Sinners & Saints (Sinners & Saints #1)

Sinners & Saints

Chelsea Ballinger

Sinners &
Saints © 2015 Chelsea Ballinger

All rights
reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or
transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval
system, without the prior written approval of the author except for the use of
brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.


Published by
Chelsea Ballinger


Cover created by
Chelsea Ballinger


This is a work
of fiction. Names, titles, places, characters, and events are the

product of the
author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to

actual events or
persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental. Any trademarks,

service marks,
product names, or named features are assumed to be the property of their
respective owners, and are used only for reference. There is no implied

endorsement.

Playlist

“Music gives a soul to the universe,
wings to the mind, flight to the imagination and life to everything.”
–Plato

London Grammar –Metal & Dust

Frank Ocean –Super Rich Kids

Frank Ocean –Lost

Phantogram –Black Out Days

Hozier –Work Song

Hozier –Take Me Church

2Pac –Hit ‘Em Up

The Civil Wars –Devil’s Backbone

Taylor Swift –Wildest Dreams

Taylor Swift –Style

Beyonce –Jealous

Beyonce –Haunted

The Weeknd –Wicked Games

Skylar Grey –I Know You

Prelow –Mistakes Like This

Nicki Minaj –Night is Still Young

Nicki Minaj –Buy a Heart (Feat.
Meek Mill)

Kevin Garrett –Coloring

Halsey –Hold Me Down

Kanye West –Wolves (Feat. Vic Mensa
& Sia)

Vic Mensa –U Mad

Florence and the Machine –Long
& Lost

Florence and the Machine –Various
Storms & Saints

Laura Welsh –Ghosts

FOR THE DREAMERS AND INSPIRERS

Part 1

 
“There is no sinner like a young saint.”

-
      
Aphra Behn

1

SCARLETT

        
Crying is
good for the soul, or so they say.

           
If
that’s true, I would suggest differently for me. My soul burns bright at the
sight of other people’s tears. It’s something about seeing people in pain that
sets myself inside an aura of tranquility and bliss. People say that doing bad
things is wrong, but why? When people tell me to do what I love and then ask me
why I did some horrible thing, my answer is…

I love to do bad things.

I love to do bad things and I never cry.
In fact, I haven’t shed a tear since I was twelve at my father’s funeral and
those tears were only fabricated. I forced myself to weep for the man I loathed
so everyone would think I actually loved him and feel sorry for me, looking the
other way when I started doing bad things. Most people do that. They cry when
it is expected; they cry when it works in their favor. My father was a bastard
and every day I smile more knowing he’s buried deep within the ground at
Trinity Cemetery. Harsh, I know, but I’m a harsh girl. I don’t miss many
people. I miss Gabriel, though, more than all these freaks here. They all weep
for him, but they didn’t know him. They hated him. Despised him with every bone
in their bodies. In my own way, I loved him. Love is a very irrelevant word for
me. It exists but it’s for the weak. I have been taught that my whole life. My
mother once told me that love only works in your favor when you don’t love them
back. The bitch is right. It does. It’s always worked in my favor, that
unrequited love men gain for me. Love can be so cruel
—
love and feelings. That is what tainted
Gabriel, which is why he’s dead.

Blowing your brains out of your skull.
Seriously, Gabriel?
Bad taste, even for
you. He should be happy that I’m even in attendance at his funeral. And I
should be sitting up front too. I’m as much as family as they are. His father
is a greedy little pervert who is married to his second wife, a failed actress
and heiress to a hotel empire. He, along with everyone else, hated Gabriel.
Gabriel was almost as cruel as I am, yet they still have false tears running
down their cheeks. Their sad faces for the lost soul they knew nothing about.
Besides me, the only one that isn’t crying is the boy up front with the rest of
the family. Hugo Mandrake. He’s Gabriel’s little brother. He is also the twin
of August Mandrake, the only brother of Gabriel’s that I know. When I first met
Gabriel, he talked about Hugo a lot. His little brother who’s a good kid and
how he’s so worried about him being alone at the boarding school their father
shipped him off to. He said Hugo doesn’t do well when alone. Gabriel wasn’t
kidding when he said August had a twin either. They are identical but of course
different. Hugo sits straight. August slouches. August scratches his hands and twitches
while his brother sits perfectly still. August is autistic and Hugo is not. I
bet that has done some damage to him. Made him guilty that he came out right
and August didn’t. Already he possesses the soul of a man who has experienced
enough pain and loss to know the reality of the world. That reality is that
life is fucking unfair. We always hear this from people, but it is truly
something when you realize it at an early age. Now he will be staying with us
at Ms. Eleanor’s and I look forward to that.

