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“That was me. Too bad I didn’t break it.” She leaned back into Sin, her dark eyes sparkling with malice. “Now get out of here before looking at you puts me off my lunch.”
CHAPTER FOUR
SINCLAIR
THREE MONTHS EARLIER
“IF HE LOSES THE Acquisition, Sin has to kill Teddy?” Stella’s weak voice floated down the hall.
My steady steps turned into a sprint until I was at my mother’s open door.
“Teddy dies.” Rebecca’s voice, wizened and brittle like a fallen leaf, cut through the air.
Panic sliced my heart when I saw Stella standing at the mouth of hell, her skin pale, her eyes wide.
“Stella!” I rushed to her.
“I see no harm in telling the peasant girl the rules.” Mother smiled, hate in every wrinkle, every line.
“Tell me. Tell me all of them.” Stella stared up at me, her green eyes watering, though not a single tear fell. “I have to know.” She gripped my arms, holding me tight and pinning me to the spot with the anguish in her voice.
“Tell her, son. Tell her.” My mother’s gleeful cackle was too much to bear.
I wrenched myself free of Stella’s hold and went to the medicine cabinet. Locked. I gripped the handles and yanked, pulling until the wood splintered and the doors flew open. Grabbing a syringe, I turned and approached the demon on the bed.
“Please don’t.” Renee cried, but didn’t rise to stop me.
“No.” Mother tried to scoot away, fear darkening her wild eyes.
I grabbed her arm and pulled it straight. She slapped me and scratched my neck. I ignored it, just like I ignored every bit of pain she’d caused since that hellish night in Brazil. Even as she struggled and screamed, I hit her vein and depressed the plunger.
Her motions slowed, her words ceasing, and then she collapsed back into the bed, finally asleep. Finally silent.
Renee shoved me aside and sank down on the bed, stroking Mother’s face and crying. “How could you?”
“It needed to be done.” I tried to clear my head, to douse the fire of emotions that raged inside. I usually had an easy time of it. Not now. Not when my mother had seen fit to shove Stella into the same razorblade straightjacket I wore.
Renee smoothed Mother’s hair, doting on her as if the woman were anything other than a venomous snake. “She was fine. She wasn’t hurting anyone.”
I threw the syringe in the garbage and looked at Stella, her eyes haunted.
“She’s hurt plenty.” I took Stella’s hand and pulled her from the room. She didn’t resist, shock settling on her like a lead weight.
I took her to my room and locked the door behind us. She sat on the bed and leaned over, her head cupped in her hands.
“Stella?” I knelt in front of her.
“Why Teddy? Why? He’s the only good thing in this house, in this entire godforsaken family.” She shook her head and still wouldn’t look at me.
I pulled her hands from her face. They were soft, so easily broken. But nothing about her was in pieces, not shattered the way I was.
“The rules. It’s what makes us compete. It turns us against ourselves until the strongest comes out on top.” That was the explanation, but not the reason. Was there any reason for this torment other than providing entertainment for the depraved lot of us?
“Why didn’t you tell me?” A tear rolled down her cheek and hovered at her jaw line before dropping onto my scarred wrist.
“Power. If you’d known that from the start, you would have had the upper hand. Teddy is the heart of this family. You didn’t know that when you arrived. You could have used that information against us.”
“But after? When you knew how much I cared for him?”
“I didn’t tell you for the same reason I didn’t tell Lucius.” I grazed my thumb along her cheek, wiping her tears—the ones I’d caused—away. “How do you feel now that you know? Stronger? Better?” I shook my head. “You are weaker. It’s meant to be a spear in my side, as the Acquirer, to know what will happen if I lose. By the time you’d come to care for Teddy, I realized telling you would give you the same pain, the same weight, the same fucking dread that’s crushing me.”
She put her warm palm to my cheek. I pressed into it, needing so much more from her than I could even admit to myself.
“You’ve had to bear it alone.”
The pity in her eyes, pity for me, almost broke what little of a heart I had left. “I’ve done what I had to do. I’ve been the man I had to be. I can’t lose Teddy. But you… You were the best choice and also the worst for my Acquisition. If I’d only known…”
“What?” She edged off the bed and sank to the floor in front of me, her body pressing against me and her mouth tantalizingly close. “If you’d known what?”
