But I want him dead.
“Kane!”
This time it's Sabrina's voice that pulls me. I glance up to see she’s standing by the open doorway as the group of swim mates carry Mason outof the locker room like pallbearers. Those gorgeous sea-green eyes of hers are wide and she stands there petrified. The door slams in her face.
I blink and I'm alone with Charlie again. "What the fuck is wrong with you?!" He screams.
"Me? What's wrong with you? Did you not hear the way he was talking about your sister? Where were you? Milling about, taking your time to get dressed. Meanwhile he's talking about the way your sister’s tongue moves in his mouth." I flick my tongue at him like a snake. "You spend all your time keeping her away from me when I'm the one who would protect her completely."
"I keep her away from you because I see what you are, Kane. I. see. you. I see the monster inside you try to hide. The vacancy behind your eyes. You're a fucking void."
I glower at him.
"My sister will never love you."
"She will be mine, Charles. There are things you're too stupid to see. But you'll find out soon enough."
He squints at me like I'm absurd, but he simply hasn't been told yet why his father has been taking him on hunting trips. He hasn't been told why his father has upped his regimen.
Not like my grandfather has told me.
"She will never want you, Kane."
I laugh and spit at his feet, leaning against the lockers, the split skin on my fingers still bleeding, still leaking, still numb. They'll ache later. But for now, all I feel is the internal rot his words are causing. "Is that so?"
"I'll do everything in my power to make sure she is never yours. You're not good enough for her. You willneverbe good enough for her."
Unbeknownst to him, he verbally scheduled his own execution with his executioner. I nod a few times in his general direction and another chuckle leaves me. "That's the thing, Charles. I always get what I want."
Six Months Later
“So, getting away with it will establish me as a member without having to do the hunt? I mean, I'll still gladly do the hunt, I’m just wondering.”
Grandfather stares at me from across his desk, over the rim of his glass tumbler as he takes a sip of whatever was in his decanter. He inhales deeply, blue eyes weary. “But why the boy if David and I have already negotiated for her?”
“Because.” I whine a bit childishly. “Because he’ll get in the way and ruin it. If I don't kill him now, I'll just end up doing it later.” I breathe out. “If she finds out it was me, it could put a damper on things. I want her to love me. Completely.”
“And your children.”
I scrunch up my nose in disgust. I really don’t want children. I don’t want Sabrina’s perfect, thin and petite, perfect body to be ruined. Or her snatch. I’ve heard things about cunts after they’ve been torn through during childbirth. I can’t imagine having a wife with a loose cunt. Not to mention the noise babies make. Squealing and squawking and defecating. Ghastly. “Well, that’s fine. As long as it’s just the one. I want her with me always. I do not want a child to get in the way of her love for me or pleasing me.”
Grandfather quirks a thick white brow. “One… if your firstborn is a male.”
Well, thank God or whatever is out there they have all that genetic coding and whatnot. We could make the child in a lab so it doesn’t ruin Sabrina’s body. I don’t tell grandfather that. “Of course,” I reply, then bring the subject at hand back to the forefront as I stand and head to the window of his office here at the Ainsworth estate in Wales. The yard is very green. “It’s settled then, I’ll become the youngest Syndicate member and marry her when I turn twenty-one. I can wait five more years. But first, I’ll drown Charles Koen Winters. Which brings me to my next question, can I borrow the yacht?”
Sabrina slips away from me faster than I can manage; moving to New York full-time to be with her father. She only visits during Christmas or the summer holiday. In the meantime, I find out he isn’t her father at all, and David is my grandfather's bastard. My uncle. Which made Charlie my cousin. It’s all a bit incestuous.
It makes me want her even more.
But she’s unattainable.
So I wait.
Age Twenty-Two
I study up on the band Sabrina sent a group text about, text everyone separately and tell them not to go. That I'm going to make my move, finally. After all, they all know how much I adore her. No matter how many timesI’d caught her with someone else's face between her thighs at house parties over the years. I knew it was only a matter of time before it wasmyface between her thighs.
As soon as I heard Sabrina was back in Kensington, and leaving again at the end of summer to begin working for David after passing the bar, I divulged a plan.
