Viper (The Unmasked #4)

Chapter 1

Viper

Ghosts travel along the path with me, whispering foul prayers at my back.

The scent of damp earth and lavender clings to the fall air, taking me back to the year I spent in this hellish place.

Each memory rakes along my spine like bony fingers, begging for my attention.

But I ignore them, navigating the rocky terrain, focusing on the dark copse of trees ahead.

My boot slips on the rocks littering the trail, and his hand lands on my lower back, steadying me.

It takes everything not to shove him away.

My body craves him too much.

And right now, I can’t deal with how my nerve endings snap with fiery awareness when he touches me. Much less his wants and needs and insecurities.

“Are you—” Breaker stops speaking as I stalk forward, putting space between us, leaving him and Striker behind.

His hand falls away, and the cool air seeps back in, replacing his warmth and I hate how much I instantly miss his touch.

He’s too consuming, chipping away at the stone wall I placed between us.

With his dark skin, tight blue Henley, and jeans that hug his perfect ass, he’s difficult to ignore.

The constant longing he rouses in me feels perfectly sinful in this place.

But that’s not why I’m avoiding him. It’s so I don’t have to see, yet again, the flash of hurt that no doubt crossed his face.

My specialty. Hurting him and moving on.

Keeping my eyes trained on the hilltop, I push on, trying to forget the agony that marked his handsome face in that hotel room a few months ago.

When I fucking ripped his heart out. When I denied not just him, but myself, everything I so desperately want.

I’m too much of a coward to admit that those lectures from Father burrowed under my skin and planted seeds of disgust.

At myself. At this ache that lives in me to have him.

“I thought they said it was at the top of this hill,” Striker says, following a few steps behind us. The sudden intrusion of his deep voice rips me from my thoughts. “Shouldn’t we see it by now?”

“It’s just up ahead,” I say, continuing up the path, shoulders hunched against the wind. It howls today, just as it did when I lived here all those years ago. Years I don’t want to remember but need to revisit.

“We don’t have much time, Viper,” Breaker says, as he slides in beside me, keeping up with my determined pace. “Fallon and Hunter are expecting us in Inverness soon, and the trip is—”

“No shit,” I snap, then grind my jaw. I don’t have to see his face to know I’ve hurt his feelings. Again. But fuck. I’m sick of tiptoeing around them. Around my own.

“If you prefer to do this alone, we can go back to the car,” Striker says. “You don’t have to be an asshole.”

I huff out a laugh, because we all know I’m an asshole, and turn around, facing Striker.

Behind him the path winds down to where our rental car sits at an angle on the side of the dirt road.

The long, windy drive to the hilltop was blocked off years ago, so we were forced to go on foot up this steep path to the entrance.

He quirks a brow. Shoving a tendril of hair away from my face, I ignore all the silent questions hanging in the air, and shift my focus to the lush green landscape, dotted with lavender. I take in the scenery, my heart expanding at the raw beauty.

It’s just as I remember it. The low mountain range in the distance, the lake at the foothills reflecting the gray sky, and bloated clouds.

The landscape is so dramatically rugged and wild.

Scraped of human life except for the small village resting in the middle.

It’s so tragically beautiful, you’d never know hope gets eaten in this desolate place.

Fallon rescued me from this hell shrouded in prayers and I never wanted to return. Yet here I am, seeking something I can’t even name.

Breaker nudges my elbow, bringing me out of my thoughts. I glance his way, catching his eyes, but look away.

He yearns too.

“Come on,” I say, continuing up the path and shoving away guilt, but it tugs at the skin on my back like an old scar.

I’m being a dick, I know, but they have no clue what this place was. Or maybe they do, and that’s why they hover like mother hens.

Ever since the day we found those papers in Fallon’s office, the memories of my time here have refused to leave. They claw inside my head, making me antsy. I had thought I had buried them so deep, memories would never visit again, but now that they have awoken, they haunt me.

Like the day Fallon came for me, carrying a kind smile and eyes resembling all the good things from my past.

Like her.

“Hey.” Breaker grips my shoulder, forcing my focus on him.

Again.

When our eyes connect, that familiar heat zaps down my spine.

His winter-blue eyes move over my face, assessing.

Seeing. They’re like Fallon’s. Eerily so.

But unlike Fallon, he’s so good. Breaker radiates purity and warmth.

