Page 109 of Sixth Sin

Sinking back into my chair, I spin back around and look out onto the darkened street again. Corralling Milly is like herding cats. Control the controllable, as my mom used to say.

Another one of Brenda McCallum’s nuggets of wisdom. Don’t spend your time flipping your shit over things out of your hands. Concentrate on taking hold of what’s in your grasp and manipulate it to your advantage. I’ve done it my whole life.

That’s what this whole damn thing has been about.

Controlling the controllable.

I didn’t start the hunt for a lost little girl, but I seized the opportunity to control it. Sure, I needed the money, but that was a fringe benefit. Two birds, one stone, no mess.

But when you build a labyrinth of deceit, you can get lost in your own maze.

Maybe in the beginning my reasons were a selfish attempt at protecting myself. As long as I found Alexandra Romanov first, people would stop looking. They’d stop questioning. And in case the little girl with green eyes broke her first pinkie promise, another queen would have already been crowned.

But that was before a down-on-her-luck cocktail waitress from Chula Vista, California stole twenty bucks from me and something I didn’t even know I had.

A heart.

She slowly brought me back to life, and in return what did I do? I turned her loose in her own labyrinth. The one that slowly chipped away at her sanity and soul, pushing her toward the edge.

Every day I watched more and more of Angel slip away as the truth bled through the fissures in her mind. I saw it coming and said nothing. Not out of fear of losing my freedom, but out of fear of losing her.

I watched my mother break before my eyes.

I refused to watch Angel break, too.

Be careful what you ask for.

Now it’s too late for apologies or confessions. It’s almost poetic. I finally get the balls to say the words to her, and she didn’t want to hear them. But I meant every word.

I love her.

I think I always have. The type of love changed over time, but she stole my heart the moment I saw her. The hope in her eyes when she first looked at me sealed my fate. Sitting there in the eye of the storm, she looked at me like I was her world.

“Are you God?”

Every jagged piece of me belongs to her. Even the ones hell-bent on cutting her and drawing blood. Somehow, she’s smoothed the edges just enough to tolerate the bite without breaking the skin.

I’ve never allowed anyone this close, and it feels like I’m being smothered and set free at the same time. Like soaring headfirst into the sun only to suddenly burst into flames. She’s my salvation and damnation. My redemption and ruin.

The biggest mistake I’ll never regret.

As soon as I hear footsteps, I palm the back of my neck and spin back around. “Let me guess, Rosten sold the rights.”

Milly’s face is chalk white. “Dominic…”

“I hope he knows I deserve at least a third of the—”

“Dominic!” she says, again, her voice unsteady. There’s a silence in her tone that chills my blood, but it’s her next words that bring me to my knees. “It’s your mother.”

CHAPTER FORTY

ANGEL

Whether you’re on top of the world or the bottom of the river, time stops for no one. You can’t wish it away, and you can’t turn it back. It moves forward at its own steady rhythm, oblivious to the change going on around it. Awake or asleep—it doesn’t matter. The hands of the clock move whether you’re conscious of them or not.

Tick tock tick tock tick tock.

It’s been ten days since I watched Dominic drive away from my bedroom window, and nine since the world turned against me. I know because time may hate me, but the sun greets me each morning.

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