Chapter 15

She screamed suddenly and shoved him back with force she shouldn't have had. She fell on the floor.

"Yes!" she screamed, head falling forward, hair wild, eyes enormous. She was barely in herself. "I did it! I did all of it! Why didn't you figure it out earlier? Big brother, how are you this stupid?"

"I've been jealous of you since we were pups! You were born Kane's firstborn. The heir. Me? My mother was dead, my father didn't care. I was nothing. A thing nobody wanted."

"The only way I could live in the Kane family was by getting rid of you!"

"I paid those pups. I gave them presents. That's why they touched you. And you came running to me crying. 'Fiona, you're so kind, so gentle.' Ha—"

Fiona laughed, twisted and wild, her tears and makeup running together. "Do you know how badly I wanted to laugh back then? You were such a fool."

"So after that I was afraid you'd remember. That's when I started acting. Protecting you. Taking care of you. And then you were actually moved by it. You even said the only one you trusted was me."

She shoved up off the floor and threw her arms around him. "Big brother, did you know? That was the moment I fell in love with you."

"Then Mom and Dad found out. They said something was wrong with me. They wanted to send me overseas for moonbound treatment. I panicked. I didn't want to leave you. I didn't want you to love another girl. So I touched the brakes. They deserved it."

Damien didn't move. He froze in place.

Fiona cupped his face in both hands, in a sick, twisted kind of rapture. "Do you know? If I'd known earlier you felt something for me, we could have been together. Selene was always in the way. She was extra."

Crack.

He slapped her so hard she went down on the couch. Blood came up at the corner of her mouth.

"Fiona," he said, a voice rolling out of hell, "you're out of your mind. You really are."

She laughed. Her head was tilted. Blood had stained her teeth. She was still looking up at him with that sick adoration. "Big brother, now that you know… can you finally accept me?"

"Accept you?" His voice was an ice blade. "I'd rather die."

He didn't wait. He picked up the internal line to the head of the house. "Lock her upstairs. All doors, all windows. She doesn't take one step out."

"Big brother… you can't do this to me. You said you'd protect me—" Fiona flung herself forward, but the enforcers pulled her off.

She screamed like an animal, clawing, crying, cursing. "You can't do this to me! Damien! You can't leave me!"

"You said we were each other's only ones. Big brother!"

Damien didn't turn. He didn't even look.

Something in him that he'd always called family died in that moment.

As they pulled Fiona into the room and locked the door, she finally shrieked at full volume.

"Selene ruined me! You all deserve to die! I'm the one who loved you the most! You'll regret this, big brother! You'll regret this!"

The door slammed shut. Silence.

Downstairs, Damien sank onto the couch, pressed his forehead to his palm, sat there like a statue struck by lightning. His eyes were empty.

Outside, the sky was finally light.

His world was still black.

The evening before the second Council hearing, Damien suddenly called me.

I hadn't meant to answer. But the ring kept coming back, like a nightmare that wouldn't let go.

In the end I picked up.

Long silence.

I was about to hang up when he spoke.

His voice was rough and low. Like it had taken the last of him to push the words out. "Sel… I'm sorry."

I paused. I didn't answer.

He went on, like he hadn't noticed. "I know now. I know about the accident. I know how Fiona played me. How she used me. How she hurt you, and our pup…"

He made a muffled sound, the kind that slipped out when a man was trying to hold something down. The wet, closed sob of someone cracking open.

"I was such a fool. I trusted her? I couldn't see you? You were the one who always had me in your heart, and I pushed you into hell with my own hands."

I went quiet for a few seconds. Then I laughed, softly.

"What are you crying for?" I said with a small sneer. My eyes had nothing warm in them. "Damien. You earned this."

"This is what you're owed."

I didn't wait for whatever came next. I hung up.

The screen went dark, and for the first time my heart was still.

I shouldn't be the only one in pain.

If he was finally tasting betrayal and wound too, that's what fair was.

The next morning, before the hearing.

Fiona was gone.

The girl who was supposed to be locked on the top floor had somehow gotten out. The house staff had gone white. Damien tore through every corner of the house with a team and couldn't find her.

"I underestimated her," he muttered to himself, cold sweat on his forehead.