The Sinner's Club [18+] Complete

chapter eight.

SOMETIMES I THINK it is funny that my only real friendship started in such a terrible way.

I was twelve, Nate was fourteen, and we were both living on the street. I'd begged for money and managed to scrounge together enough for a loaf of bread.

Bread was a good choice to buy; fill you up and last you a couple of days. I was eating it slowly, savoring it, when I fell asleep in the homeless encampment. I woke up to my bread gone. Furious and hungry, I set out to find it and saw a scrappy but tall boy with my loaf of bread.

"Hey! That's mine!" I was stupid back then, didn't know when to cut my losses and which battles to pick.

"Is it? It's in my pile of things," he snapped back. He had mean, dark eyes and cutting cheekbones. I could see a decent set up behind him, with a small tent and some belongings.

I had nothing.

"Give it back." I lunged forward to grab the bread, but he stepped in front of it. His mere presence pushed me back, his glower hot enough to kill.

"It's mine now," he hissed. "You should watch your shit closer if you want to keep it."

I was not quite stupid enough to push the matter further. But I did as he said, and I waited and watched closely, until that night when he left his things unattended. Then I stole from him. My loaf of bread, a brown leather jacket, and some other things I thought I could sell for some cash.

He found me the next morning, and I clutched my half-finished loaf of bread, scared but unwilling to back down.

I'd seen this same boy beat another boy half to death for a lesser infraction only a week ago.

"You stole from me," he said, crouching down. "That isn't a smart thing to do."

"You stole from me first. Fair's fair. You should've been watching your stuff closer if you wanted to keep it," I parrotted his earlier words.

A hint of a smile, a ghost of pride. "Alright...Keep the bread. Keep the jacket. Give me back my other shit."

It was a more than good deal, and one I took.

"You shouldn't say fair is fair," he told me right before he left. "The world isn't fucking fair, and thinking otherwise is fucking stupid."

That's the first lesson Nathaniel Sterling ever taught me.

It was certainly not the last.

I sit on the couch in his office, and wonder if I'd still be alive today if he'd never been there to help me. I think the answer is probably no.

He is leaning back against his desk, gripping it so hard his knuckles are white.

My voice is quiet when I say, "I'm ok."

"I know that," he snaps back. He's been in a foul mood lately—even more so than usual. Something to do with Wren, I am sure.

The door to the office opens. Viktor steps inside, his gaze already pinned on me. I'm wearing Nate's spare clothes—his dress shirt and a pair of his boxers. I showered here at the club, feeling more disgusting from having Dario looking at me the way he did than from crawling into the dumpster. My hair is still wet, dripping down onto the shirt.