Page 170 of Cain

“It’s over,” she says softly.

She’s wrong. Nothing’s over yet.

Katerina’s fingers are still tightly tangled with mine as we walk ahead of everyone else outside the church, swallowed by flames.

Grayson comes last and gives me a single nod with a warm smile before he walks away. He’s going home to clean up the slaughter I left behind me—if he hasn’t done it already.

I know he disapproves of my actions, but he still stands by me, saves me, and shoots men inside a church just to make sure my soul doesn’t sink even deeper into the darkest pits of hell. As if that made any difference.

Some truths are never spoken. Some bonds don’t need names to be understood.

It’s in the way he looks at me like he’s failed twice over. Like he’s trying to make up for something neither of us can say out loud.

He was always there in the background, watching me fall apart, letting me ruin everything I touched. But he was also there, protecting me, pulling strings, guiding me in silence when I needed someone I could never name.

He never said it washim, and I never asked. ButI always knew. And he saw it in me.

Maybe that’s the real sin we’re both condemned to carry.

“I enjoyed that more than I should,” Adam says, clapping his bloodied hands together.

I look at Judas. He’s standing stiff, arms crossed, eyes on the ground.

“Pretending to be someone you’re not is filthier than anything you did inside,” I mock, crossing my arms.

He raises his amber eyes and looks at me with furrowed brows. “I don’t have a choice now. I need to go against my nature and go back to who I used to be.” He exhales slowly. “Or at least wear the skin of it long enough to be believed.”

“Do you always have to sound so dark and twisted?” Adam asks him, his lip hooked high.

Judas rolls his eyes. “Do you always have to be such a fucking little shit?”

“Do you always have to piss me off and fuck everything up?” I ask, drawing their eyes to me.

“Hestarted it!” Adam spits.

“And I can finish it, pretty boy!” Judas replies, standing stiffly in front of him, matching his eye level.

Judas isn’t as bulky as Adam, but they have the same height. Most people have to look up when Adam walks into a room. Judas and I are among the few who don’t.

“Oh, you wanna go there?” Adam growls.

Judas tilts his head, his smile fading and becoming colder. “I already live there.”

“I will fucking break you,” Adam hisses, punching his palm.

Judas laughs, low and dark. “Get in line. Others have tried. Most of them don’t talk anymore.”

“Do either of you actually want to survive this night? Because if you keep this up, one of you isn’t walking back home,” I snap.

They glance at me.

“Piss off!” They both say in one voice.

Ah!The Mansons.

Born to bicker, raised to resent, and apparently destined to die annoyed with each other. Some families pass down heirlooms. We pass down grudges and middle fingers.

Judas rolls his eyes so hard I’m amazed they stay in his skull. Adam lets out that half-laugh, half-scoff he always uses when he wants to sound above it all but has absolutely nothing smart to say. Classic.