Like home and everything safe, and I can’t even look at him.

Not after that night five months ago. When I stole a piece of his innocence in that shitty hotel.

Or maybe he took the last dregs of mine.

But I know that’s not true. Cruel hands slashed away my innocence while I kneeled in a dark room with rose-scented candles and whispered sins.

Breaker gave his innocence away. He exchanged it for a single night of meaningless sex with a complete fucking stranger.

I don’t know which part pisses me off more.

That he gave his virginity to a random woman he picked up in a bar between missions—a woman who didn’t give a shit about him—or that he chose to sleep with someone two days after that night in the hotel when I let him strip me of all my barriers.

“We don’t have to be here.” Breaker gestures to the hilltop, eyeing me strangely. Part of me wonders if he knows the secrets I keep. He lifts his chin toward the path ahead. “Whatever is up there can stay in the past.”

“The woman in the village said the place isn’t even here anymore,” Striker adds, catching up with us. He looks around, then to the copse of trees, before his gold eyes land on me. “We can go back.”

“I have to see it,” I say.

What I don’t tell him is I need to see, to know it’s gone, so I can bury the past. Leave behind the corrosive thoughts in this God-forsaken place and be done with them. And maybe, just maybe, I can fucking breathe. Live. Be at peace.

Without explaining further, I continue on, my gut churning, knowing that we should be able to spot the tops of the towers above the tree line, but it’s just more sky and gray clouds.

The woman in the tavern we stopped at told us the old school was in ruins, which seems impossible.

It was such a massive structure, with tall stone walls and angled roofs that covered the sins that lived within its dark halls.

Stained glass windows depicting saints and fallen angels.

Cold drafts in secret rooms filled with punishing pain.

All this for a God who felt too distant to care about a boy in an orphanage.

There is no way it’s just gone.

It takes us another minute to reach the top, but when we do, we freeze, taking in the scene.

“Jesus,” Striker whispers. He steps off the path, inching forward, hands the pockets of his jeans. “What do you think happened?”

Destruction. Damnation.

A cleansing.

“What was this place?” Breaker asks. “It looks like…” He doesn’t continue. We know what it looks like.

“Saint Theresa School for Boys,” I say, my heart doing a weird tumble in my chest. “This is where Fallon found me.”

Striker glances over his shoulder at me, then down to the ground.

Large stones scatter the landscape, stuck at odd angles in the damp emerald grass.

Only a few walls remain upright, all scorched with long black lines that snake up toward the sky.

The large opening in the cathedral wall that held stained glass, now gapes empty and vacant.

“Looks like the place burned to the ground,” he says. “How long ago did she say this place—”

“Eighteen years ago,” I say, cutting him off.

“So you’d have been, what?” Breaker asks. “Seven?”

I nod absently, taking a step forward, careful not to step on the thick black stones embedded in the ground.

“It must have been one hell of a fire,” Breaker says. “This place looks like a fucking bomb went off.”

Striker kicks at a large stone, covered in moss. “Didn’t you mention Fallon brought you to the school when you were six?”

My heart hammers, that old fear digging into the back of my neck like talons. I don’t answer as I move ahead, mindful of each step. He knows the answer. It was in the file.

“Excuse me!” Behind us, a voice carries over the ruins, and we turn to find a man somewhere in his forties rushing up the path, waving at us.

“Who the fuck is that?” Striker asks as Breaker stalks forward to meet the man halfway.

His shaggy red hair frames a handsome but open face, covered in freckles.

A woven brown sweater covers his broad chest, and worn jeans stretch over his thick legs.

He has a stocky, hardworking look to him, like everyone else who lives here.

When he reaches Breaker, he pulls out a piece of paper about the size of a photograph and hands it to him.

“My mum thought you’d want this,” he says with a thick accent, eyeing me as Breaker inspects the paper. “She told me to come up here and make sure you got the picture.”

“Your mother is the woman from the tavern?” I ask.

“Aye,” he says. “Mum told me to get up here and give ya that photo. Said you may want it.”

I glance at Breaker, but he’s absorbed in the photograph, his focus making me uneasy.

“You were here, weren’t you?” the man asks me. “At the boys’ home?”

When I nod, he makes a sound in his throat, then shifts his attention to the ruins at my back.

“It was a good thing you got adopted,” he says. “Though none of the boys were here when it happened.”