke me.
So I hid from the real world. Barely left Ollie and Rague’s house for months.
Buried myself under fear, self-pity, and hopelessness.
Until one day, as I spent each passing hour apathetically drifting away into the ocean of time, I saw my brother—the toughest and most strong-willed man I’ve ever met—crying in the kitchen in his husband’s arms. He mistakenly felt responsible for what happened to me, since he was the one who was supposed to be sold that day.
After all he had done for me growing up, all the sacrifices he made and things he gave up, he still believed it had been his fault.
That was my turning point. I willed myself to fight not for myself but for him.
I needed to see him enjoying his life for once, to stop putting me first. My words weren’t chipping away at Ollie’s guilt, though.
So I went to Meg, Rague’s foster mother.
She was… is a psychiatrist, and since Ollie and I became part of the family she built with her wife, Linda, she welcomed me as a patient with open arms.
My diagnosis was a form of PTSD caused by the assault.
The symptoms were interfering with my daily life, so I started therapy.
Thanks to Meg and the year and a half we worked together, I slowly took small steps into the outside world.
I even worked part-time in an animal clinic, and although I almost let fear win a couple of times, after a while, something changed.
I guess life snuck up on me, and I realized I wanted to move on… for myself.
I started by getting a high school diploma online.
Then I took some online college classes, which multiplied quickly—I’ve always been a bookworm with a higher-than-average IQ.
Then I began taking the occasional trip to the University of Illinois branch in the city—the family took turns accompanying me since I still felt edgy when outside.
I got steadier and more confident with time as I remembered who I used to be and what I was passionate about and why.
Six months ago, I left my brother’s place—convincing him to let me go wasn’t without effort—and moved to the university campus near the small town of Urbana, to continue the third year of my undergraduate studies in chemistry and animal biology.
Someone from the family comes every week to check on me, and I don’t mind it one bit.
This everyday routine has become comfortable.
But the harder I keep trying to build a life of my own, the harder the irrepressible fear threatens to come crushing down on me all over again.
But one thing has become crystal clear with each passing day: I will never go back to being that broken person.
I’ve painfully glued my cracked pieces one by one, and I won’t let anyone or anything shatter them ever again.
I straighten my spine and start walking across the quad.
My thoughts tend to get tangled, and I space out at times while I should be focusing on the present, my studies.
I’m at the top of almost all my classes.
Next semester, I’ll start vet school, and the year after, I’ll get my university degree in two different majors.
My goal is to become one of the best vets in the state of Illinois.
Someone called me an overachiever, but I’m not. I’m smart and diligent and adore animals. I lost two years due to my father’s disinterest in my education and what happened that horrible day. No more. I got this.
Adapting to campus life hasn’t been smooth sailing, though.
I had to get used to the university’s fast pace and loud dorm.
My roommate was kind of an asshole, coming back late and wasted, playing noisy video games as I was trying to sleep, sneering at me with his friends.
But he suddenly moved out after only a week.
When I asked the RA, he said the guy didn’t give any reason, just ran out with his stuff like a bat out of hell.
The fact that the few times I saw him on campus he lowered his eyes and hurried away scared shitless tells me that someone from my family had something to do with his hasty move and change of behavior.
The brotherhood can be intense or, in layman’s terms, menacing as hell.
Rague was fostered by Meg and Linda with the other five kids, and when Ollie married him, we became part of this brotherhood—or sausage fest as Lori calls it.
The fact that the brotherhood has a dark past that turned them into bloodthirsty vigilantes makes them extremely dangerous, but only to people who hurt others.
They’re trying to eradicate the hidden deep roots of evil, the ones invisible to others, but nonetheless very real.
I’ve seen different shades of malevolence in my life, enough to realize that the brotherhood is an essential part of it. The best evil part.
My phone starts ringing. I slide it out of my jacket pocket and tap on the green icon when I see Brad’s name.
“Hey, dude!”