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This part of my life is obviously all a secret.

I don’t want to be persecuted and end up inside a cage again.

With my brothers, I’ve been carrying on the bloody family business for ten years now.

It’s like a perfectly working machine. Each of us has a particular, useful skill to contribute.

We will never stop—for each of us his own reason.

The world needs us just as much as I need to cause pain.

Nevertheless, when I leave the base—and I’m back out in the world—wearing a fake mask is necessary.

I’m Uriel Mahoe, billionaire, business man, investor and owner of a chain of restaurants.

It’s not hard to conceal the real side of me; all of the smartest people in this world aren’t so careless as to show others their true selves.

With high-functioning sociopaths like me, it’s all about appearances.

I don’t usually conform to norms unless I can take advantage of them.

I’m extremely skilled at faking a range of different emotions—which is essential when reaching a certain status among Chicago’s crème de la crème.

Depending on the party and attendees, I can effortlessly manipulate every single one of them when invited to one of those lavish charity events.

It’s all a show, and I’m the main protagonist in the storyline—just how I fucking like it.

Even though there’s an absence of certain emotions in my sociopathic brain, I can sometimes be happy…

when others simply can’t, because I don’t have a conscience or feelings of remorse or guilt.

The complete lack of these emotions can result in more happiness for me since I can’t really imagine or feel the emotional worlds of other people. It’s foreign to me.

I am capable of feeling euphoria, joy, and excitement, anger and sadness, but in a more blunted way than what is considered the norm—I can even cry on command.

I can also form attachments to other individuals and, in general, enjoy being around other people, although that’s kind of rare.

Sometimes that makes me wish I could be free from mind-numbing social niceties—it can be grating since I’m completely detached from most people’s source of happiness.

All humanity could burn to ashes, and I wouldn’t give a fuck.

There’s only one person I’d run to save. My Baby Blue. I crave the hint of softness in his pale aquamarine eyes when I utter the nickname, the slight trembling of his lower lip. I like the thought of Sari all soft for me, too damn fucking much.

The first time I laid eyes on him was in a field of periwinkle flowers. They were surrounding him like an endless, silky blanket. He raised his gaze to mine—the same periwinkle shade reflected in his eyes—and the agonizing, profound desolation filling those pools bound him to me.

He actually became mine two years before that.

During the first year of my imprisonment, I thought I was the only subject the scientists were experimenting on until one day I heard a cry.

It was so soft and low I wasn’t sure it was real.

But the profound desperation, the hurt in those hushed sobs couldn’t be a figment of my imagination.

I was only six, inside my cell in the secret facility where we were kept.

I was huffing and growling with anger. Bloodthirst was running through my veins while I was shivering with cold, beaten up and aching like most nights, but that faint cry made me smile for the first time in a very long time.

The quiet whimpering stopped when one of the assholes on staff had snarled, “Four, shut up!”

A slapping sound followed and then another sob before silence reigned again. Four had to be another subject like me. I was Seven. Was there a One? A Two? More? Was my brother one of them? At that time, I wasn’t sure if they had taken him as well.

Subject Four sounded pathetic. Judging by their sobs, I didn’t know how they endured and were still alive after all the torture they must have undergone. They sounded too defenseless, whimpering like a weak puppy—I liked the sound of that, though.

Over the following three years, I never heard them again.

I reckoned they were dead. But I remembered Four and their murmured pain every single night.

Those hushed cries became my companion in those long silent hours, my brief escape, my only pleasure.

So when I saw that same level of despair in the skinny, battered kid surrounded by Baby Blue Eyes I’d known those sobs belonged to him.

Four wasn’t fucking dead. He’d survived, and it all became very simple to me. He was alive because he was mine.

I walked up to him and told him exactly that. He didn’t react at all. But that was okay, I had all the time in the world to make him understand who he belongs to.

After all these years, he still smells like fucking apples and honey—that sweet scent is lodged in my brain.

