Page 67 of Betrayed By Sin

A tremorruns through me.

This isn’t real.

It can’t be real.

I force myself to breathe. “Who?”

Sin’slips press together. “Zeik Caputo.”

Everything inside me shatters.

The name alone is enough torip the air from my lungs, to set fire to whatever fragile hope I’d been clinging to.

Zeik.

The one person I’d never let myselffear, because I never thought I’d have to.

I force out a hollow laugh, but it sounds as broken as I feel.“You’re lying.”

“I wish I was.”

I shake my head. “Cameron wouldn’t…”

“He would. He would also throw it in my face that you came home in his clothes the other night.” Sin rolls his eyes, “But that’s obviously not true.”

“Yes it is…” I say quietly and Sin steps away from me.

“Are you?” He looks around the darkness, his eyes giving way the emotions swirling inside of him. “You and him?”

“No!” I step forward, placing my hand on his solid chest. “I’m only yours.”

“Then why?” A blaze of fury is roaring behind his ghost eyes.

This brings us to a point we need to discuss, “The other night, when you fell asleep… I went into the office to look at my bookshelf, and I saw the blueprint on your desk.”

Sinsteps forward, his voice lower now, urgent. “You want truth, you want it all? I’m giving it to you, from here on out. I knew they were going to make you marry him.”

My hands shake.My breath comes too fast. “How do you know?”

“My intel is constantly running name checks for our family, your name is included in that.” I nearly smile that he’s still protecting me, but I didn’t imagine it would be from my own family. “Your name popped up at the courthouse for a wedding license.”

“This isn’t happening. This can’t be happening.”

“The moment I found out, I got the blueprints so I could pull you safely tomorrow if that is what you wanted. Magnolia, if you don’t do something now, it’ll be too late. Since the Russian mafia entered your home… they left that bullet.”

“How did they know the same exits as you?”

“I don’t know. No one has been in my house; my guess is they acquired the same blueprint.” Singrabs my wrist, grounding me as I spiral. “Look at me.”

I do.

And what I see in his eyes, pure, unfiltered desperation, steals the last bit of fight I have left.

He pulls the collar of his jacket up against the night and stands so close I can see the tiny scar by his eyebrow, the way the light catches the dark in his hair. The air between us thrumswith all the familiar things, danger and tenderness, the old rules that tell us to be apart and the new ones that pull us together. I press my hands into the pockets of my coat just to feel something steady beneath my fingers.

“I will not let them take you from me,” he says, his voice low and steady, and it cuts through the night like a promise. The words make the world narrow to the space between our faces. “But I need to know if you’re going to fight this, or if you’re just going to let them decide your fate for you.”

My pulse answers him, a hard, urgent drum at my throat. “What do you want me to do?” I whisper, and it feels odd to say so little when everything inside me wants to spill out.