Page 32 of Blind Sin

I reach forward to take her hand but think better of it. “Nix wanted to protect you.”

She snorts. “Nix was fifteen years old. My father would have killed him if he’d tried defending me. He took over his parents’ company just because he didn’t like that his daughter had a boyfriend.”

“Woah!” I say, extending both my hands out. “Back, the fuck, up. Your father took over the Nix’s company because of you?”

She shrugs her shoulders, but her face has become hard. “I don’t know for sure, but I wouldn’t put it past him. Maybe he was going to do it anyway.” Her expression changes again and I see something in her that she’d never show to the media. A deep sorrow that marks her features. “I didn’t do what Nix thought I did though. I never even mentioned Joshua’s name to him. I thought I was being discrete, running away to the cabin to meet up with him, but my father always finds a way to get what he wants and he has eyes and ears everywhere. I would have run away with Josh in an instant if I didn’t have Lauren to think about. It wasn’t long after my father announced he was taking over Nix’s parents’ company that he installed the security system on the house and by then, I was as much a prisoner as Lauren was.”

A deep rage crests over me. I’d been so caught up in Mercier’s games and Nix’s aloofness and work and worrying about my parents that I’d not really considered how hard this all was for Lucinda and Lauren. Peter Waldgrave deserved to die in a horrific way.

A profound sadness washes over Lucinda’s features, subtly etching lines of vulnerability on her face. Her eyes, once filled with trepidation and fear, now carry a weight of sorrow that wasn't there before.

“I don’t want to lose her, Alexander. She’s all I have.”

“You won’t,” I reply and when that’s not enough, I add, “I won’t let that happen to you both. I promise.”

I feel like a shit stain on humanity, knowing I’ve already partially broken one of my promises to Lucinda, but this one I’ll do everything in my power to keep. Whatever happens with Mercier, Nix and I, I’ll make sure that we don’t tear the girls apart to get what we want.

21

NIX

Dacre thrusts a plate into my hands full of food, which looks delicious apart from a pile of charred black stuff on the side. “We need to figure a way out of here.”

“You’re losing your touch.” I nod to the plate as a disgruntled-looking Mercier follows Dacre through the door.

“It’s a local delicacy,” Mercier says, shutting the door to my room behind him. Why is it I feel like I’m being ambushed? “Wanna tell me what’s going on?” I sit on the bed as Dacre takes the one chair in the room and Mercier stays standing.

“This isn’t viable,” Dacre starts. “We did what we set out to do and saved Lauren and Lucinda, but beyond that, we’re fucking sitting ducks. If Waldgrave figures out where we are, his men won’t even have to get off their boat to kill the lot of us.”

I raise an eyebrow as I taste some of the black delicacy. It tastes like burnt onions. “You think they are going to bomb the place? Throw hand grenades? Come on, be real.”

Dacre’s usual calmness is absent as he runs his hands through his hair, a manic expression on his face. “Waldgrave is a grade A asshole.”

“Haven’t I been telling you that for weeks? He destroyed me. Wasn’t that enough of a clue?”

“He destroyed Lucinda and Lauren too. His own fucking daughters!” Dacre’s eye twitches. “I made a promise to Lucinda.”

I lay back on the pillow of the bed laugh. It’s a laugh filled with the bitterness built up over five years. “I fucking knew she’d get under your skin.”

Dacre shakes his head. “It’s not like that.”

I sit up again, almost knocking over the plate, which by some miracle is still on my lap. “That’s how she gets you. She makes you think you have to protect her and save her and then she gets her claws into you, and before you know it, you’re on her fucking massive pile of rejects.”

“I’m not fucking Lucinda!” Dacre growls back. “Jesus fucking Christ, Nix. You’re the one with the obsession over her. I have no intention of fucking Lucinda. I never did. But whatever is going on in your brain, fucking get over yourself. I brought Lucinda here for Lauren and, yes, I want to protect Lucinda, because I know for a fact if I don’t, I’ll lose the one fucking good thing that has happened in my life and the one good thing apart from you two that I care about and that good thing isn’t the sister that’s running through your head.”

I glare at him. “Maybe Lauren’s just learned how to hook men in like her sister,” I say bitterly.

“Enough bickering.” Mercier jumps up on the bed and I have to catch the plate before is falls to the floor. “It’s like being back at my parents’ house. They’d be at each other’s throats, screaming at each other for hours and then they’d go off and have loud make up sex.”

That explains a lot about Mercier. “Yeah, well that won’t be happening.” I grouch as put the plate on the small side table next to my computer. Mercier suggesting sharing Lauren feels like a lifetime ago. I have no right to tell them to lay off Luce, but the thought of either of them touching her hurts so fucking much, she might as well have stabbed me with a dagger to the chest. I don’t even want her anymore. I just don’t want them to have her and if that’s not some psycho possessive bullshit, I don’t know what is. I can’t even think about Lauren, because that’s another shot of pain to the chest right there, but at least, thinking of them with her isn’t the same. She was never mine in the first place. Not the way Luce was.

“I don’t want to leave the island.” Mercier crosses his arms over his chest and glares at me then turns his attention to Dacre. “I have everything I want here. Why the fuck are you so desperate to leave?”

Dacre throws his hands up into the air and mutters incredulously. “You honestly think that we can stay here indefinitely? Even if Waldgrave miraculously doesn’t find us, which, let’s be honest, is fucking up there with the fairies, how long do you think the money you stole from my parents will last? We brought five thousand dollars. We’ve been here days and over a quarter of that is gone already. Hell, you’ve spent most of it on books.”

“What’s wrong with books? I’m teaching Sinful to read. How am I supposed to do that without Braille books? Besides, I bought those using the credit card I found in your father’s bedside drawer.”

Dacre stares at him as though he’s completely lost it; although I’m not sure Mercier had ‘it’ to begin with. What’s interesting a lot more than Mercier’s lack of care as to whether we get found, but the fact he’s teaching Lauren to read. He’s’ actually gone to the effort to have Braille books brought in.

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