Total pages in book: 65
Estimated words: 61861 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 309(@200wpm)___ 247(@250wpm)___ 206(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 61861 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 309(@200wpm)___ 247(@250wpm)___ 206(@300wpm)
My brother, who would have thought.
If he’d have said something earlier, I would have embraced it. Instead, he chose to lie and deceive me.
Why? That’s a question I may never hear the answer to.
“You really fucked this up, didn’t you?” I question Cane.
He shakes his head. “You see it as that, I see it as I kept you two apart for so long that now she has doubts about you. I broke her, and all the blame for everything that happened to her is on you.” He laughs at himself.
“You know I’m going to kill you, right?”
He shrugs his shoulders. “You can try. Will she allow you, though?”
I look back up to the door that’s shut, knowing what I do in here will be for her. To keep her safe for the rest of her life.
“I wouldn’t worry what she approved of, especially not while I have you tied down here, Cane.” I pull out a chair and sit opposite him.
Quinn passes me a knife and Cane doesn’t even flinch.
“She’s upstairs. Do you think she’ll stay where she is if you’re hurting me?”
I growl and try to keep my ass in the seat. It’s becoming more difficult for me to keep a calmness to my persona. “You don’t know fucking anything, you idiot. She won’t hear your screams. And even if she did, you really think she’d save you?” I laugh, and Quinn leans down to whisper in my ear, “Sabrina said she’s passed out. Michael’s staying in front of the door in case she hears anything. The doctor gave her something to go to sleep.”
Cane overhears, and I smile. Because for some strange reason he has this idea that she’ll save him. After everything he’s done to her. All the ways he’s hurt her without her even knowing.
Maybe this life of hers wasn’t my fault. Maybe it was his, all along. It makes it easier to believe that her love for me isn’t due to me hurting her.
“Amy really fucked her over,” Cane says, laughing. “She told me how much she hated her. How she would go in and kick her until she no longer cried like a bitch.” He smirks and looks down. Shaking his head. “She really, really, hated her with a vengeance.”
I stand from my chair, and it flies backward as my fist punches straight into his jaw. He shakes his face as I stand back to look at him. “You better tell me... tell me why?” There’s more to it. It can’t just be all about my father, and then him choosing to hate me. Because I’ve been nothing but good to him. More than good to him.
“You’re so spoiled, such a little fucking brat. Everything’s handed to you. You don’t fight for anything.” Containing my eyes from rolling is hard.
“You’re cut from the same cloth, Cane, your family is well off. Just the same as mine. Don’t act like the life you lived was hard done by. You don’t even know what that is. Maybe you should go and live in the trailer park she came from. Spend a few years there and tell me how hard your pitiful life has been. You’re a fucking idiot. How could I have been so blind to it?” I scoff, looking at Quinn who’s watching Cane not moving. He wants to kill him, but I won’t allow it. That’s for me to decide and how to do it. It’s something I need to do to make her safe again. So she won’t feel vulnerable or in danger anymore. But, unfortunately, with me, I guess that’s never really guaranteed anyway.
“Let me do it, Boss,” Quinn says.
I shake my head at Quinn, nodding for him to go. He doesn’t want to, but this needs to be done between my brother and me, and no one else present.
His life needs to slip away from my hands.
CONFESSION #12
“Bless me...”
Shit! There’s no priest here to hear my confession.
I’m well and truly fucked.
No priest can save me now. No last rites, no sacraments, no penance, and most definitely no absolution.
No... I’m condemned by my own brother.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Cane
He’s pacing the floor because he doesn’t know what to do with me. I’ve been his friend, his closest confidant for so long, now he’s confused. But he isn’t confused enough that he won’t kill me to protect her. Because just like myself, he loves her too. Except he has her, and she has him. It makes me mad and want to kill Ryken even more. I move, struggling against the rope that binds me still and groan when I don’t move. He looks to me, his eyebrows scrunched together. The knife is back in his hand as he stares. He’s working up the courage to do it, to kill me. It’s playing in his head—how to do it. He doesn’t want to, but I know he will.