CHAPTER ONE

SIRE

A year ago…

You know the saying, “Give the devil his due.”

It’s to acknowledge the good qualities of an evil person.

Why, thank you. I appreciate it.

Because I am the Devil looking at this Angel.

“Girls, turn around. Full circle. Come on! Show them the goods!” The seller barks, and the girls cry, shaking and obeying…except…

This one.

“Yeah,” I gloat. “This one’s mine!”

She’s no girl. She’s a young woman with pert breasts, rouge nipples, and a dark mound, peeking through her white silk slip.

I can’t tell her maturity by her body because some of the underage girls in here have mature-looking bodies, too. But it’s their eyes betraying their innocence. They’re way too young for the hell they’re being sold into.

Okay, being trafficked and sold is hell at any age, but I can tell this one is wiser beyond her years. Her eyes don’t shake in terror. Her half-naked body doesn’t tremble. Her tawny cheeks are dry.

She’s the only one not crying.

No, she looks straight ahead, and if looks could kill, every man in this room would be dead.

These girls and young women are being sold, and I’m buying them.

Settle down.

Don’t worry.

I won’t lay a hand on them, and neither will my brothers, posing as other buyers in the room. They’re making us sit in a circle of chairs around the girls.

This fucker, the seller, a hedge fund manager by day, rented a swanky house in Palm Beach, and he has us sitting like we’re getting ready to dine. Like we’re about to make an evil meal of these innocent girls.

So, the Lord wants me to use the gun strapped to my ankle and hidden under my jeans to kill the seller.

The sloppy pat-down I got at the door missed my Glock.

Amateurs.

But the Devil in me knows if I kill this fucker now, we won’t bust his entire network, and that’s what we want.

“What’s your name, sweetie?” Some old, sick fuck addicted to self-tanner reaches for the youngest girl.

She sobs, and I growl, “Yeah, she’s mine, too.”

“You can’t have them all,” he whines.

“Like you can stop me, mother fucker?”

I’m not dressed like a forty-something pastor; I’m dressed like a twenty-something dealer. Guess I look like one, too. Ink on my face. Neck. Hands. My entire body. Most people can’t see past my menacing exterior to my tortured soul inside, and fuck yes, that’s how I want it.

“No.” My brother Axel glares at me. “I’m taking three of them.”

“Fuck you.” Grant, my other brother, acts along. “I’m not going home empty-handed. I want two.”

“I’m taking the blondes.” Nash, who’s like our brother, fights his rage. He’s a father to a daughter, and this shit is eating him alive, but he plays the part. “All three of them.”

That leaves the youngest girl … and this one.

This iron angel belongs to me.

“You know the price, gentlemen.” The seller enters the circle. “The bidding starts at a million each.”

“You said a hundred K each.” The old orange man whines again, “That’s not a good deal.”

They go back and forth, and it doesn’t matter. My brothers and I came to get these girls. To get them the fuck out of here and the help they need.

Our brother Jace and our mom are waiting in a van five miles away. They’ll take these girls and get them somewhere safe.

This is what we do, and we don’t fuck around. In fifteen minutes, we’ve bought them all, and they’re starting to leave. My brothers won’t blow their cover.

But this last one?

The Iron Angel?

“I’ve grown quite fond of her.” The seller caresses her long raven curls. “She’s special. Such a rare little bird. Right, Wren?” He grabs her breast, and I clench my jaw as he sneers, “She’ll fight back, and that makes it sweeter.”

He throws her down on the marble floor. Crashing on her backside, she muffles her cry, her tattoos revealed.

Stigmata tattoos.

Two blood red marks on the inside of her wrists. Two on the tops of her bare feet. They look like the nail wounds of Jesus Christ on the cross.

Days from now, I’ll realize her tattoos are my sign. My greatest temptation and salvation.

Right now?

I get in his face. “Don’t fucking touch my property.”

“She’s not yours yet. Maybe I should have her first. We’ve been saving them all, ten little virgins. But this one? I think I’ll break her before you buy her.”

“Two million.” My lip curls.

He tilts his head.

Fuck, that was too much. He’s suspicious.

“If she’s worth so much to you…” He pulls a knife from the pocket of his khaki pants. “How about I take a pound of flesh, too?”

A sob breaks the youngest girl, burying her face in her shaking hands.

Dragging herself up, the Iron Angel reaches for her, protecting her like a big sister.

God, save her. The youngest girl barely looks fourteen. The same age as my mother when she was kidnapped and trafficked to my father.

But my Iron Angel? She acts wiser than her years. Dear Lord, she’s brave.

“What do you want?” I stare down the seller.

“How about I take a pound of flesh from her,” he points his knife at the youngest girl, “and the virgin flower from her.”

He grabs the Iron Angel, and something in me snaps.

I did this for my brother. I sacrificed myself.

And I’ll do this for her—a complete stranger.

From as young as I can remember, a spirit has moved through me. I can’t describe it, and I don’t need to. It speaks and I listen.

The problem is.

Is it God?

Or the Devil?

“Take a piece of my flesh.” I don’t care. My spirit speaks, using my mouth, “Take a piece of me and give me these girls.”

“Why?”

Yeah, he’s suspicious.

“Because I like blood.” I’m not lying. “I like mine. I like theirs. I like cutting and breeding, and let’s start the fun now.”

Quoting scripture, I hold out my left hand, “I remind you to fan into flame the gift of God, which is in you through the laying of my hands.”

“What the fuck?” The seller scoffs.

But the Iron Angel…

Her eyes widen, not knowing what she’s seeing, staring at me, but she knows scripture. She must be wondering, Why is God’s word spewing from the Devil’s mouth?

“I’m not fucking cutting your hand off, man.” The seller gestures to the opulent house. “I don’t need a mess and the heat on me.”

