Page 2 of Betrayed By Sin

As if it’sholding its breath along with me.

Something about it unsettles me.

The silence doesn’t feel comforting, it feelsstrategic.

Like I’m being watched.

I shake the thought away, refusing to let paranoia creep in,but something deep inside me knows… I am not alone here.

I need to get my breathing under control before I start to fall apart in a place I don’t recognize, surrounded by people I don’t know.Before I let them see just how lost I really am.

But there’s something worse clawing at my chest,burning hotter than the confusion, the fear, the grief.

Betrayal.

Sin knew.

He had known who I was from the very beginning.While I had spent months questioning everything about him, feeling drawn to him, falling into him, for him.He had already been armed with the truth.

He held it close, keeping me in the dark while I lay in his bed, and whispered my name like it meant something.

How many times had he looked at me, knowing I wasn’t Magnolia Finley,the orphan girl with no past?

How many times had he kissed me, touched me,whispered things that made me feel like I belonged to him when all along, I was a secret he kept for his own amusement?

A shaking breath escapes me,my vision blurring with unshed tears.

That, more than anything that has happened in the past twenty-four hours is what made me break down. Sin Donati, the monster under the bed that I tried so hard to help, never wanted to leave his toxic den. He isevil.

I had trusted him.

Even when I knew he was dangerous, when I knew his world was nothing like mine, I had trusted himmore than anyone.

And now,I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to trust a single soul again.

The thoughtwraps around my throat like a noose.

I don’t even realize I’m crying until a single drop of warmth rolls down my cheek, sinking into my skin like a scar.

A knock at the doorstartles me.

I wipe my face quickly, my handsclenching into fistsas I turn toward the sound.

I hesitate.

I don’t want to speak to anyone,but I don’t have a choice.

“Come in,” I say,forcing my voice to stay steady.

The door opens slowly, the gold handle twisting, and then… Cameron.

His broad frame fills the doorway, his presence as heavy as the air between us.For a moment, he just looks at me.His blue eyes, the same ones I saw in the mirror every day growing up, flicker with something I can’t place.

Guilt? Pity?

I don’t want either.

“You’ve been in here a long time,” he finally says, stepping inside. His voice iscareful, measured.As if one wrong word will make me shatter.