4. A SOCIOPATH

KADE

Every human being is bound to take at least one bad decision in their lives. Maybe more.

Kissing Seline Dufort, the fiancée of the next don, was mine.

Not because I feared Luca. But because I wanted to do it again.

So much that I hated her a little more for making me feel this way.

I have many reasons why I did what I did.

For someone who spent their entire life in shadows, escaping the cops isn't a big deal for me.

But she is here. She followed me here against my orders.

She was under my protection, and as much as I wanted to kill her, I was expected to protect her.

You know, just rules and all.

This is Ylumia. My kingdom is the Bernan Islands.

Duforts aren't as powerful as they used to be.

A new player entered the picture, controlling the ports and the city's borders.

ZALEY.

I still didn't get the chance to face him personally to determine if he is as unhinged as they said he was.

I don't go out and put myself there without a plan.

Fuck it.

All these sound like pathetic excuses even for my ears.

I wanted to kiss her.

Control her in the disguise of pretence, giving the cops a show to mislead them away from me. Us.

But she kissed me back.

And everyone in the family thinks she is a meek little doll.

I drew back just enough to meet her hazel eyes. They burned through me, then flicked past my shoulder.

Her hand slid to the back of my neck, tugging me closer again.

“You’re such a good actress,” I whispered, my breath grazing her ear. “Not the timid girl your grandfather promised, huh?”

One slender finger pressed against my lips, silencing me.

A flashlight snapped on. “Hey! What are you two doing here?” a cop barked. “Move along.”

Her mouth curved in a secret, wicked smile just before she sagged against me, playing the part of the unconscious girl.

“Did you drug her?” the cop demanded.

I stayed in the shadows, shook my head, and scooped her up as if we’d been caught mid-sin. "We fucked against the—,"

Her fingers squeezed my shoulder—warning or dare, I couldn’t tell. I smirked anyway. “Didn’t you see my mouth down her throat a minute ago?”

The cop recoiled. “Jeez, get a room. Out.”

We moved on, the night swallowing us.

No room. No tomorrow.

But my instincts were right.

Seline Dufort isn’t meek. She’s a wicked little storm.

And Luca is doomed.

“Oh, you came alive.”

Dante’s greeting drifted in as I stepped through the door, the metallic tang of gunpowder still clinging to my jacket. He’d vanished the moment the cops arrived, of course.

“What’s that on your lips. Lipstick? Did you seriously sneak off to screw someone while we were—”

I didn’t bother looking at him. I drew the revolver from the holster, flicked the safety, and levelled it in his direction. “Another word, and this bullet goes through your skull.”

“Come on, I’m your best friend.”

“I have no friends.”

“Exactly. That makes me your best friend.”

I turned just enough to catch his smirk and raised hands. The sight made my trigger finger itch.

“I’ve got some interesting news about your new addiction,” he said lightly.

“She’s no fucking addiction,” I snapped before I could stop myself.

Too late.

Dante’s brow arched. “I didn’t say who. So…who is she?”

I holstered the weapon, stripped the second revolver from my ankle, and laid both on the table with a soft clack. The adrenaline was ebbing now, leaving only the echo of her mouth on mine. My hand drifted to my lips before I knew it.

Dante caught the gesture, his suspicion sharpening. “You didn’t kiss who I think you kissed, did you?” He barked a laugh. “No way. You’re not that dumb. She’s forbidden, your cousin’s fiancée. Luca’s the underboss, next in line for Kai’s throne.”

He didn’t need me to answer; he already had.

“What about the girls?” I asked, voice flat.

“The cops on our payroll are handling it. They’ll get them home.”

I nodded once and finally looked at him. “What else did you dig up for me?”

Dante smirked, "She is Arthur's granddaughter. Not adopted." He only confirmed what I have already suspected.

"What else?" I asked him.

I flipped open the folder he tossed onto the desk. A photograph stared back: a girl of maybe ten, wide-eyed and solemn.

"Celia," I murmured.

"That's Seline," Dante corrected. "She looked so different. I think it's the surgeries. Arthur has a daughter who eloped when she was a teen. Seline was born to her. I couldn't trace down her mother's details or where Seline was born, except for the part that they are actually twins. We are not sure where she was before Arthur took her under his care, and what happened to her twin or her mother. It took so much time, effort and risk to get my hands on that photo. I am expecting a raise in my—"

Nothing Dante said reached me. Words ricocheted off the walls of the room and died. All I could see was the photograph in my hand.

The name came out of me before I thought. “Celia.”

It tasted wrong on my tongue, sour and hot. Memory slammed into me—grey eyes wide and innocent, a shy smile, the small, determined hands that had once tried to haul me up a tree. I had promised to keep that girl safe. I had failed.

Delmere burned in my head: the screams stitched into flame, the way the earth took people and spat back smoke. Everyone turned to ash that night. Everyone except the ones who walked away. Including the one I’d sworn to protect, the first person who’d ever meant anything to me. She was supposed to be alive.

Instead, she was gone. Murdered.

And now I was staring at a photograph of the girl who’d survived, smiling like a child at a picnic, and the thought landed like ice.

'Seline wants to burn this place down and run away to another world. She said I can’t survive there. None of us can. Because we are not brave like her.'*

Celia’s naive voice echoed back. I had laughed it off then. I should have listened.

So Seline did as she promised. She burned Delmere. She walked out with ash on her hands and left her sister behind. She let Celia die in the fire.

She killed her.

The photograph crumpled beneath my fingers. My breath hitched. Hatred rose in me, raw and immediate.

She is not just a liar.

Not just a survivor.

She is something worse.

A calculated monster in a child’s dress.

A fucking sociopath.

Funny. People once called me that.

I met my opponent tonight, and there will be no mercy. No forgiveness.

For Celia.

I will make Seline’s life a living hell. I will ruin her, piece by slow piece, until every scrap of her confidence, every quiet victory, every breath she takes tastes of ash.

This is not righteousness. This is hunger. This is vengeance. This is mine.