Page 48 of Kill for a Kiss

12

Sterling

The next morning

I hate still being here, but I need to watch over Elle. Thank fuck, the house is quieter today. I notice it the second the usual strum of voices is absent. Clo is gone. Stanley too. Clo’s probably out cleaning up the mess I made, or whatever’s left of her empire still smoldering. I step out of the shadows, letting the hallway light strike the edge of my mask. The corridor stretches ahead like a memory I’ve tried and failed to erase.

And then I see her. Elle’s drifting, her blue eyes fluttering like a violin strung mid-note. Something in me aches to tune her back to herself.

But right now, she can hardly keep her eyes open. She fights it and fights it. Stands in the grand hall like she’s waiting for something orsomeone. She forces her eyes to stay open, even if it’s only enough to see. Just so her glance can roam around the space surrounding us. Her fingers twitch. I know who she’s looking for. She’s looking forhim. A sick, sinking feeling twists inside me.

I want her to ache for herself, for the girl whose life was stolenfrom her. But instead, she’s aching forhim. Her fingers clench tighter. Her lips part just enough for me to hear his name, falling from her mouth like a plea.

Stan. That’s what she calls him. The sound of it sears me from the inside, all fire and fury. My own trembling hands close into fists at my sides.

She’s slipping. Faster and further than I thought. Andworse, she’s slipped into someone else’s arms. Someone Clo trained her to lean on. Someone who fits into this dream world Clo built for her. He’s easy. He’s everything I’m not. And she wants him.

My jaw tightens. I hate that it matters. I hate that I feel it like a blade between my ribs, sinking deeper and deeper. It shouldn’t matter. I’m used to being alone. I was raised in isolation, not because I was forgotten, but because Clo made sure I knew what I was. A mistake. A thorn on her side. A reminder.

Kai Smith never saw me that way. He cared for me in the ways he knew how. He favored me, gave me everything a father should. But he never had power over Clo. She’s always been shrewd, always scheming, too calculating for a man like Kai, who lived for indulgence while she ran his empire behind the scenes. Even as a child, I knew Clo wasn’t just the wife of a powerful man. Shewasthe power. And she hated me for existing. All because I wasn’t hers. I was someone else’s, from the woman Kai truly loved.

When I was old enough, I found out the truth. An affair. The woman. The result of it all—me.

I always wondered why there was ire in Clo’s eyes whenever she looked at me, the careful distance Kai kept even when he tried to be a father. I wasn’t just an accident. I was living, breathing proof of betrayal.

I was never meant to be part of this family. So I left. I became someone else. A mercenary. A ghost. A boy who didn’t need anyone.I became the dokkaebi Clo used to call me.I embraced the identity she cursed me with, since I was still small enough to dodge whatever she threw at me.

But I snap back to the present when I hear Elle’s voice tremble. The first time she murmurs his name, I nearly dismiss it. But then it happens again. And again.

I’ve watched her for hours now from the shadows, still not able to sleep. My eyes need to stay on her at all times. I move closer and closer to her. I can’t stop myself, not even when her brows knit together, her lips parting like she’s about to say his name again. Her hands shakily grip the silk shawl around her shoulders. The urgent need to comfort her surges through me, so I decide to show myself. Whatever she was about to say into the empty hall dies the moment I step out into the light.

She turns. Her wide eyes land on me.

My voice cuts the air between us. “He’s not here.”

She blinks, brows still knitted. “What?”

“Stanley,” I say. “He’s gone.”

She winces. Then she looks up at me, and the feeling in my chest gets worse. Because there’s so much confusion in her eyes. Hurt and longing, all for someone else. It makes me want to tear the world apart.

“I have to find him,” she says.

“You don’t.”

“He needs me.”

I want to scream. To shake her. To fall at her feet and beg her to remember who she is. Who I am. Who we were supposed to be before all this.

But I don’t. Instead, I close the space between us. I stop just short of touching her. She smells like tea. Sweet and floral. But underneath that, I catch something else. Something warm. Something thatreminds me why I still have blood on my gloves. Why I haven’t slept. Why my hands won’t stop shaking around her.

I shouldn’t care this much, not when I’ve spent my life being no one’s, needing no one. But I do. And it’s killing me. Because she isn’t looking at me the way I need her to. Not yet, but I’ll wait. Until it’s my name on her lips instead of his. Until she sees me. Until she remembers that it was always me. Not Stanley.Me.

Elle turns to me, more confusion flickering behind her eyes, and beneath that, achingfor him. It’s unbearable. But I can use this. Stanley is her weakness. A vulnerability Clo carefully constructed within Elle. I hate that it’s there, but I’ll twist it until it fractures, and use it to break Clo’s hold, even if Elle resents me afterward.

It’s worth it. It has to be. So I soften my voice, forcing my fingers to relax at my sides as I angle my head down toward her. “You’re worried about him, right?”

Elle hesitates, searching my mask, uncertainty etched into every delicate line of her expression. “I just… I can’t shake the feeling that something’s wrong.”