I stepped closer to her, my boots thudding softly against the warped floorboards of the apartment. I didn’t need to shout. My presence alone bent her spine, made her breathe as if she were drowning.
Just wait.
“Don’t please me,” I said. “Say it exactly. No hesitation. No stammering. One wrong word and you’ll wish you had listened better.”
She blinked up at me, wide-eyed. “But…you’re my brother. You’re not like this…”
“I was always like this,” I told her, tilting my head so she could see my eyes in the dim light. “You just liked the mask I wore better. That mask isn’t here tonight, sister.”
Her hands shook as she fumbled with the phone, and I crouched down, bringing my face level with hers. The tremor in her fingers and the tear tracks down her cheek were perfect. Fear was the edge I needed.
My little puppets with strings taut, ready to sever at my orchestrated hand.
“You’re going to do exactly what I told you,” I whispered. “Call him. Say the words. Make him believe every syllable. Let me hear the panic. Make him think you’re falling apart. That’s the only way this works. If not...”
She hesitated, her eyes darting to the gun. “And…if I don’t?”
Ah. The defiance. Maybe this is the single shred that made my Shiloh tolerate her this long, however, to me. It’s simply annoying.
I dropped the pretenses I held every fucking day. I let my voice drop to my usual dark register. I slumped and watched my eyes reflected in the windows as they grew void of emotion.
I let her feel it.
I let the edge slip into my tone.
“Then he gets hurt,” I said softly. “Or you do. Maybe both. Do you really want to test me and find out?”
Her throat bobbed. “No…”
“Good girl,” I murmured.
She dialed with shaking fingers. I stood perfectly still, just watching. Her voice trembled, and tears were falling free, adding weight to the spiral I’d set in motion.
Perfect.
Shiloh answered and immediately started screaming at her.
I couldn’t help but snicker silently.
My pushy sister seemed to push Sunshine too far, and now she was paying for it with a tongue-lashing about patience, something Alexandra Harding would never know.
“Shiloh…please…please. Just listen,” she whispered into the phone, her voice small and trembling. “I need you to go back to where it began. Please…for me.”
I leaned back against the wall, letting her words roll into the room.
Perfect. Exactly perfect.
My sister’s fear would reach him, and the beautiful little hero would come running.
Every note of her voice would lock into him and make him panic, make him understand how serious I fucking was.
Make him see what he had lost, and what he had abandoned before they both lived happily never fucking after.
She started to say more, and I frowned, lifting the gun and shooting the phone out of her grip.
“What the fuck!”
I saw her collapse slightly, curling further into herself, shivering, letting the sobs come in waves as she sank to the floor by the couch.
