Page 45 of Cruel When He Smiles (Sinners of Blackthorne U #3)

Liam

As soon as Nate leaves, the house feels empty.

It doesn’t make sense; loneliness doesn’t touch me the way it does other people. I don’t crave company, or feel isolation like it’s some kind of ache. But right now, standing in the silence, the absence of him is a presence in and of itself.

I roll my shoulders, dragging my tongue slowly over my teeth as I exhale, pushing the sensation aside. I gave Nate exactly what he needed before he left—calm words and steady orders, instructions clear enough to quiet the storm in his head for the night.

He’ll spiral, I know it. He’ll stare at the ceiling and overanalyze every second of what we’ve done.

He’ll lie to himself about why he let me in, about why he didn’t stop me, about why he begged for more when I was already in too deep.

He’ll try to make it fit into whatever fucking narrative he’s been clutching since he got here—some story about control, about being untouchable, about not needing anyone.

He’s going to fail because I already broke that part of him. I didn’t just fuck him. I rewired him. And I did it gently enough that he still believes it was his choice.

That’s the real trick—making them think they handed it to you. But even knowing all that, even standing here with the satisfaction of ownership curling around my spine, I still feel the itch under my skin.

Who the fuck was on the other end of that line?

I need answers, but I can’t force them. Not with him. Nate’s the kind of boy who burns when pushed too hard. He fractures if you take too much too fast. And I don’t want him broken, I want him whole.

So, I do the only thing that ever steadies my mind when it starts pulling at itself from the inside out.

I go and find my brother.

He’s spread out on his bed, all lean muscle and casual lethality, flipping a knife between his fingers with practiced boredom. Killian King is violence wrapped in skin—my mirror and my opposite.

He’s the only person who understands the monster beneath my carefully constructed calm, because his matches it perfectly.

He doesn’t look up when I walk in. “You look like your favorite toy got stolen,” he drawls. “Let me guess. Carter’s gone?”

I don’t answer immediately. I drop into the leather chair across from him, letting my arms drape over the sides, and stare at the ceiling like it’s going to give me answers. “He needed to get some sleep.”

He flips the blade again and slams it into his nightstand, the thud sharp enough to echo through the silence. He finally looks at me, eyes half-lidded and bored, but I know better. He’s always watching. Always calculating.

“You let him leave on his own?” he tilts his head, lips twitching into something cruel and curious. “Getting soft, little brother.”

“Don’t start,” I mutter.

He grins. “I’m not the one who let his plaything wander off after handing him a goddamn breakdown on a platter.”

My jaw tightens, but I force myself not to react. Killian only pushes when he knows there’s blood in the water. I tap my fingers against the armrest. “Something’s off.”

His smirk fades enough to make room for interest. “With him or with you?”

I hesitate because I don’t know. There’s something off in my head, something unsettled, something I can’t quite pin down, and it’s been there ever since I saw that look on Nate’s face this afternoon. I hate not knowing, so I do the only thing that makes sense.

I ask.

“When you broke your first toy,” I start, watching him carefully, “did you feel… off?”

Killian hums, dragging his fingers along the hilt of his knife. “Did I feel off?” He shrugs. “Not really. I felt complete.”

I knew he would say that because that’s what I expected to feel, too. I expected to own Nate completely and feel the same satisfaction I always do after breaking something apart.

But I don’t. Not entirely.

“What exactly are you trying to figure out?” he asks.

I lean forward, resting my elbows on my knees. “He keeps getting these calls that leave him hollow, and whoever it is… they get to him badly. He got one again today and didn’t even flinch when I walked up. Didn’t react to me at all. He was just… frozen.”

Killian watches me, twirling the blade slower this time. “You’re not used to being ignored.”

“I’m not used to anyone else holding strings I already cut.”

He exhales, long and steady, before shrugging. “So, pull harder.”

“I am. But it’s not working the way it should.”

He hums again. “Because someone else got there first, and you can’t fucking stand it, can you?”

