Her face pales, the blood draining out until she looks like marble. “If you so much as touch her?—”
I cut her off with a sharp, barking laugh. “Touch her? Sister, you’ve got it backwards. She’s already in my hands, whether you like it or not. I’ve been holding her for years. The question isn’t if I’ll touch her. It’s if she’ll beg me to stop when I finally do.”
Her jaw locks. She looks at me like she’s seeing a stranger standing in her brother’s skin. Maybe she is.
“Stay away from her,” she says finally. It’s not a plea. It’s a command.
And that’s the thing about commands. They never fucking work on me. They just make me want to break the person giving them.
I push off the counter, stepping close enough to see the mask of “Little Sister” slip, revealing the terrified girl underneath. “You want me to stay away?” I whisper, my voice a low, vibrating threat. “Then tell Wendy to stop looking at me like she already knows she’s mine. Tell her to stop wearing that perfume that makes me want to burn the world down just to keep her in the smoke.”
Her breath hits a snag. That’s all the proof I need. She knows. She’s seen the way Wendy looks at me when she thinks no one is watching.
“You’ve changed,” she says quietly, her voice thick with unshed tears. “This isn’t you, Peter. This is some… twisted obsession.”
I laugh under my breath, a low, jagged sound that makes her shoulders tighten. “That’s where you’re wrong. This has always been me. I just got tired of playing the part of the good brother. You just didn’t want to look at the blood under my fingernails.”
She takes a small step back, her hand reaching for the counter to steady herself. “If you care about me at all, Peter, you’ll leave her alone. Don’t drag her into your world. Don’t make her another body in your wake.”
I tilt my head, watching her with the cold, calculated curiosity of a predator. “If you care about her at all,” I counter, “you’ll stop pretending she’s safe out there. You’ll stop feeding her fairy tales about good men and white picket fences. She doesn’t want a picket fence. She wants a cage.”
“Wendy isn’t like us,” she whispers. “She still believes in people.”
“She wants someone to burn the lies out of her.” My voice cuts sharper now, faster, the way it does when the hunger takes over. “She’s been circling me for months. Walking into the same rot I haunt. Waiting for me to notice the way she bleeds for me. And I did. I noticed everything.”
“Stop.” Her eyes flash. “You’re talking about her like she’s a thing, like she’s property.”
“She’s already halfway gone,” I snap. “You think she walks into that club because she likes the music? No. She’s looking for a reason to fall apart. She’s looking for me to be the one to break her.”
My sister’s lips press together, her face a mask of panic. She doesn’t know whether to believe me or not, and that’s exactly where I want her—drowning in the doubt.
“She’ll hate you,” she manages finally.
“She already does.” I take a slow step toward her, lowering my voice until it’s a whisper that bruises. “But hate is just a different kind of hunger. Hate is a tether. Hate is what makes her wet when I whisper her name. It keeps her coming back for more of the poison.”
Her eyes shine with anger. “If you ruin her?—”
I lean closer, my mouth near her ear, smelling the fear on her skin. “Then she was never yours to save. She was always mine to destroy.”
The words land like lead. I straighten, adjusting my jacket, the leather creaking in the silence. I look perfectly normal. Perfectly sane. “Go home,” I tell her. “Lock yourdoors. Pretend you don’t know where I’m going next. Pretend you didn’t see the blood on my boots.”
“You won’t find her tonight,” she throws back, her voice desperate. “She’s not at the club. She went home.”
I smirk, already halfway to the door, the adrenaline finally starting to sing in my veins. “She will be. She always is. She can’t stay away from the fire.”
And then I’m out in the hallway, the fluorescent lights flickering like a dying heart. The night swallows me whole, my pulse already shifting into that slow, lethal rhythm it always finds before a hunt.
Wendy’s scent is a permanent resident in my brain. The club’s red lights are burned into my retinas. The night tastes like gasoline and ash as I step outside, the city pressing down heavy. A thousand strangers brushing past, pretending they aren’t all one bad day away from becoming me.
My sister’s voice still rings in my skull.If you ruin her…
Too late. I ruined her the first night she looked back at me and didn’t scream.
The car waits where I left it, sleek and black as a coffin. I slide behind the wheel and let the leather swallow me, the city reflected in the windshield like a broken, neon mirror. I don’t turn on the radio. The only music I need is the memory of Wendy’s breath hitching.
I take the long way. Past the river where the boy’s body is currently being weighed down with stones. Past the boarded-up houses where I learned that the only way to get what you want is to take it. Every block reminds me why I was always going to end up here—with her neck in my hand.
I think about the booth. The way she sat stiff, defiant, trying to pretend she wasn’t vibrating with need. The way she clenched her thighs like a betrayal. She can hate me all she wants. It’s the most honest thing she’s ever done.
