Saint glanced at him, a small smile playing on his lips. “I know.”
He turned away, then visibly shut down his emotions. The change was so sudden and so complete, Knight almost felt like he had whiplash. The Saint sitting beside him was now so cold and detached it almost made Knight afraid.
“Stay here,” Saint said as he left the bed.
Inappropriately, Knight felt his dick twitch at the cool command. “As you wish.”
Saint wasn’t sure how to feel as he stood in front of the woman he’d called “mummy” for most of his life. She was standing a few feet in front of the main gate to the compound, which Saint noted was slightly open behind her. One of the other men must’ve forgotten to lock it behind them. Either that, or they’d willingly let her in, thinking she was rightfully coming to visit one of the others.
“They don’t know I’m here.” The first words she’d spoken to him in over three years. “I just ... I had to come here to warn you.”
Saint stared at her. Knight was right, she didn’t look so good. Her hair was hidden underneath a scarf, and she wore a plain, worn t-shirt with an old, fraying wrapper tied around her waist, her feet in bathroom slippers. Her dark brown skin was a little ashy, and she had more wrinkles on her face than Saint remembered. Her lips were turned down, and her eyes were red and swollen, like she’d been crying.
Saint hated that even after everything, he still wanted to save her. When he’d first run away, she’d been his one source of comfort, of home. He remembered her praying with him every other Sunday; her text messages in the mornings wishing him a lovely day; her tentative questions about his defection, as if she was contemplating leaving, too. He’d been so desperate for her company—so eager to believe she’d been as much of a helpless victim as he was—that he’d ignored all the red flags.
He’d completely ignored the fact that you couldn’t save someone who didn’t want to be saved.
Those first two times they’d found him, he hadn’t even suspected it could be her. Why would he have? But that third time? Especially with how close it had been to the last? There was no way they could’ve been finding him so quickly without an inside source, so he’d confronted her.
She hadn’t denied it. Instead, she’d begged him to come back, telling him it would be easier, it would be for his own good. When he refused, and began ignoring her calls and texts, she’d moved to emotional manipulation, sobbing about how terribly they were treating her and how it was all his fault—if he truly loved her, he’d come back and end her suffering,please. And when that hadn’t worked—
Saint didn’t want to think of those last few messages. He’d changed his number after that, then moved to Arehjia with zero ties to his old life, determined this time would be different.
Behind him, Saint could hear the faint sound of Knight the Dog still barking.
“How did you find me?” he asked, thanking God his voice came out cool. Steady.
“Saint.” He tried not to flinch. “If you don’t come back, Pastor Zeke is going to use your father as an example.”
Was that supposed to scare him? Saint almost snorted. When he’d told Knight about Nigeria being full of narcissists, his father had been included in that. That man was practically the right hand of the Pastor, with grand dreams of gaining his own following one day.
He didn’t like to remember those times, how his parents had simpered and obeyed, doing everything their pastor told them to if they wanted to be “blessed with God’s riches and get to heaven”. Nothing they’d done had ever been enough.
“If he doesn’t want to be used as an example,” Saint said, “then he should do as I did and leave.”
She stared at him like she no longer recognised him. “Really, Saint? Wow. So, you really have become this heartless.”
And he’d had enough. “I’m done with this conversation. Goodbye.” Knight the Dog had stopped barking, he noticed faintly.
“No.” She snarled the word out so desperately Saint was stopped in his tracks. “I have come here to say my piece, and by God, as the person who cried and suffered to bring you into this world, to feed you and clothe you and raise you, youwilllisten.”
There were tears in her eyes. Saint was struck with a hope so frantic it was painful. And then she spoke.
“You ruined everything,” she whispered viciously. “Ever since you defected, I have become a pariah. Your father went to Pastor Zeke to atone, and he threw me under the bus. No matter how much I begged and pleaded—it didn’t matter how faithfully I followed Pastor Zeke’s recommendations, nothing I did wasenough.” She took a step forward, and it took everything in Saint not to take a step back. “Nothingis ever enough when the stain ofyoukeeps following me around. And now you’re selfish enough not to come back and pay for your sins?”
“Fuckyou.”
She blinked like he’d hit her, her lips parted with shock. She brought her hand to her mouth. Said hand was trembling. “Saint, you don’t understand—”
“Don’t speak my name.”Don’t taint it with your hatred and disappointment.
“You don’t realise what you’ve done,” she said, half-yelling. “No one has left the village in twenty years!You don’t realise what you’ve done.”
The honest fear in her voice nearly put that same fear in his limbs, but Saint stood his ground. He refused to be moved by her tears, no matter how genuine they were. In the end, he knew she was only here to save herself.
“What happens in the village is no longer my problem. I’m not coming back. If Pastor Zeke and his ilk think torturing me or killing me—” She flinched.Good. “—is the best way to teach his “congregation” a lesson about what’ll happen if any of you try to even—God forbid—thinkfor yourselves, then so be it.”
“Selfish. You’ve always been—” Her eyes widened when she spotted something over Saint’s shoulder.