That pisses me off more than it should. There’s something old in Nate, something carved deep. Something someone else wrote into him long before I got the chance. I hate it. “No. I can’t.”

Killian is quiet for a long beat before he smiles faintly. “Then stop thinking like your mother and start thinking like a King.”

I arch a brow. “Meaning?”

“Meaning, you don’t need to drag it out of him. You don’t need to play twenty fucking questions. The thing about owning someone completely is that it doesn’t just come from controlling them. It comes from being the only safe place left when everything else falls apart.”

I lean back in the chair, stretching my fingers along the armrests, watching Killian like he has the answer to the one question I haven’t been able to figure out.

Because manipulation isn’t working. Not completely. Nate gives in physically—I can push him, break him, reward him, and he responds—but he still keeps that one part of himself locked away.

The piece of him that isn’t mine yet, and that’s not fucking acceptable.

I breathe out, forcing myself to speak the words I hate having to say. “So, how do I get the truth out of him?”

He raises a brow, his fingers still tracing the hilt of his knife. “You’re asking me for advice on manipulation?”

“Not manipulation.” I roll my tongue over my teeth, choosing my next words carefully. “That part’s already working. I just need… a new angle.”

Killian watches me, expression flat, and for a second, I think he’s going to tell me to figure it out myself. To keep playing my game until I find the crack in Nate’s armor. But then he shakes his head. “You want to know what I did with my first toy?”

I nod once, and Killian runs his fingers along the knife before flipping it once, catching the blade between two fingers. “It was Roman.”

That surprises me. Roman Bishop was never someone I considered to be a part of Killian’s games. Roman is different—loyal, reckless, sharp as fuck when it comes to everyone but himself. I assumed their friendship was just that—a friendship.

But Killian is still talking.

“It wasn’t like what you’re doing with Carter,” he admits. “It wasn’t romantic or sexual, and it wasn’t about breaking him. It was about making sure he didn’t break himself before we even got to Blackthorne.”

I tilt my head, waiting. Killian smirks, but there’s something else behind it now. “His dad was worse than yours, and I’m not talking about the monster whose blood we share.”

My fingers tighten against the armrest because I know what my father was like. My father’s fists were always wrapped in authority. He beat obedience into me and then punished me when I learned it too well. Every raised, ugly scar on my body is a story he told with his hands.

And if Roman’s was worse…?

Killian’s voice drops a note lower, and he drags the knife across his thigh, edge turned out, absentmindedly.

“Roman was already drowning because of his father’s abuse, but it got worse after Caleb died,” he explains. “Everyone thinks he went numb after. Like it was just another story, another death in a line of bad ones. But he didn’t go numb.”

He looks up at me now, and there’s nothing mocking about it. “He shattered.”

I shift forward a little, tension winding tighter in my shoulders, but I don’t speak. Not yet. Killian doesn’t like being interrupted when he actually decides to tell the truth.

“He was slowly killing himself, and no one was noticing because he still smiled in public. Still showed up to the team dinners, still made everyone laugh, still let the coaches think he was just having a rough month. But I noticed.”

“So, what did you do?” I ask slower now because I know Killian’s never told anyone this.

“I made myself the center of his attention and challenged him at everything. I picked fights with him, made him race me to class, stole his protein powder. I fucked up his locker and left him stupid little puzzles to solve just so he’d get mad enough to focus on something that wasn’t grief.

I got in his head, Liam, every single day.

Not to ruin him,” his voice dips, “but to keep him here .”

I stare at him silently. Killian—my brother, the one who taught me how to tear people apart without lifting a finger—is telling me he saved someone by becoming their anchor.

“That’s not your style,” I say eventually, trying to sound unimpressed, but it doesn’t land right. Not when I’m still reeling from the image of Killian dragging Roman back from the edge, not with fists, not with threats—but with strategy. With consistency.

“It was either that,” Killian says, “or lose him.”

I can’t believe what I’m hearing.

“You became his rival.”

“I became his fucking purpose.” He says it without shame. “Every morning, I made sure he hated me enough to show up. Every night, I made sure he was too exhausted to think about dying.”

