Page 94 of Two Sides of Sin

I wasn’t being stalked. There wasn’t anybody in my apartment. I was just hallucinating from exhaustion. I desperately needed to get some deep sleep tonight, before I lost my mind.

I pushed off the brick wall and headed back inside to gather my things, totally unaware of the man sitting in a black SUV parked across the street, watching my every move with cold, calculating eyes.

Chapter 54

Cain

The surface of my desk was a flawless slab of modern glass. It was a stark, contrast to the mahogany antiques that had filled my study back at the Manor, but I preferred the coldness of the twenty-first century. It suited me.

I sat back in my sleek leather chair, the sprawling city skyline visible through the floor-to-ceiling windows of my office, but my attention was consumed by the piece of paper in my hand.

It was a letter. From Julian, but to who— was the question.

The paper was slightly worn at the edges from how many times I had run my thumb over it in the last week. My private investigator had intercepted it before it could reach the local postal sorting facility, recognising the outdated cursive handwriting instantly.

Sage.

I played with the name on my tongue.

It seemed my fleeting, bored impulse to hunt down my twin had turned out to strike gold.

Once the investigator had handed me the letter, I had immediately taken over the manhunt myself. I had spent the last week doing my own investigating, unraveling the digital trails, the secure military phone lines, and the quiet, mundane life of an art student who once belonged to me. I had the addresses now. And surprisingly, she wasn’t too far away at all. Just sitting perfectly unaware in her student apartment in Emeralds Grove, just a few towns over.

Oh, our little June, I thought, a venomous smile curving my lips as I traced the ink of her new name.

I dropped the letter onto the glass desk, looking at the empty space next to my laptop.

I had left her a little blast from the past last night. It had been incredibly easy to slip in through the sliding glass door of her kitchen, while she was distracted by her pathetic little horror movies. I had left the painting right on her drafting table, right where she would find it with no issue.

I had found myself carrying that piece of frayed, aged paper around with me for nearly a century. Through every continent, through every kill, I had kept it perfectly preserved. Not out of sentimentality for the Manor, but because it was the only thing she had ever painted with me in it. Even if I was just a dark, imposing shadow in the window, looking down at the brother I despised and the girl I couldn’t stop thinking about.

I leaned forward, resting my elbows on the cold glass, staring at Julian’s desperate, protective words of devotion scattered across the stolen page.

How long was my brother going to keep this from me? How long did he really think he could hide the fact that he had found her soul reincarnated?

I tapped my index finger repetitively against the glass. I didn’t blame him for keeping his secret. If I had found her first, I would have locked her away in a cage so hidden, Julian would never see her again.

But if my twin wanted to play games… I could play games of my own.

The digital clock on the dashboard of my Aston Martin read 3:00 AM.

The city was mostly dead, the streets slick with the remnants of the evening’s rainstorm. I sat parked in the shadows across from her brick apartment building, the engine idling with a low, seductive purr. I was bored. The kind of suffocating, immortal boredom that usually ended with a blonde bleeding out in my bedroom.

But tonight, my lack of restraint had driven me here. To her.

I leaned my head back against the pristine leather headrest, my eyes locked on the third-floor window. Through the gap in the curtains, I could see the faint blue flickering of a television screen in a dark room.

A calculated, icy thrill spiked in my chest.

I killed the engine and stepped out into the damp night. I didn’t bother with the front door of the building. With the effortless, predatory grace that came with a century of hunting, I scaled the wrought-iron fire escape in the alleyway, my dark coat practically swallowing the shadows until I stood perfectly still on her small, rusted balcony.

The sliding glass door was locked. A pathetic, modern illusion of safety.

I slipped a thin piece of metal from my pocket, sliding it into the cheap mechanism. Click. It took less than three seconds. I slid the heavy glass open just enough to step inside, the cheap curtains brushing over my shoulders.

I stood in the silence of her kitchen, letting the scent of the apartment wash over me. Coffee. Inexpensive candles. Charcoal and paint. And beneath it all, that subtle, intoxicating, unique scent of her skin that I hadn’t smelled in decades.

My jaw tightened. My eyes swept over the space, my deep-seated obsession with order and symmetry clashing with the chaotic mess of an art student. There were mugs left in the sink. Sketchbooks stacked haphazardly on the table. A sweater tossed carelessly over the back of a chair. It was chaotic and imperfect and should have disgusted me. But because it was hers, it didn’t.