It doesn’t matter.

Tomorrow, Nash will drain this evil fuck’s accounts of the money we paid for the girls, and then Axel and I will kill him, the orange buyer, and the hired guns behind him. It’s only six men. It won’t be hard.

It’ll be fun. I’ll make sure of it.

“You want flesh or not?”

“Theirs.” He points to the girls.

“Nah, they’re my toys and I don’t share. So, take my fucking pinky and let’s roll.”

I slam my hand down on a glass table, strewn with tumblers of whisky. Giving a pinky isn’t a Christian custom. It’s Yubitsume, a Japanese mafia thing. My Russian mafia father admired their discipline and rituals. Growing up, he took a lot from our flesh, too.

But the seller keeps eyeing my Iron Angel.

“Come on, man.” I keep my voice flat. “Three million and my pinky, and it’s a deal, and I get to take my girls home to play. I have a dungeon waiting for them.”

He likes the sound of that way too much. In three steps, he presses the blade, poised over my splayed digits.

“No!” The Iron Angel cries out, “Don’t hurt him!”

I wink at her. “It’s alright. I won’t feel a thing.”

But goddamn, I do.

At first, the shock hits me, even though I expect it. Numbly, I stare down at him doing it, my blood pumping as flesh and bone are severed. It spills over the glass table, but he wipes it up with a towel one of the gunmen throws at him.

Then it’s a throbbing, nauseating pain from my severed finger to my stomach, to every nerve in my body registering the unnatural trauma—the permanent loss.

But I hide it.

I don’t want to scare the girl and the Iron Angel any more than we need to get the fuck out of here.

“Done.”

I make myself breathe while the seller lifts half of my pinky, holding it to the light like a goddamn diamond.

“Careful,” he warns. “With your appetite for torturing virgin pussy, you’ll run out of fingers.”

No, dumbass, you’re out of time.

In twenty-four hours, I’ll cut your head off.

With a blood-soaked towel wrapped around my left hand, I signal to my angel with the right. Shockingly, she follows me without resistance and gets the girl to come, too.

I guess the Iron Angel believes I’m the lesser of the evils in the room.

Maybe she’s wrong.

When we get to my rented Hummer parked in the driveway, I clock Axel in his rental, acting like he’s on his phone when really, he’s waiting for me.

His eyes shock wide at the bloody towel around my hand, but I lift my chin. I got this.

Yanking the back door open, I bark, “Get in.”

The youngest starts to sob again, so I drop my voice to as true as I can make it sound.

“I won’t hurt you. I’m taking both of you to a woman who protects girls in your situation.”

“Come on.” The Iron Angel urges the youngest one to climb in. “It’ll be okay. We’re safe now.”

I don’t know where this angel gets her conviction, but she follows it. Holding the girl in the back seat like a sister, she protects her again, while glaring at me through the rear-view mirror. “Who are you?”

I smirk. It’s fitting. Fated. “A fallen angel.”

“Don’t bullshit me. Who are you, and where are you taking us?”

Fuck it. I don’t hide this part of me.

My mom has a safe place for these girls. She’ll get them all the resources they need, and I’ll go back to my cursed soul.

“I’m a pastor at a church that helps trafficking victims like you. I’m taking you to a woman who spends all her money helping girls and women get safe.”

Her glare in the mirror’s reflection confronts my soul. Huh. Only my brothers are brave enough to look at me that way. “You can trust her.”

Her eyes narrow. “Can I trust you?”

“No.” I don’t lie.

“Why not?”

“You have stigmata tattoos. You know what a fallen angel is.”

“An angel who rebelled against God, and was cast out of heaven, and now waits in darkness until judgment day.”

I wink. “Nice to meet ya.”

She gets the idea, and I take the next interstate exit, my heavy heart already lighter after that confession.

“What did you do?” Damn, she’s brave. “What’s your sin?”

I glance in the mirror again. The youngest girl looks asleep. Or passed out in shock. Fuck, I need to get her to my mom.

“Tell me,” the Iron Angel insists. “You gave a pound of flesh for me, and I want to know.”

Fine.

I’ll never see her again.

And I need to confess my sins.

“I lay with men. I lay with women. I have some very dark needs when I do, and while I help everyone else, I don’t help myself. I sold my brother to the Devil, and I’ll be paying for it for the rest of my life.” I pause. “Amen.”

She studies me, her topaz eyes never breaking their glare in the mirror, her breath stealing all the oxygen in the car. It’s like we’re in the presence of something powerful, but I don’t know its name as a heavy minute claims the space between us.

“My name is Wren.”

“It’s not nice to meet me, Wren.”

“What’s your name?”

“It’s best you don’t know.”

This is me, protecting her. That’s half of my DNA. The other half? It’s wired for destruction. I could rip her to shreds.

So why do I sense she’s doing the same for me? Like she was brought here to protect me, too? How can a creature so small make the molecules around me feel so … so right?

For another potent minute, she’s silent before warning, “Lay a hand on this girl and I’ll poison you.”

Poison? What a biblical way to go.

“You should.”

I spot the passenger van up the road in a hotel parking lot. My brother Jace waits beside it. My mom, as well. My brothers, in their rental cars with their victims, have arrived, too. They’ll take the girls from here, and I’ll never see the Iron Angel again.

It’s best that way.

You should only glimpse the Devil, not take a road trip with him.

I park beside the van.

Of course, the Iron Angel fears what’s about to happen, so she vows again, “And if you ever lay a hand on me, Pastor—”

“Yeah, yeah…” I meet her gaze in the mirror. What the fuck? She makes me smile. “You’ll poison me, too.”

“No,” she answers sweetly. “We’ll fall in love.”