He let his hair grow, the thick mane cascades down his back when loose.

He likes to braid all that dark silk. Some spirited wisps always get loose to frame his delicate face, heart-shaped lips, and big, expressive eyes.

His cheeks turn apple red so easily from embarrassment or nervousness.

At first I didn’t care about the little changes he has undergone in the last months—caused principally by Lori—like using contact lenses, taking yoga classes, and wearing different clothes, still comfy, but higher quality, classy styles, and delicate tones.

However, the way he’s interacted with me has altered as well, pushing me away while not listening to me anymore.

Then Meg got poisoned, and I discovered my bio bro is still alive.

And I’ve been too busy looking for him since I learned of his reappearance, creating an even bigger distance between Sari and me.

Too much fucking space.

His newfound elegant appearance, his graceful moves, and tempting purity turn him into sex on a stick, as Michael called it.

It fills me with the urge to devour him.

I see him, and I burn. The harder I contain myself, the wilder my obsession with him grows.

Fuck being foster brothers and fuck society’s teachings of what’s acceptable.

I just can’t fucking help it. I don’t want to.

I want him under me, submitting to me in the most carnal way possible.

We aren’t blood related, not brothers. We are connected in a way that exceeds family; it goes beyond fleeting emotions and useless feelings.

I don’t know when it happened, but at some point I started wanting to turn his ordinary day-to-day, placid expression into a disheveled passionate one, filled with cries and sweat.

And pain. Fuck yes! I want to fuck his hole loose and stir up his insides until I break him, until I make a mess of him.

But I fucking can’t. Not if I want to see his eyes sparkle and crinkle, those little wrinkles forming at the corners when he smiles at me. I find respite from everything surrounding me only when he’s with me. And I prefer to feel excruciating pain than not being around him at all.

I can’t have him because I can’t hurt him, no matter how much I want to. But he’s still mine.

He makes a habit of dripping innocence and unspoiled naivety, that’s why a number of bastards keep gravitating to him.

But they don’t know he was caught a long time ago by the worst of the worst. Me.

All I can do is get rid of all those fuckers, using any means necessary.

From threatening texts, to finding them new job opportunities in different cities, to getting them charged for wrongdoing—with a hacker and a lawyer in the family, finding and using dirt on people is very easy.

I’ll go even further if I have to. Predators kill prey.

It’s natural, understandable, there’s no need to justify it.

And the world is a fun park full of oblivious prey.

My hands never have enough blood on them, and I hate every motherfucker who takes Sari’s attention away from me. I call it…serendipity.

I let the rope loosen around Sari’s neck the last few months, just a little, enough to give him the illusion of being free to move away.

When in reality, he’s not, because I’m always there in the shadows pulling the strings.

He does a job he enjoys while helping people—which satisfies him—and he has a family who cares for him.

And me. This rebellious phase he’s going through will end soon, but in the meantime, I need to change a few things.

First, this house needs to be secure, otherwise my plan for Sari won’t work.

Phoenix is close, and with them danger lurks around us.

Sari is part of this family even though he doesn’t enjoy the bloody side business like the rest of us do.

I will keep him closer. I let him wander for far too long, and now a damn stalker is fucking with him.

I’ll end up killing them if they try to take him from me—not even my brothers or Linda will be able to stop me. Fuck that!

I look down at my phone when a gentle ring informs me of a notification.

Rami created a monitoring program and uploaded it on my phone so that I can check on Sari’s location.

Through the tracker inside his neck and another inside his phone, Serena lets me know every time he moves.

He just arrived at work. I tap on his red dot on the map and a live video from the CCTVs inside Bear-Stone Labs pops open on the screen.

He’s talking with Michael, getting ready for work; a sad song is playing in the background—he only listens to country music.

He’s smiling, braiding his long hair with deft, precise moves as Michael jabbers about something scientific.

He’s so fucking delectable, and I’m starving.