The Lost Souls (The Holy Trinity #2.5)(8)

He was so screwed.

Pennsylvania was a snow-covered hellhole. It was dark and snowing, and he couldn’t see jack shit. Now, he was out of gas and out of hope.

“So much for good intentions,” he muttered.

He’d left the safety of his Romani clan and their ancient Romani magic to try to right a wrong. Out of jealousy and spite, he’d left his friend Xan’s wife, a young woman named Trinity, all alone in this shit pit of a world. Everyone had thought she’d run off with another man, and Xan had taken to sleeping with other women to try and stave off the pain of losing her.

One of those other women had been Marko’s fiancée, Nadya Popa. Their pending marriage had been an arranged one, one that Nadya had continuously put off for years, and he’d let her. He hadn’t forced her into becoming his wife, as Gypsy law allowed, because he’d loved her fiercely and would have done anything to make her happy, including waiting. Losing her had been devastating.

The pain was still red hot when Marko had run into Trinity while out on a supply raid, and he’d let his emotions get the better of him.

Gripping the steering wheel, he cringed, remembering what he’d said to her. Blinded by jealousy, he’d callously told her that she was no longer wanted by Xan or the clan.

Now, everything he’d done was out in the open.



Feeling triumphant, Marko had tossed Trinity’s gun onto the ground in front of Xan. For several moments, Xan had just stared dumbly at the weapon. Then reaching out, his hand shaking, he picked it up and turned it over. Marko knew what Xan was looking for—the inscription, Trinity, fat? mea.

Finding it, Xan’s Adam’s apple bobbed up and down as he swallowed repeatedly. Swaying back and forth, he began to tremble.

“Xan?” Becki yelled. “Xan! Are you going to be sick?”

Xan attempted to shake his head but he couldn’t seem to tear his gaze away from the gun in his hands.

“Frate!” Pesha shouted.

“Xan!” Nico bent down in front of Xan and shook him.

Someone within the nearby crowd shouted, “Where did you get Trinity’s gun?”

Instead of answering, Marko dropped to his knees beside Xan. “You know where, don’t you?” he sneered. “Kicker is, Trinity left roughly twenty minutes before you showed up.”

“You stupid f*ck!” Becki cried out.

“Fat?,” Marko said, looking up at her, “that’s not even the best part. According to Trinity, Gerik left her. He dumped her in the woods the same day as the attack in the Catskills, and he never came back for her. You know what that means, don’t you?”

Becki gasped, and the surrounding clan members cried out in shock.

But Marko wasn’t done yet. He had to drive that knife just a little deeper. He needed to take from Xan everything the man had taken from him. “Your wife has been alone since the end of summer, Deleanu,” he said. “Summer,” he repeated. “That’s a long f*cking time. It would be a damn miracle if she’s survived this long.”

Marko was suddenly yanked to his feet, coming face-to-face with Nico.

“You dirty f*ck,” Nico hissed, right before he slammed his fist into Marko’s face.

Dazed and disorientated, Marko staggered for a moment before falling backward into the crowd. Landing hard on his back, he stared up at the disappointed and horrified faces above him, wondering why he didn’t feel any better than he had before.

It was done. He’d gotten his revenge, only he still felt like shit.

In fact, while watching Xan break down, instead of basking in his revenge, he’d felt a million times worse.



So Marko had packed up his shit and planned to head back to where he’d last seen Trinity, hoping like hell she was still alive and holed up somewhere nearby. He’d tell her what he had done, that he’d lied out of spite and jealousy, and then he’d bring her home to Xan, to the clan. And maybe, just maybe, Nadya would want him again as a result.

At least, that had been the plan. A snowstorm the likes of which he’d never seen, and he’d seen a lot, had thrown him off course. Now he was running on empty in the middle of nowhere in the midst of a blizzard.

The first farmhouse Marko came across, he didn’t bother looking for a driveway. He just threw the truck into four-wheel drive and headed straight across the lawn. Parking his truck and trailer directly in front of the house, he tied a scarf around his face, grabbed his backpack, and left the warmth of the truck.

It was slow going, fighting the biting wind and flurries as he made his way to the house. Luckily he found the front door unlocked and hurried inside. The house wasn’t any warmer than outside, not that it mattered. He wouldn’t be sleeping in it.

A few months back while preparing for the coming winter, he’d altered his trailer, as had most of his clan, and installed a wood-burning stove. It wasn’t an easy job. First, he’d had to rip out the entire kitchen unit and, using bricks and sheet metal, built a fireproof area. Once that had been completed, he’d taken a saw and cut a rectangular hole in the ceiling of the trailer. Using more sheet metal, he finished off the entire project by creating a flame-resistant chimney area.

Before he left camp in Ohio, Marko had taken a shit ton of firewood, and had since been collecting anything he could find. Didn’t matter what it was as long as he could eat it, drink it, or burn it.