Chapter 28 REICH
REICH
Castor arrived the next day after I told him Sage was willing to give him the answers we needed. I knew why she was drawing another invisible line between us. She wasn’t ready to let me in. Maybe she never would be.
I told myself I was fine with that.
But as I paced the length of the room, burning off restless energy before Cas showed, I knew it was a lie. I wasn’t fine. I wasn’t anything close to fine.
And letting Cas handle this? Well, that was a recipe for disaster.
I needed to give him a pep talk first—make sure he wouldn’t fuck it up. That was the problem when I let other people handle things. I never trusted them to get it right. It was why I’d trained myself to rely on only me. My hands. My decisions. My control.
I was the one who kept things together.
At least, that’s what I’d always believed.
But Sage… Sage had wrecked that certainty. She had already dragged me into a tangled mess of doubt, forcing me to second-guess my choices, my instincts—my entire damn life.
And now?
After tasting her, after feeling her body melt beneath mine… there was no walking away.
I was hooked.
And for the first time in a long, long while, I was scared.
Not of her.
Of myself.
Because I wasn’t sure I could protect her. Not the way she needed.
And worse… I wasn’t sure she wouldn’t turn on me and ruin everything my brother and I had built.
A system in place to keep us safe within the confines of the life we had chosen.
***
When Cas finally showed, he looked like hell. The dark circles beneath his eyes told me he hadn’t slept. His clothes were wrinkled, his jaw shadowed with days-old stubble. The usual easy swagger he wore like armor was gone. In its place was something rawer, stripped bare.
I grabbed two whiskey glasses from the cabinet and poured generously. Liquid gold caught the dim light, gleaming like something that might save us both in this endless black void.
Fat chance.
I handed one to Cas as we clinked them in a silent toast.
“Brother,” we muttered in unison.
We drank without speaking for a moment. The silence stretched long between us, familiar and heavy. The burn of whiskey down my throat didn’t even register. Cas sighed, dragging his palm over his face like he could rub the exhaustion away.
Finally, he spoke, his voice rough around the edges. “I’m a terrible liar.”
I smirked faintly. “You’re not as bad as you think.”
He shot me a look. “Don’t humor me.”
“Fine.” I leaned back in my chair, exhaling slowly. “Then keep it short, Cas. If you don’t overshare, you won’t have to lie.”
His hand tightened around the glass, knuckles blanching. His stare dropped to the swirling amber liquid, watching it the way you watch something you want to drown in.
“What is it?” I asked.
He shook his head once. “Sam.”
My gut clenched.
“What about her?”
He exhaled, heavy and tired. “She keeps asking about Sage.”
I waited.
“She doesn’t buy the story that she just disappeared without a word.” His mouth twisted, part amusement, part regret. “Sam’s convinced something else happened. She wants me to look into it.”
I frowned. “Why you?”
He gave me a flat look. “Because she’s smart.” His voice was bitter and resigned. “Because she’s catching on and starting to realize that ‘finding people’ isn’t just some hobby of mine.”
That was a problem.
A big one.
I rubbed a hand down my face. “We can’t let her in, Cas. You know what happens if she finds out even a fraction about what we do and who we do it for.”
His jaw tightened. He stood abruptly, crossing the room like he couldn’t sit still anymore. His shoulders hunched, like he was carrying more weight than his frame was built for.
And I knew he was.
We both were.
“Eventually, I’ll have to say something to tide her over,” he said. “Or I’ll lose her for good.”
His voice cracked just enough to make me freeze.
When his eyes met mine, they were raw. Desperate.
“She thinks I’m living a double life,” he continued. “That I’ve got a house somewhere. A wife. A couple of kids. Like I’m playing the perfect miserable suburban dad on weekends and banging the hot blonde secretary in my off hours.”
I huffed a dry laugh.
Not because it was funny.
Because it was tragic.
That was the kind of life Cas could’ve had. Hell, maybe even me in another lifetime. But not here. Not now. Not with the ENA’s leash tight around our throats.
I pressed my fingers to my temples, feeling the pulse of a migraine building behind my eyes. “Even if you told her the truth, Cas—are you really willing to put her in that kind of danger? You’d lose her anyway. You can’t have a normal life with her. Not in this world we’ve built.”
His gaze dropped as I watched his fists clench.
“I don’t know,” he whispered. “But I just can’t lose her.”
And that was it.
The line in the sand.
I recognized it because it was the same one that I had already crossed with Sage.
The difference was Cas was still pretending it was a choice.
I wanted to tell him it would be okay. That if he fought hard enough, he could have her. That if he ran fast enough, far enough, maybe they could disappear together.
But we both knew that wasn’t true.
“What are you going to do about Sage?” Cas asked, dragging me back.
His voice was steady again. Too steady.
I opened my mouth, only to close it again because for once I didn’t have a response.
What was I going to do about Sage?
She was in my head. Under my skin.
Inside every goddamn thought I had.
I couldn’t stop reminiscing over the taste of her. Couldn’t stop feeling the heat of her breath on my neck. Couldn’t forget the look in her eyes when she’d bared herself to me—trust, desperation and defiance all meshed together.
She was chaos. And I craved it.
But more than that…I wanted to protect her.
And I wasn’t sure I could until I got this stupid formality out of the way about Klay.
I ran a hand over my mouth, shaking my head. “I don’t know, Cas.” My voice felt raw and honest. “I’ve never felt like this before. But I know it doesn’t change anything. This life—this is what we’re stuck with.”
He studied me closely, something softening in his gaze. “Did she say why me? Why not you?”
I shrugged, feigning indifference like it didn’t matter.
But it did.
It fucking did.
Why not me instead of Cas?
To call it jealousy would’ve been an understatement. I wanted to be the one to unravel that side of her—not watch my little brother do it. Yet here I was, tangled up in this stubborn little wildflower who was slowly wrecking every last part of me.
“All right,” He said, pushing away from the table with a heavy sigh. “I’ll do my best. But knowing you, by the time I get anything useful out of her, you'll already be lurking in the shadows.”
I smirked. “What makes you think I’m not already?”
He let out a small laugh. “Some things never change.”
I leaned back in my chair, letting the silence settle over us. “Exactly,” I murmured. “Just like our arrangement with the ENA.”
The temperature in the room dropped.
A heavy, suffocating silence fell between us.
Just saying those three letters out loud was enough to twist my gut.
The ones who owned us.
The ones who controlled every move we made.
They were the reason we couldn’t walk away.
The reason we never could.
Cas’s jaw clenched. His fists curled at his sides. He didn’t say anything. He didn’t have to.
We both knew the truth.
We knew too much.
And that meant we would never be free.
Not until we were dead.
And with every move we made, that day felt closer.
I wasn’t sure if I feared it anymore.
Or welcomed it.
I stood, knocking back the last of my whiskey. “Go talk to her,” I said, my voice quiet.
Cas nodded once and then he was gone.
And I was alone again.
Left with nothing but the echo of her voice in my head and the weight of everything I couldn’t say.
Maybe in another life, Sage.
But not this one.