Chapter 6 #2
Thankfully, he calmed enough and released him. Making sure he stayed down on the ground, Dom left him there and came to me. He took hold of my arm and led me away from the group and most of the crowd.
His car was parked a little way off from the others, closer to the road. Clearly, he had been racing. Go figure. Seeing the Mustang again made my anxiety nearly boil over. As we reached the car, I tugged my arm away and he faced me.
“What the hell, Dom?” I seethed. “I was looking all over for you. Why did we have to meet here of all places?”
The look of rage on his face was gone and replaced with a sheepish one.
“Sorry,” he signed. He signed some more and it was my turn to look guilty.
I shook my head. He brought up his phone and started texting.
A few seconds later, he showed me his screen.
“I figured you wanted to meet somewhere public to feel safer.”
Safer from him and his brother.
“So, a street racing hangout?”
He shrugged and I rolled my eyes. He texted some more. “I thought you might like it.”
My anger dissipated if only a little. “That’s…sweet of you to think. And…probably I would have dug it a year ago before I…you know…got ran over by a car.”
Dom’s face actually went a little red and I couldn’t help laughing. “It’s okay. It’s cool, really.”
“Sorry,” he signed again. I waited for him to show his text. “Let’s go somewhere else and talk.”
“Where?”
He gestured for me to get in the car as he opened the door.
“I…I don’t really feel good about leaving my Jeep here.”
He seemed to think it over, then started texting. “Will you trust if I have one of my guys take it somewhere safe?”
One of his guys?
“Probably not, honestly.”
“Follow me then?”
I glanced over at the group of men then turned back to him. “Alright, but take me over to my car first.”
He winked, gesturing again for me to get in his car.
I went to walk around, then stopped. I reached out to his door, gripping it as he was about to get in. He looked back at me curiously.
“Your brother…” I was going to ask if he had told his brother anything, but of course he had to have. Still the mention of him grew tension between us.
Dom’s eyes shifted from me to something past my head. I looked around, the wind whipping my hair back, and I went rigid.
Lez was still across the lot, joint in one hand, leaning forward against the door of his car. Only now he was ignoring the girl near him, as well as everyone else, to stare directly at me.
The moment our eyes met, a shiver ran down my spine. Then my body started to heat up. I wasn’t sure if it was from rage or something else. Deciding it was rage, I refused to look away, until I heard a tap on the door. I looked back at Dom, and he tilted his head toward the passenger side.
Silently, I went around the front and over to the passenger, perfectly aware of Lez’s eyes burning into my back. As I got in and shut the door, Dom started up his car, the roar of the engine making me flinch.
He backed out of his space and slowly made his way over to my Jeep, the crowd parting as he went. Once I slipped back into my own car, I followed him, keeping close behind as we turned on to the main road.
We drove closer to the city. More lightning flashed from a storm in the distance, hinting at the threat of rain coming our way.
Dom got off the highway, passed a gas station and several dark buildings before he entered the parking lot of a twenty-four-hour diner called Tony’s.
I sighed as I parked next to him, glad he hadn’t taken me to one of the bars in the city instead.
From the row of windows, I could see a few groups of people sitting at booths or the counter beyond, otherwise the place was mostly empty.
Cold air hit me as we made our way inside and Dom led me over to a booth in the corner. As we sat, a waitress with curly blond hair and a wide smile came our way.
“What are we drinking?” she asked.
“Just water for me, thanks,” I answered.
Dom typed quickly and showed her his screen.
“And a coffee. You got it.” She sauntered off, and I looked around, studying the pictures along the walls of famous musicians from the city.
There was jukebox in the corner and little paper vinyls hanging from the ceiling.
A neon sign above the coffee station said “Never too late for a coffee break.”
Dom tapped on the table, and I looked over as he showed me the screen of his phone.
“I’m sorry about your sister.” It read.
I bit my lip as my gaze flickered up to him. “Who are the men who took her and how do you know them?”
He took a moment to type again before showing me. “They are called the Order of the Serpent but used to be known as the Serpent Kings. Before that, it was the Serpent Brothers.”
“So, some kind of gang?”
He shrugged and typed. “Yes. But a little more than that.”
“Like what?”
“Cult-like. With ties to the mafia.”
Fuck, Trish, what did you get yourself into? “Cult-like?”
