8. Church
CHURCH
A week passed since Stitches tried to tear our house apart to get to Bryce. Luckily, Bryce had become scarce afterward, for which I was grateful. Sirena had mostly returned to her old self.
I hadn’t been to classes all week. Ashes was sitting with Sin to give me another break, and Stitches was waiting in the courtyard for Sirena to get out of class.
I heard movement above my head as I lay on my bed and stared at the ceiling. We rarely saw Cady. In fact, had I not known she was upstairs, I’d have thought we had ghosts. She never came down. Sirena continued to leave food and drink outside her door, but Cady wouldn’t speak or open the door. It was bothering my specter. I didn’t like that. In fact, it was beginning to piss me off. The bitch couldn’t stay locked away forever.
Sighing, I got to my feet and made my way to the door that led to Sirena’s room, or rather, Cady’s room now. I stared at it for a moment before knocking.
Nothing.
I knocked again. Still nothing. My patience was already thin, per my usual, so this wasn’t going to work for me.
I pulled the key to the door out of my pocket and unlocked it before taking the steps two at a time. I made it to the top to find Cady staring out the window.
“You shouldn’t come in if you aren’t invited,” she murmured, not bothering to look at me.
“It’s my house. I do what the fuck I want,” I shot back, stepping fully into the room. She reminded me of Sirena as she sat there and stared out the window.
Irritated, I went and knelt in front of her.
“You need to get your shit together, Claws.”
She dragged her attention away from the window and stared me down with bloodshot eyes.
“Sirena killed Adam. She stabbed him to death for what he did,” I continued.
Her bottom lip wobbled, and her eyes misted over. She knew he was dead. She just didn’t know how. I figured she thought we’d done it.
“Does that make you mad?” My voice was soft.
“Yes,” she answered, her voice trembling. “But not for the reasons you think. I should have done it, but I was an idiot, and now…” A tear slipped down her cheek, and she looked away to the window again.
“He was my brother,” I said.
She looked back at me, her eyes wide.
I nodded. “I only just found out. My father fucked his mother and created this nightmare. So my only brother is now dead.”
“Do you blame me?” She sniffled.
“No.” I sighed. “I don’t. I blame my father. He’s the heart of every fucking problem I have, not you.”
She wiped at her tears but didn’t say anything.
“Why don’t you come downstairs?”
“Because I can’t face Sirena. She’ll hate me.”
“Why would she hate you?” I waited, hoping she’d tell me what happened that night. She’d not been forthcoming at all in regard to her and Sin’s nakedness.
More tears streamed down her cheeks.
“This is all my fault. I was such an idiot. I thought Adam could change. He told me he would. He said he didn’t want Sirena, and I was jealous. He promised me things would be better. I was so desperate to have someone that I fucked it all up. I should have listened to Sirena. I knew better. That’s the worst part. I fucking knew , and I did it anyway. And now…” Her voice trailed off.
“And now what?” I studied her as she cried softly.
“Sin,” she finally choked out. “Adam.”
“Did you fuck Sin?” I asked, my voice barely above a whisper.
She wept a little louder, her small body shaking. I leaned forward and grasped her face, forcing her to look at me.
“Answer me, Cadence. Did you fuck Sinclair?”
She nodded miserably, her tears rolling down her cheeks faster.
“I didn’t want to. I love Sirena. I would-would never do that to her. Adam said if we did it, he’d leave her alone. He wouldn’t kill her. He would never bother her again. She’d be safe from him. I believed him,” she choked out. “Sin believed him, too. He begged Adam. Made promises to give him anything he wanted if he swore to leave Rina alone. Adam told us if we didn’t do it, he’d make us watch him hurt her. K-Kill her. He-He drugged us. My head felt so weird.”
She wiped at her eyes again. It did nothing to help the flood of tears.
“Adam promised. He said to let him watch, and Rina would be safe. I’d do anything for her. This is fucking killing me. It’s killing me!” Her blue eyes locked on mine. “Dante, please .”
“Please, what?” I whispered, my stomach rolling with nausea at her confession. I knew Sin. He hated cheaters. He hated liars. Bells did a number on him, and we almost lost him to that madness. Knowing how deeply he’d fallen in love with Sirena made my chest clench with the fear of what this new shit could do to him. He had already beaten himself up over everything that happened to her in the facility. And now this?
FUCK.
“Kill me,” she finished softly.
“You want me to kill you? What good would that do?”
“I can’t live like this. Please. Please do it. I’m begging you. PLEASE!” She slid down onto her knees and faced me, her words tumbling off her lips quickly as she repeated her request.
“If Rina finds out, she’ll hate me forever. I need you to do this for me. Please. Please, Dante. Please. I-I only let it happen because I didn’t think Adam would let me live after. I-I thought I w-wouldn’t have to face Sirena. That she’d be safe.”
I reached out and wrapped my hand around her delicate throat, feeling the dampness from her tears as they dropped onto my hand. She trembled beneath my hold as I tightened my grip.
