Page 13 of Two Sides of Sin

Cain didn’t look up. He traced the edge of the envelope. “You’re still going to go?”

“Of course, Cain. Why wouldn’t I be?”

Finally, he looked at me. His eyes were dark, filled with a cold, analytical intensity. “I just thought you’d change your mind, that’s all. Given everything.”

“Everything is exactly why I have to go,” I countered.

Cain’s expression didn’t change, but he picked up the stack of envelopes. The movement was smooth, almost predatory. “Let me post them for you. I have to head to the post office in the morning anyway.”

I hesitated. There was something in the way he held them—too tight. “Are you sure? It’s out of your way.”

“I’m sure, June,” he replied almost too quickly.

"Like I said, I was heading there anyway. It’s no trouble."

He stepped closer, the magnetic pull of his presence making the air feel tense. He didn’t wait for a response. He tucked the envelopes into the inner pocket of his dark jacket, the white paper disappearing into the black fabric.

“Goodnight, June,” he called out, his voice returning to its normal, detached tone.

As they walked out the door, Julian gave me one last lingering smile. But it was Cain’s silhouette I watched as they crossed the yard, the way he walked with my future hidden against his chest. I was too tired to chase after him. I told myself it was just Cain being Cain—cryptic, dark, and difficult.

Chapter 11

Cain

The silence of our house was a relief after the suffocating sentimentality of the evening. Upstairs, Julian had retreated to his sanctuary, no doubt to trace the phantom shape of June’s smile in the dark or weep over the Polaroids of her he keeps tucked away like holy relics. He was always the dreamer, the one who wanted to believe that the cage could be made of velvet and poetry.

I was the destroyer. I was the one who understood that a cage, no matter how gilded, required a grip that never faltered and control at its core.

I stepped into my office and locked the door with a soft, final click. The sound echoed in the high-ceilinged room, a period at the end of a sentence. I knew Julian wouldn’t be impressed with what I was about to do. I could almost feel his silent judgment through the floorboards—those weary, moralistic sighs he gave whenever I reminded him of the cold reality of our existence. He would call this a betrayal, taking things too far. He would talk about how we should be “nurturing her spirit” and “giving her time to heal.”

I didn’t care. Julian was starting to forget the point of all this, drifting into the fog of his own longing and delusion. He was becoming soft, distracted by the way she smelled of vanilla, and grief. I would have to remind him soon—remind him of the ritual, the pact, the blood, and the years we have spent preparing for this specific harvest.

Lately, June has been a brat. There is no other word for it.

She’s been giving me the cold shoulder, moving through the house like a ghost that refuses to be seen. Her silence is a weapon she wields with a new, irritating brand of teenage arrogance. It was starting to fucking piss me off. The way she flinches when my shadow crosses hers, the way she deliberately leaves a room the moment I enter—it was a level of defiance I hadn’t authorised.

But the more she pushes, the more she tries to claw her way out from under my thumb, the more I crave to break her back into place. Every time she rolls her eyes or turns her back on me, a primal, untamed need to break her spirit flares in my gut. I find my mind drifting to darker corners, imagining exactly how I’d enforce her obedience.

I’ve spent more than one night staring at the ceiling, fantasising about having her handcuffed and helpless. I want her bound to my bed, every limb pinned and secured until she has no choice but to look at me. I want her defenceless at my mercy, where her only job is to exist for my satisfaction. She thinks she’s winning by ignoring me, but all she’s doing is making me want to prove that in this house, I am the only one who dictates.

One of these days, she’s going to push me too far, and she’ll realise that being a ghost is much safer than being the core of my undivided attention.

But it was her eyes that truly galled me.

When she looks at Julian, her eyes are wide, luminous things—soft doe eyes, liquid with a misplaced, desperate adoration. She looks at him as if he is the sun, the only thing keeping her from freezing to death in the wake of her cousin’s passing. But the moment those eyes land on me, the shutters slam shut. The light is extinguished, replaced by a cold dread. It’s something dark and addictive that stands in total opposition to the warmth she offers my brother.

It pisses me off because it was a territory I had not yet conquered. It made my blood simmer with a need to reach out and tilt her chin up until she had no choice but to see me. One day, I would make her look up at me with those same doe eyes. I would own that gaze, that softness, even if I had to pin her down and force her to acknowledge who really held her leash.

I daydream about the moment that fear finally breaks, replaced by the same heavy-lidded worship she wastes on Julian. I want to see her eyes go hazy with a different kind of heat while she’s bound beneath me, her pulse hammering against my fingertips. I will own every flicker of light in those eyes, or I will snuff it out myself. I’ll wait until her very last breath if I have to, just to ensure that the last thing she ever sees is the man who finally broke her.

Sitting behind the heavy mahogany desk, I reached into my jacket and pulled out the stack of white envelopes. They felt flimsy in my hands, frail paper vessels carrying the weight of her pathetic ambitions. These were her “escapes.” Her tickets to a world that doesn’t exist.

I took a silver letter opener from my desk, the blade catching the dim lamplight like a sliver of the moon, and began to work.

Rip. Rip. Rip.

I spread the contents across the table. Transcripts. Letters of recommendation from teachers who thought they were helping a “bright young girl.” Her personal essays.