70. Cain
Cain
Watching my brother fall apart from across the dining room was, without a doubt, the most exquisite delicacy I had tasted in a long time.
I sat comfortably in the shadowed, velvet alcove of my hidden booth, nursing a glass of bourbon as I watched the heartbreak unfold.
The faint, blue glow of the phone screen illuminated the exact second Julian’s heart shattered.
I could practically feel the feral, suffocating anger radiating off his massive frame from all the way across the restaurant.
The way his face dropped, the way the colour drained from his skin as he realised exactly what he was watching… it was an absolute masterpiece.
Perfect cinema.
But watching them together this evening had ignited a dark, starving fire in my own chest. The prize had never looked more enticing.
The way she looked at him over the candlelight, the gentle way she touched his hand, the unguarded devotion in her eyes—it was the one thing I had chased for lifetimes, but had never been able to fully grasp.
I could force her obedience, I could break her body, but I had never been able to fully command her genuine affection.
So, I had stolen it in the dark under false pretences. Did I feel an ounce of guilt as I watched Julian bury his face in his trembling hands? Absolutely not. Guilt was a human weakness, and it was out of my character.
Sage stood up from the booth, her beautiful black dress sweeping the floor as she walked towards the back of the restaurant.
I watched the way the silk clung to the curve of her hips, my jaw tightening as a pulse of undiluted possession thrashed in my veins.
My mind was a chaotic, dark storm, torn between the visceral urge to rip out the eyes of every man in the room who dared to look at her, or to simply rip the dress off her body myself.
I wanted to shield her from their gazes and simultaneously expose her to only mine—to destroy the beauty they were all trying to steal with their eyes.
Julian didn’t even look up. He was too consumed by the agonising shame of the video.
I set my bourbon down on the table, adjusting the cuffs of my tailored suit, and slipped seamlessly out of the booth.
I moved through the crowded restaurant like a ghost unnoticed, and followed her into the narrow, dimly lit hallway.
I pushed the heavy oak door to the women’s restroom open and stepped inside, the lock clicking softly into place behind me.
The room was a sprawling expanse of cold marble and gold framed mirrors.
It was empty, save for the single occupied stall at the very end.
I stood in front of the door, completely silent, a dark, wicked smile curling my lips.
I heard the rush of water as the toilet flushed. The latch clicked, and the stall door swung inward.
The second she stepped out, I lunged.
I grabbed her by the throat and shoved her back. Sage let out a startled gasp as her spine slammed hard into the tiled wall of the stall. Before she could even draw breath to scream for help, I clamped my hand ruthlessly over her mouth, pinning her head against the cold tile.
She thrashed wildly, her startled eyes wide with sheer terror as she looked at her attacker.
Her frantic struggles faltered. Shock, followed instantly by a dizzying, terrified confusion, washed over her delicate features as her eyes rapidly scanned my face.
She was staring directly into the face of the man she loved. But there was no warmth here. Just cold, psychopathic amusement.
I leaned in, brushing my lips against the shell of her ear.
“Hello, little bird,” I whispered, the words triggering a shudder through her body. I felt her heart threatening to beat right out of her chest beneath my hand. “Didn’t your boyfriend tell you about me?”
She made a muffled, whimpering sound against my palm, her eyes darting frantically to the locked bathroom door.
“How incredibly rude of him, not to introduce you to his obviously better looking twin brother,” I mocked, dragging my free hand slowly down her stomach, tracing the curve of the tight black dress. “But don’t worry, darling. We’ve met before. You just don’t remember it.”
I dropped my hand lower, brutally shoving my fingers right between her thighs, unapologetic in my invasion.
The touch shocked her out of her paralysed state. She completely panicked. She let out a muffled, furious scream against my hand, viciously thrashing her hips away from my touch and clawing desperately at my chest to push me off. She was a fighter, just like she had been a century ago.
But before I could tighten my grip and really show her how trapped she was, the door of the restroom practically exploded off its hinges.
The wood splintered with a deafening CRACK.
Julian burst into the marble bathroom like a literal force of nature, his eyes swallowed by a terrifying, black void of rage.
He crossed the room in a blur of terrifying speed, his massive hand locking like a steel vice around the back of my neck.
He ripped me off Sage with such brutal force that my feet left the ground. He spun and slammed me face first into the marble wall opposite the stalls. The heavy tile fracturing instantly under the impact, a jarring pain exploding behind my eyes.