“And it worked?”

Killian shrugs. “Roman is still here, isn’t he?”

My stomach twists. I understand what Killian’s saying, and it’s fucking with my head. “And you did all that without laying claim to him?”

“I didn’t need to,” he mutters. “He chose me every single day he got up to chase me down, and that was enough.”

I sit back, dragging a hand down my face, trying to reconcile the image in my head with the man in front of me. Killian King, who once broke a guy’s jaw for cutting in front of him at a bar. Killian, who has never once given the impression that he knows what subtlety even is.

“You used a soft method.”

His grin widens. “No, little brother. I used a personal method. You’re used to mind games.

To whispering your way into someone’s soul until they forget they were ever whole to begin with.

I don’t do that shit. I give people something to fight and someone to hate.

That’s still power, just a different flavor. ”

My brain spins. The thought of Killian choosing restraint, of all things, deliberately crafting a slow-burning survival mechanism instead of detonating Roman from the inside—it doesn’t make sense. But the evidence is right there since Roman’s loyalty to Killian is goddamn bulletproof.

“I don’t get it,” I say honestly. “You didn’t want him to break, but you also didn’t try to put him back together.”

He shrugs again. “He didn’t need to be fixed; he needed someone to make him feel seen. To make him feel angry instead of empty. I didn’t want to comfort him; I wanted to make him fight again. I gave him the only thing he could hold onto without it cutting him.”

I stare at the floor for a long second, the silence settling heavily in the wake of his words. Because I know what he’s really saying. He’s not telling me to manipulate Nate harder; he’s telling me to show up.

To make myself the one thing in Nate Carter’s life that never falters. The one person who never leaves—even when he begs me to.

Because that’s what Killian was to Roman.

A tether.

A constant.

A weapon he could fight against instead of turning it on himself.

“If you want to own him, you have to earn the part of him no one else has touched. The part that flinches when his phone rings. The part that still belongs to someone else,” Killian continues.

“You can fuck him raw, Liam. You can make him beg, make him sob, make him scream—but none of it matters if that part of him is still anchored to a voice that isn’t yours. ”

The words sit like stones in my chest. I want to reject it. I want to tell him he’s wrong. That control is about power, that submission is about dominance, and that this is obsession, ownership, and nothing else.

But I didn’t see ownership in his eyes today; I saw fear.

Killian is quiet again, watching the gears turn behind my eyes, and I don’t like how he’s already figured out where I’m going before I get there. “You’re already too close,” he says, “so you might as well go all the way.”

“I’m not in love with him,” I snap.

Killian’s grin is slow, cruel, and amused. “Didn’t say you were.”

“You’re thinking it,” I growl.

“I don’t think in fairytales, Liam. That’s your problem.”

“I don’t have a problem.”

“You do,” he chuckles. “He’s got pretty green eyes and trauma you can’t fuck out of him.”

I scowl and stand abruptly, dragging a hand over my jaw, trying to settle the riot in my chest. I don’t love Nate. I’m not capable of it. I was raised to control, not to connect. I was built for psychological warfare, not emotional rescue.

Killian smirks as if he can hear each of my thoughts. “You keep trying to convince yourself this is just obsession, but here’s the thing, little brother—obsession burns fast. It doesn’t stick around after the high.”

I exhale slowly, head tipping back as I stare at the ceiling. I feel raw. Like Killian just carved out the softest part of my chest and held it up to the light.

Nate doesn’t need comfort; he needs permanence. He needs to know someone isn’t going to flinch when he tells them the worst parts of himself. And if I want all of him—the scars, the silences, the locked doors, and the shattered glass—I have to become the one thing stronger than his fear.

Not the one who fixes him, or the one who softens the edges, but the one who takes his fire and makes it burn brighter. I glance at my brother, and a plan starts to form.

I’m not going to take Nate Carter. I’m going to make him choose me every single time, even when it hurts. Even when he’s afraid, even when someone else’s voice is screaming louder than mine in his memory.

Because, eventually, I’ll be the only voice he hears.