Cadence Lawrence was brave.
I admired that about her.
I tightened my hold on her throat, listening as her breathing became ragged at the restricted airflow. Killing was part of who I was. As I held her by the neck, I let the feelings of bliss rush through me. The familiarity of the joy the kill brought me made my body come to life.
I shoved her roughly onto the floor and straddled my body over hers, drinking in the way her eyes widened and how her chest moved as she tried to rake in mouthfuls of air.
I tightened my hand further. Cadence was a delicate little thing, just like my specter.
Her chest heaved as I continued to choke her. It took a lot to kill someone with your bare hands. I’d done it plenty of times before. It made my list of the top three ways to kill someone—something about feeling the life slip away made my dick hard.
That made me just a little crazier.
The blood vessels began to splinter in her pretty eyes. Her lips parted, struggling to breathe.
“You wanted this,” I whispered to her. “Don’t cry when you get what you want.”
More tears squeezed from her eyes at my words.
I leaned in and ran my nose along her trembling jaw before my lips brushed against her ear.
“I love killing,” I whispered in her ear. “It’s my passion. It’s what fucking drives me. It’s what fucking built me . Today, I will do you no favors. You will live with the choices you made and learn to do fucking better. Sometimes, our failures are our best teachers.” I inhaled her scent of cinnamon and lilac. “Killing you would hurt my specter. I would do no such thing to her. Stop being so fucking selfish. If you love her, you’ll live. Do you love her?”
She choked out what I thought was yes.
I pulled away and stared down at her beet-red face.
Carefully, I loosened my hold on her. She coughed violently as she sucked in mouthfuls of air.
“Then fucking live,” I said in a dangerous whisper. “If you consider death again, do it your fucking self. I’m not interested in doing you any favors.”
She stared up at me, her small body trembling as I continued to straddle her.
“Please don’t tell her,” she rasped, reaching for me. “Dante. Please. She’ll hate me. I-I can’t lose her. She’s all I have.”
I took her hand in mine and pulled her to sit up so she was facing me. She stared up at me with big blue eyes, silently begging me not to tell her ugly secrets. I released her hand, gripped her face tightly, and gave it a vicious shake.
“You fucking did this. You tell her what you did, or I will. Do you understand me?” I shook her face again. “You knew he was trash, and you kept bringing him out of the fucking dumpster. You fucking knew , Cadence.”
She let out a choked sob and nodded miserably.
“Fucking use words when you speak to me,” I snarled.
“Y-Yes. I’ll tell her.”
“I fucking expect to see you downstairs and acting like a goddamn functioning part of society within the next seventy-two hours. If you’re not, I swear to fucking god, Claws, I will come up here and make you regret ever being born. Remember what we did to Sin?”
“Yes.” She wept harder.
“That’ll be a Sunday walk in the park compared to what I’ll do to you if I don’t see you making Sirena smile. I will come for you if she’s stressed, even the smallest amount. Believe me, you do not want to piss me off.”
Her tears continued to drip onto my hand as she nodded miserably.
“We deal with one problem at a time. Get this shit over with so we can focus on taking these fuckers out. You want that, right?”
“Yes,” she whispered.
The creaking on the stairs made me pause.
“Malachi,” I called out, knowing it was him. It was too heavy a squeak to be my specter. She was a little ghost when it came to her explorations.
He cleared his throat from behind me. “Dante.”
“Cadence and I were just having a little talk, weren’t we?” I released her face and stared her down.
“Y-Yeah.” She wiped her eyes.
Stitches was quiet for a moment before he spoke. “Sirena is downstairs waiting for you.”
“Perfect.” I rose to my feet and didn’t cast Claws another look as I went to the stairs, Stitches hot on my heels. The moment the door closed behind us, he shoved me against the wall.
“What the fuck did I walk in on?” he demanded, his dark eyes flashing and his lip curled into an angry sneer. I knew my brother well enough to know he was ready to fight me and probably kill me if I somehow fucked up.
I reached out and adjusted the noose he wore as a tie.
“Easy, brother. You should know me well enough by now to know that I’d die before I hurt our girl. Do you truly believe I’d hurt her by fucking around with her sister ?”
The tension visibly eased away from his body as he exhaled. “No, I don’t think you’d hurt her.” He backed away from me, and I quickly stepped into his space.
“We do need to talk, though,” I said softly.
Fear flashed in his eyes. “Did she… tell you?”
“We’ll talk later.” I didn’t elaborate. I walked past him and went downstairs to find my specter waiting for me on my chair.
Something unfurled in my chest, and I couldn’t stop myself from rushing to her and dragging her into my arms.
She seemed surprised by my sudden hug, but responded as I knew she would. She raked her fingers through my hair, sending goosebumps across my flesh, and nuzzled into my neck.
I’d never fucking hurt her.
That feeling only continued to grow stronger the longer I held her.
Sirena Lawrence was my whole world, and damn anyone who tried to fuck with that.