HUGO

It wasn’t even my dad who called to tell
me Gabriel was dead. It was his secretary. I’ve been away at some shitty
boarding school in some shitty town in New Hampshire for three long shitty
years. Hadn’t seen my family once and he couldn’t even bother enough to call me
and tell me my selfish brother killed himself. I call Gabriel selfish because
he wasn’t supposed to do this. We promised each other we would never do the
same thing Mom did. He promised me we would never go through this again. But
can I be surprised by Gabriel’s change of heart? He had become a real dick
through the years. Then again, I suppose we both changed. I used to smile a
lot. I used to laugh more, but now it’s all for show. I show off my boy smile
so no one will know how bad all this shit hurts.

He killed himself by blowing out his
brains with a revolver he had received as a Christmas present from our
grandfather. From what they told us, he placed it right in his mouth and pulled
the trigger. Classy, but my mother still gets the grand prize for dramatic
suicides. She literally went out in style. She dressed herself in a white gown
and wore her favorite Harry Winston diamond necklace and diamond earrings from
Tiffany’s. My brothers and I had gotten her those earrings for her birthday
with our allowance. She even did her hair. She was dressed for a ball, but
after putting on the finishing touches of her makeup, she went ahead and jumped
off the balcony of our penthouse. She fell down fifty-five floors. It took 10.6
seconds for her to hit the ground. It took my father forty-eight hours to come
back home from his business trip in Sweden. When he arrived, all he did was ask
Gabriel, “Where were you?” Gabriel was thirteen years old.
  

I’m not crying for Gabriel. I cried for
my mother, but I swore I would never cry for another person who gave up again.
What they did is selfish, leaving August and me here with my dad?! The only
bright side of this is that I won’t be attending the boarding school anymore.
I’ll be staying here back on the island. Ms. Eleanor is a woman from very old
money, my stepmother
—
I just met
her yesterday
—
says. I
remember how that conversation with Gabriel went when he told me.

“Dad got married to this woman.” He
spoke in a monotone.

“What?! When?!”

“They eloped to Ibiza.”

“Oh,” was all I could say. I didn’t even
know he was seeing anyone exclusively. A silence occurred and I just waited for
him to say something else. I miss you. How’s life? Anything.

“Yeah, so I was just calling to let you
know. Bye.” He hung up before I could even comprehend what had just happened.

That was the day I knew he had
officially become an asshole. He didn’t care about anything anymore.

Anyway, when rich and overworked parents
don’t want to be bothered with their kids but don’t want them to be home alone
on the island, they send them to her. When my mom died, Dad shipped me off to
boarding school and sent Gabriel and August to her. Gabriel was already acting
out and August is autistic, so my father saw me as his last hope for a
wonderful heir to his fortune capitalist company. Now I think he’s sending me
so I can keep an eye on August, which I am glad to do. He and I are all we have
left of our tragic, beautiful family. That’s what people call us. They say Ms.
Eleanor enjoys the company, that she’s a lonely old woman. She’s been married
five times and claims to only have loved one of them. They say she’s bat shit
crazy and judge her for her strange behavior. Yet, they send their children to
live with her in a heartbeat. Yeah, the definition of crazy in this town is
completely fucked up.

SCARLETT

Chad is the only one I know who takes
pride in creating the perfect line of white powder before snorting it. He
snorts the powder, trailing the line with the hollow glass tube, off of the
mini bar.

           
“Do
you really need to do that now?” Noel asks in disgust.

           
Chad
sniffs and wipes his nose with the back of his hand. “It relaxes me.”

           
Noel
harshly laughs and shakes his head. Chad, high, decides now is the time to
place his hand on my thigh. I sink my fingernails into his hand and he winces,
pulling it back.

           
“The
fact that you think I’m in the mood to be groped by you is truly unbelievable.”