“Yes.
“It’s a cult?”
“More like a brotherhood with certain…ideals.”
I frowned, trying not to stare at the tattoo on his arm. “You were one of them, weren’t you? You and Leslie?”
He hesitated before typing a reply. “We created them.”
I stared at his words. “I’m sorry, what?”
“We were the original leaders.”
“Are you fucking serious? You and Lez founded a cult?” I hissed.
Dom clicked his tongue while typing a response. “A brotherhood.”
“Semantics.” I threw up my hands in disbelief. “You swore to me you don’t know what happened to my sister.”
He started to text “And I don’t”— but I cut him off.
“You expect me to believe you don’t know anything? That you don’t have any clue what they are up to? Or what’s going on?”
He put up his hand for me to wait so he could give me his excuse. I rubbed a hand over my eyes, trying to fight the urge not to scream at him. When I dropped my hand, he showed me his phone.
“We founded the Serpent Brothers a few years ago. Before that, we were already working for a local mafia and some of the other men started noticing how oddly strong we were, or how we could hear and see things they couldn’t.”
I fixed him with a sad look. “The experiments,” I whispered.
He nodded, then typed some more. “So, we—mostly Lez—got it into our heads that we needed to go into business for ourselves. A lot of people started respecting us, seeing the power we had. And they wanted to know our secret. Obviously, we weren’t going to tell them we were locked in the basement of a warehouse and drugged, so we made up a story.
We told them we were enhanced. That through some mental gymnastics and using drugs like meth or ketamine, we had unlocked this power in us and that they could too, if they followed us. ”
“That’s fucked.”
He nodded and replied. “I know. But we were kind of fucked in the head. Lez was barely stable and wasn’t on the meds he needed.
I was…not in a great place. We thought it was a perfect way to start our own organization.
We made people believe, made them follow us, made some of them think we weren’t even human. It worked…for a time.”
“What happened?”
“Jasper. We got really close at first. He rose in the ranks fast, got really good at getting recruits, smuggling whatever it was we wanted to smuggle, and moving cash around. He was our second in command. He was a manipulator. He acted like he believed us, but I think he was just good at faking for the sake of wanting the power we had. Eventually he started gaining favor with others because he was charismatic and me and Lez’s social skills were shit.
He convinced some to follow his way, claiming he’d figured out our method to unlock all senses—which was obviously bullshit.
He wanted to make the brotherhood more culty than it already was and do more dirty jobs for the mafia.
Since we were no longer seeing eye to eye—and because Micheal had contacted for help—we split off, letting Jasper take over the group so we could focus on Severfalls. ”
I sat back, stunned. “So that’s it? You didn’t go back after Severfalls and just let him have it?”
“We didn’t want what he changed the group into. Didn’t want to be lap dogs again for the mafia or keep on pretending while watching the others lose their sense of reality in pursuit of having an ounce of what we have.”
I shook my head. “You never mentioned any of this back…at the church. When Eve interviewed you.”
“Didn’t think she needed to know all that. She was focused on our past as kids. We didn’t really want to get too deep into more recent events.”
The waitress came back with our drinks and Dom ordered a pie for us to split since I wasn’t very hungry. I sat for a moment taking it all in, watching the lightning pass by and hearing thunder roll in the distance.
“You have to contact him, Dom.” I turned back to glare at him. “You have to talk to Jasper.”
He played with his phone for a moment, then typed back. “He won’t tell me anything, trust me.”
“You’re not on speaking terms?”
“Rivals don’t talk.”
My face twisted in confusion. “How are you rivals? You just broke off.”
I could tell he didn’t want to tell me at first. He took his time replying. “We might not be with the Serpents anymore but we’re not lone wolves either.”
It took me a minute to understand. “Are you trying to say you started another gang?”
The look in his eyes was answer enough. I let out a short laugh in frustration. “Don’t tell me those assholes in the black bandanas were your goons.”
He shook his head. “No. But some of ours were walking around.”
I hugged an arm around myself, dread creeping up in the back of my mind. “How can you help me then? How can you help me find my sister?”
The waitress returned with Dom’s pie, filling up his coffee cup before moving on to the next table. Dom turned his phone around. “We have people everywhere. Many are ex-members of the Serpents. One of them is an insider—they got connections into the gang.”