Page 138 of Two Sides of Sin

She was staring directly into the face of the man she loved. But there was no warmth here. Just cold, psychopathic amusement.

I leaned in, brushing my lips against the shell of her ear.

“Hello, little bird,” I whispered, the words triggering a shudder through her body. I felt her heart threatening to beat right out of her chest beneath my hand. “Didn’t your boyfriend tell you about me?”

She made a muffled, whimpering sound against my palm, her eyes darting frantically to the locked bathroom door.

“How incredibly rude of him, not to introduce you to his obviously better looking twin brother,” I mocked, dragging my free hand slowly down her stomach, tracing the curve of the tight black dress. “But don’t worry, darling. We’ve met before. You just don’t remember it.”

I dropped my hand lower, brutally shoving my fingers right between her thighs, unapologetic in my invasion.

The touch shocked her out of her paralysed state. She completely panicked. She let out a muffled, furious scream against my hand, viciously thrashing her hips away from my touch and clawing desperately at my chest to push me off. She was a fighter, just like she had been a century ago.

But before I could tighten my grip and really show her how trapped she was, the door of the restroom practically exploded off its hinges.

The wood splintered with a deafening CRACK.

Julian burst into the marble bathroom like a literal force of nature, his eyes swallowed by a terrifying, black void of rage.

He crossed the room in a blur of terrifying speed, his massive hand locking like a steel vice around the back of my neck.

He ripped me off Sage with such brutal force that my feet left the ground. He spun and slammed me face first into the marble wall opposite the stalls. The heavy tile fracturing instantly under the impact, a jarring pain exploding behind my eyes.

Sage scrambled out of the stall, completely terrified, her high heels clicking frantically against the tile as she sprinted out of the shattered doorway and into the restaurant.

The second she was clear, Julian fully unleashed.

He grabbed me by the collar of my dress shirt and threw me viciously across the room. I crashed through the vanity, shattering the marble sinks in a rain of porcelain and twisting pipes. Before I could even push myself up from the wreckage, he was on top of me.

He straddled my chest, pulling his fist back, and drove his ring covered knuckles directly into my jaw with bone crushing, immortal strength.

Crack. My head whipped to the side, thick, hot blood instantly filling my mouth. He didn’t stop. He punched me over and over and over again, completely silent, letting out a century of suffocating rage and gut wrenching guilt with every single brutal, flesh tearing blow.

My skull smacked against the broken tile again. And again. And again.

“Why couldn’t you—” CRACK “—just stay—” CRACK “—the fuck away!” Julian roared, the feral agony in his voice vibrating through the flooded bathroom.

He didn’t give me a single fraction of a second to recover or get my bearings. Every time my immortal biology desperately knitted the shattered bone of my jaw or cheekbone back together, his heavy, bloodied knuckles came crashing down to obliterate it all over again. He was hitting me with a speed and ferocity that outpaced my accelerated healing.

Through the dizzying, blinding pain and the thick, suffocating taste of my own blood, I started to laugh. It was a wet, broken sound, but I couldn’t stop it.

I had pushed the saint to his final breaking point.

Julian’s shark eyes flared with pure, unrestrained hatred at the sound of my laughter. He let go of my ruined shirt and reached blindly into the wreckage of the vanity next to my head. His hand closed around a jagged foot-long shard of shattered porcelain from the destroyed sink.

He didn’t even hesitate. With a feral grunt, he drove the serrated porcelain straight down, plunging it deep into my shoulder and pinning me violently to the flooded, blood soaked floor.

A breathless hiss ripped through my teeth as the porcelain scraped against my collarbone.

I coughed, thick dark blood spilling over my lips and staining my tailored white shirt even further. I tilted my head, looking up at his heavily heaving chest, and flashed him a grotesque, blood streaked grin.

“I missed you too, brother,” I spat out, the words bubbling through the spit and blood pooling from my mouth.

Julian grabbed the edge of the porcelain, totally unfazed by it slicing into his own palms, and prepared to rip it sideways through my chest⁠—

“Oh my god!”

The horrified, piercing shriek of a woman tore through the heavy tension of the room.