           
“Come
on, Scarlett,” he smiles at me. “Let’s not pretend that you’re actually
mourning.”

           
“I
grieve in my own way. I will miss Gabriel deeply.”

           
“Yeah,
but not enough to undo all the wrong, right?” Noel bravely says to me.

           
Grinning,
I say, “Noel, let’s not be testy now.”

           
“Yeah,
Noel,” Chad chimes in. “Stop acting like a bitch.”

           
“Chad,
I will fucking end you.” Noel sits up from his seat, his shoulders and chest
rising.

           
“Fuck
you,” Chad snaps back and I roll my eyes at this childish tantrum. “Can you
both give it a rest? Chad, go back to the drugs and Noel, go back to staying
quiet. It’s what you do best.” Noel’s jaw tightens and he looks at me like he’s
prepared to put me in my place, but he won’t. None of them ever do no matter
how angry they are.

 
I put on my Chanel sunglasses and step
out of the limo once everyone else has stepped out of their cars and I leave
both of my idiot boys there, preparing myself to say goodbye to Gabriel for
good.
 

HUGO

I watch my brother’s casket get lowered
down in the hollow grave. I can’t help but think of my last good memory of him
in person. He was ten. August and I, six. Mom took us to Central Park and we
had a picnic. The sun was out and so were the mosquitoes. August threw a
tantrum because of both of them. I tried to calm him down and he accidentally
slapped me. I cried like a baby. Still, it was the happiest day of our lives
because I swear that was the only moment we saw her happy. Through all the
small chaos, she still found happiness. Little things never ruined her. Only
the big things. She never let the fact that my father called and said he would
be late for dinner for the fourth night in a row get to her. She never got
alarmed when women gave her envious or gloating looks due to them knowing all
her business. She never felt any type of way when my dad stopped telling her
how pretty she was or would forget to hold the door for her when we went out.
No, only the big things like when my father forgot her birthday for the second
time in a row or when she found him in bed with another woman and again after
that and again after that. Or how about when she told our grandmother that she
would leave him and instead of getting comfort Grandmother told her, “We women
of high rank look the other way when our husbands want to philander about.
Don’t be naïve, Susan”.

I could list many times I witnessed my
mother’s heartbreak, but if I do that then I will surely cry.

“You better not embarrass me, Hugo,” my
father says as he looks around my new room. It was actually Gabriel’s room. The
way he looks suggests he has never stepped foot in here. I asked Ms. Eleanor
not to move out any of Gabriel’s things. I believe it only makes it harder for
my dad. The guilt of knowing that the second person you were supposed to love
ended their lives. He failed and he knows he failed.

“Hugo, are you listening to me?” My
father snaps me out of my thoughts.

“Yes,” I quickly oblige. “I understand.”

“Good. Your brother did enough with his
reputation here; I don’t want a repeat of that behavior in this family.”

“Yes, sir.”

He checks his cell. My dad never makes
eye contact with us. August rarely makes eye contact with anyone, but he has a
brain development disorder. What is my dad’s excuse? Oh yeah, he’s suffering
from being a dick. “Well, I’ll have Daniel call and check up on you this week.
I have meetings back to back so maybe by next week I’ll give you a call.”

“Okay,” is all I can say. There is no
hug, no see you later, be safe, no anything. He just leaves and I now start my
new life here.

Gabriel’s room is very Gabriel. The bed
is made up of dark cherry oak wood. A dark red duvet cover with white sheets.
His headboard has a lion carved in it. He loved lions. He was the lion in a
Wizard of Oz
play once. I look at his
desk
—
same wood as
the bed and dresser. Three books and a laptop. I open the doors of his walk in
closet. Looking through his clothes, I realize my brother had style. He had suits
for days and I see only two pair of jeans. Every designer of men’s suits from
Armani to Hugo Boss. I like wearing Hugo Boss of course due to my name. He has
a shelf where his watches and cufflinks line up in order of color. Gold, rose
gold, silver, black. On top of the shelf is a pair of Ray Ban aviator
sunglasses. The lenses are purely tinted black. The bridge and rim are gold
leading up the earpiece that is also black. Ray Ban written in white on the top
corner of the right lens. I definitely like these.