Page 81 of Moonlit Temptation

Where did he get it?

My phone buzzed with a text, no doubt Jessa giving me a warning that she was about to leave my ass if I didn’t hurry. Couldn’t have that. Staying at Saint’s wasn’t an option.

It apparently never was.

I pocketed the necklace, not knowing why Saint had it to begin with. He didn’t get to keep it. He didn’t get anything from the Novak women.

Not my mother, and certainly never me.

Not again.

Never again.

I’d hated the secret society I sold my soul to longer than I’d ever enjoyed it. I was promised power, but was treated like a puppet. Their little plaything they could jerk around, nothing more than a pawn for their bidding.

For a while I could pretend I didn’t mind. That the strings they liked to tug didn’t tear at my muscles, at my very soul. It gave me my company, the loaded zeroes in my bank account. This house.

I just had to pretend I didn’t know the hidden prices I had to pay to achieve any of it.

After my father’s arrest, I promised myself I’d never be like him. I wouldn’t cheat to get ahead. I wouldn’t steal. I’d live an honest life and bring honor back to the Delacore name.

Arguably, I became someone worse.

And tonight only cemented that.

I hated Icarus, but I never felt this searing, blinding rage that charred my insides, that left me feeling hollow, like I did tonight.

I didn’t know a person could feel this empty, like there was nothing left to give. Just a twisted wasteland of regret. Of agony.

It weighed me down, pulling me under. Drowning me in this emptiness that consumed every bit of me.

I vaguely remembered leaving my room, and coming back downstairs to the party, but I couldn’t tell you what I did. Couldn’t tell you who I talked to or when it ended. Only that I somehow found myself in the kitchen after the music had faded away, and the people dispersed out, staring at the aftermath of a well hosted party.

Normally the mess would make my eye twitch, but it barely disturbed a muscle. I wasn’t really focused on what was in front of me anyway. Too consumed with the way Mady’s warm honey hazel eyes, the very ones I had spent the last week memorizing, crystalized in heartbreak before solidifying in hate.

Stabbing myself in the lung would’ve hurt less than how I hurt Mady. My little dove.

I wasn’t born to be a good man, but she made me think I could pretend. That I could forget all my crimes, that a simple smile from her was enough to absolve my sins.

So I did what I did best, and ruined it.

No, ruined felt too clean of a word for yanking out Madelayne’s heart, watching the candle she had always kept lit for me inside there go out.

Taking any shred of good of me with it.

I’d done a lot of questionable things in my time, things that altered my moral compass, but nothing would haunt me like tonight.

Raw, visceral, debilitating pain shot across my chest, and I sucked in a pained breath. The air that sliced through my clenched teeth felt punishing.

As if even the oxygen in the room knew what I did was unforgivable.

I wasn’t supposed to want her.

We stood on two sides of a very unforgiving line. The brother’s best friend and his little sister. His nineteen-year-old sister.

It should’ve been easy to stick to our reserved sides.

It shouldn’t have even been a thought in my head.

---