Sage scrambled out of the stall, completely terrified, her high heels clicking frantically against the tile as she sprinted out of the shattered doorway and into the restaurant.
The second she was clear, Julian fully unleashed.
He grabbed me by the collar of my dress shirt and threw me viciously across the room. I crashed through the vanity, shattering the marble sinks in a rain of porcelain and twisting pipes. Before I could even push myself up from the wreckage, he was on top of me.
He straddled my chest, pulling his fist back, and drove his ring covered knuckles directly into my jaw with bone crushing, immortal strength.
Crack. My head whipped to the side, thick, hot blood instantly filling my mouth. He didn’t stop. He punched me over and over and over again, completely silent, letting out a century of suffocating rage and gut wrenching guilt with every single brutal, flesh tearing blow.
My skull smacked against the broken tile again. And again. And again.
“Why couldn’t you—” CRACK “—just stay—” CRACK “—the fuck away!” Julian roared, the feral agony in his voice vibrating through the flooded bathroom.
He didn’t give me a single fraction of a second to recover or get my bearings.
Every time my immortal biology desperately knitted the shattered bone of my jaw or cheekbone back together, his heavy, bloodied knuckles came crashing down to obliterate it all over again.
He was hitting me with a speed and ferocity that outpaced my accelerated healing.
Through the dizzying, blinding pain and the thick, suffocating taste of my own blood, I started to laugh. It was a wet, broken sound, but I couldn’t stop it.
I had pushed the saint to his final breaking point.
Julian’s shark eyes flared with pure, unrestrained hatred at the sound of my laughter. He let go of my ruined shirt and reached blindly into the wreckage of the vanity next to my head. His hand closed around a jagged foot-long shard of shattered porcelain from the destroyed sink.
He didn’t even hesitate. With a feral grunt, he drove the serrated porcelain straight down, plunging it deep into my shoulder and pinning me violently to the flooded, blood soaked floor.
A breathless hiss ripped through my teeth as the porcelain scraped against my collarbone.
I coughed, thick dark blood spilling over my lips and staining my tailored white shirt even further. I tilted my head, looking up at his heavily heaving chest, and flashed him a grotesque, blood streaked grin.
“I missed you too, brother,” I spat out, the words bubbling through the spit and blood pooling from my mouth.
Julian grabbed the edge of the porcelain, totally unfazed by it slicing into his own palms, and prepared to rip it sideways through my chest—
“Oh my god!”
The horrified, piercing shriek of a woman tore through the heavy tension of the room.
The heavy oak door had been pushed open by a group of restaurant workers and the ma?tre d’. They stood frozen in the doorway, staring in utter horror at the apocalyptic bloodbath we had made of the upscale bathroom.
“Hey! Get the hell off him!” a waiter yelled, his voice cracking with panic. “I’m calling the police right now! Get out!”
The sudden, piercing reality of the mortal world crashing down around us acted like a bucket of freezing water over Julian’s rage.
He froze. His torn hand released the bloody porcelain shard still buried in my shoulder.
Slowly, heavily, Julian pushed himself off my battered body. He stood up, his towering frame swaying slightly with the adrenaline. His expensive suit jacket was torn, his crisp white dress shirt ruined and soaked through with my blood.
He looked down at me. The black void in his eyes slowly receded, leaving behind his striking amber irises. But there was no victory in his face. His eyes were bright, brimming with hot, desperate tears of profound frustration.
He knew exactly what I knew. No matter how brutally he beat me, no matter how much of my blood he spilled onto this floor… he couldn’t end it. We were a curse bound by blood, doomed to this cycle for eternity.
“God,” Julian whispered, his voice cracking with a raw, devastating sorrow that almost made me pity him. “I wish I could just fucking kill you.”
He didn’t wait for a response. He turned his back on me, ignoring the terrified restaurant staff cowering in the doorway, and shoved past them into the crowded dining room.
“Sage!” his panicked, desperate roar echoed through the restaurant. “Sage!”
I lay there in the wreckage of the flooded room, staring up at the flickering overhead lights as my shattered ribs slowly began to knit themselves back together. I let out a long, wet sigh, pulling the bloody porcelain shard from my shoulder with a sickening squelch.
The night was now ruined for them. And for me? It was an absolute triumph.