Page 35 of Darkness

“Right? You have my prints already on the system. Take hers. How long do you think it will take you?” Cain asks him, and Miles shakes his head.

“Don’t start with that. You’ve already got time in your head, haven’t you?” I have to giggle listening to Cain and Miles go back and forth.

“I’m not timing this. Take your time. You have all day-”

“All day? You’re joking?” Miles asks him. He looks at me. “He’ll check everything. Put money on it. The moment I say I’m done, and set it up on your cell, you’ll be here looking over my work. Anyway.” Miles pushes his glasses up his nose again.

“Obviously, I have to get to work. Are you going to be alright with him?” Cain asks me, and I raise my brows at him.

“I don’t know, he might rape me-”

“He lays one finger on you, he’s dead,” Cain cuts me off, and he’s not even joking about it, either.

“Hey, do I look like a rapist?”

“It’s the cute, innocent ones you have to look out for,” I tell him when he laughs, Cain just looks at me. “Well, he’s cute.” I shrug my shoulders at him.

“If you think I’m cute, you should see my twin.”

“You’re a twin? That’s cool.”

“Total opposite of this idiot. Are you going to be okay? I have to get to work,” Cain asks me again.

“If you trust him to put a system in my apartment, then I trust him.” I give Cain a smile, thinking maybe I’ll be lucky and Miles might tell me something about him.

Cain grabs his cell, and I was hoping he would give me a kiss before he leaves, but no, not one for showing affection I take it. He talks to Miles quietly by the door, but I can’t hear a word they are saying to each other. Once the door is closed, I smile at Miles.

“So you two are brothers?” Miles starts laughing at my question.

“I don’t think so. If he’s not told you, I’m not talking, I’m not saying a word.”

“Are you scared of him?”

“Fuck yes, I’m scared of him. And when you know everything about him, and I mean everything, you’d know why we’re all scared of him.” Miles sounds serious too, not messing about with me. He means every word he just spoke.

“Do you work for him?” I ask. There has to be something he can tell me.

“Keep asking, I’m not telling you anything now. If you want to ask about me, be my guest,” Miles tells me, and I take amoment before asking. Is there something I can ask which will trip him up and tell me something about Cain?

“So you have a brother, a twin brother? Is that it?”

“No, I have two other brothers and a sister-”

“And Cain is one of them?”

Miles leans his hip on the kitchen counter, folds his arm over his chest. “That crazy fucker brought me here to give you a whole new security system, because yours was shit. And he made me come in the middle of the fucking night and now again in the early morning when I should still be in bed, because the man scares the life out of me. I’m here. There’s only one reason he’s doing it. He cares for you.” Miles stops talking when I choke on my coffee. He cares about me. My lips curl into a smile. “Is he going to tell anyone about you? No. The fact that I know about it, and I already know not to breathe a single word about it to anyone, not even to my brothers, because if I say anything, he will have killed me himself by tomorrow. But he’s doing all this for you, which proves one thing.” Miles stops as he waits for me to say something. My body tenses up, because of how scared Miles is of Cain, when just a minute ago they were both having a funny conversation with each other.

“I want to say that he’s not going to kill me.”

“No, you’re the first woman he’s probably even thought of doing something with. He will protect you until his dying breath. When he thinks the time is right, not when you ask him, by the way, but when he thinks the time is right, he will tell you everything.” Miles stops talking for a second. “I don’t know what he’s told you. All I know is that I’m not telling you anything about it, but everyone honestly thinks he is going to end up alone. After everything that happened to him, a lot of people would have come out the other end, either dead or in a mental hospital. But not him. Put it this way, he won’t let anything happen to you. He’ll protect you more than you’ll ever know. So,whatever or whoever you’re hiding from, tell him who it is. He can’t protect you from what he doesn’t know.” Miles walks away and I swirl the mug on the counter.

Everything Miles has just said means I should be scared of Cain, but when he’s with me, he’s not that person. He’s not…Is he a killer? Should I tell him who I’m running from?

Maybe I should talk to him, like Miles says he can’t protect me from what I’m running from if he doesn’t know.

***

“Ready, Poppy?” I ask her. She looks happy today. She’s always so happy and full of energy.

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