Wrathful Souls

WRATHFUL SOULS SONS OF TEMPLAR MC - NEW MEXICO BOOK 3 ANNE MALCOM CONTENTS Trigger Warnings Prologue Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Chapter 8 Chapter 9 Chapter 10 Chapter 11 Chapter 12 Chapter 13 Chapter 14 Chapter 15 Chapter 16 Chapter 17 Chapter 18 Chapter 19 Chapter 20 Chapter 21 Epilogue Acknowledgments About the Author Also by Anne Malcom Copyright © 2023 by Anne Malcom All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review. This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locales or organizations is entirely coincidental. Cover Design: TRC Designs Editing: Kim BookJunkie For the women who feel broken. May you find someone to worship you. Who makes you feel whole and healed. TRIGGER WARNINGS This book is dark. For those of you who read Wilting Violets, you probably already suspected it would be. There are some very triggering scenes featuring graphic violence, sexual assault, mentions of suicide. Sariah’s story is not an easy one, so I understand if this is where I leave you. I promise, like always, she will get her HEA. Anne xxx PROLOGUE I told myself I wouldn’t scream. Wouldn’t beg. Made promises to myself when it was clear what was happening. When it was clear who he was. What he was. But although I excelled at keeping my word with my friends, I routinely broke every promise I ever made to myself. Why should this be any different? “Please,” I begged, coughing a pitiful, wet sound. The single word was coppery, bitter, coated in the blood that filled my mouth. His lips stretched out, exposing straight white teeth in a wretched smile. “You wanted to think that you were different,” he sneered, running the knife coated in my blood along my ruined, naked body. “That you weren’t like the others.” When he leaned in, I could smell the way my blood scented his body. My stomach roiled as I fought to keep from vomiting. Not that there was any left inside me. “But you’re just like the rest,” he whispered, the tip of his knife pressing against the soft flesh of my stomach. “Just another whore.” My scream echoed off the walls as he pressed the knife in. He didn’t plunge it in. No. He did it with devastating slowness. Patiently. So he could inflict the worst kind of agony. So I could feel the steel tearing through every layer of skin and flesh before puncturing my organs. He wanted me to die slowly. That I knew. He wanted my last hours on this earth to be bloody, agonizing, horrific. I’d seen the crime scene photos, hadn’t I? Poured over them with a sick fascination, some kind of warped arrogance that I would be the one to find him. And I guess I was. But I wasn’t going to be the one who exposed him. Wasn’t going to be the girl who escaped. I wasn’t special. I was dying. The cuffs around my wrists had rubbed the skin raw as I tried to slip my way out of them. I thought that my blood would make them slick, slippery, aid in my escape. But that shit only happened in the movies. When you were cuffed by a serial killer who also happened to be a cop, you didn’t escape. You didn’t outsmart them because you thought that’s what you would do as the heroine of your story. Every girl who came before me was the heroine of her own story, but that didn’t change a fucking thing. Not when the villain, the real fucking villain, was in front of them, puncturing their skin with a sharpened knife. “Whores giving their bodies to countless men,” he continued as the blade cut through me. “So many, they don’t even know who the father is when they get pregnant.” I let out a sob of agony when he ripped the knife out viciously. The pain was white hot. I didn’t dare look down at my torso which must’ve been a shredded mess. I could practically feel the cold warehouse air kissing exposed organs as they slipped through the tears in my skin. “You shouldn’t be allowed to reproduce,” he hissed, waving the knife at me. My blood flew off the blade, small droplets hitting my face. “Shouldn’t be able to grow life when you abuse your body. Trash it. When you don’t keep your baby safe like you should.” When the hand not holding the knife reached down to cup me between my legs, bile mixed with blood in my mouth. His eyes glowed at my revulsion, his face contorting into a shape that didn’t seem human. “No life will come out of you,” he hissed. “And in death, you’ll be mine.” The tip of the knife teased along the seam of my thighs, between my legs. For one horrendous moment, I thought he’d put it … inside. I was already in agony, but being cut from the inside out? Maybe my body would protect me, maybe I’d finally pass out. Maybe I’d never wake up. That would be nice. I tried to grit my teeth, narrow my eyes, rustle up my signature attitude. “Fuck you,” I whispered, the words coming out weak and garbled. He smirked at me, keeping the tip of the knife at my entrance. “Oh, I will be fucking you, as you so eloquently put it. But not yet. I’ll wait.” The knife hovered for a second longer before he stood up, staring at me with disgust before turning on his heel and walking out