Page 92 of Captive Souls

Away from her smell, her smile, her soft body and the little mews of pleasure she made as my lips explored her body. Yes, that would turn me right. Or turn me wrong. Back into the cold, unfeeling, familiar creature I had been quite comfortable being.

That was the only way to ensure my survival. Both of our survival.

That’s what I told myself the entire drive to Jupiter, Maine, where my brother lived.

I’d visited three times. Once to deposit the battered body of my brother’s piece of shit agent for his punishment, another time to meet Mabel, my niece, and the final time to plant a bullet in the brain of the piece of shit agent who almost killed my six-month-old niece and sister-in-law.

Neither Avery, my sister-in-law, nor my niece seemed scared of me, even when I murdered a man in front of them. Avery was nothing but thankful, welcoming. Mabel, well... Mabel wasperfect. The embodiment of it. A small person I would do literally anything to protect. That included keeping my distance from her. Which she didn’t seem to understand, since her chubby fingers reached for me whenever they could.

A long time had passed since my last visit. Mabel would look completely different. I ached to see her, watch the changes, see how she’d grown. But I knew the best thing I could do for that child was to be nothing but a shadow whenever possible.

I watched them from a distance for hours. They had their lights on, no curtains. I shook my head at that. My brother was famous, his relationship with Avery Hart had made headlines, was a fucking sensation in the past. Paparazzi had once stalked along this beach in order to get one photo of Kane, Avery and most importantly, Mabel.

My fists clenched at the thought. I couldn’t protect them from that. I couldn’t kill every asshole with a camera. Couldn’t dispose of a body without it never tracing back to me like I had with the piece of shit who’d tried to steal Mabel.

But I hadn’t needed to. Their town, Jupiter, had closed ranks. They’d accepted Kane and Avery as their own and protected them from the media. There were still stories, ongoing interest, but no one dared to breach the limits of their beach.

Kane had a family there, friends. Good ones. I’d done the background checks on them myself to ensure they weren’t threats.

Rowan Derrick and Kip Godman were threats if they chose to be. Former SEAs. They were honorably discharged, despite some of the Black Ops shit they’d been a part of. They weren’t squeaky-clean heroes by any means, which was why I liked them. Because anyone who looked squeaky-clean, like a hero, was likely the worst villain underneath it all.

I shouldn’t have even been there, on that beach, watching my brother kiss his wife as she cooked dinner, holding theirdaughter. Shouldn’t have been intruding on the life he deserved, polluting it with my toxic presence, poisonous problems. It had been my job since before I could remember to protect him from everything, including myself. I’d never resented it, not once.

It seemed like he might not have needed me to protect him any longer, and the loss of that role felt unsettling, even if it was a good thing.

Though it wasn’t actually the loss of that role that unsettled me. It was the fact that I had come to him for help. Fuck, did I hate myself for it. I’d spent the entire evening on the beach for a reason, full of shame, unable to move toward the house. But I couldn’t leave either, not without some sort of guide for how to survive this.

Howanyonesurvived this.

I couldn’t believe that people who declared themselves ‘in love’ felt the way I was feeling. How they said things like that then went about their lives as normal, as if they weren’t crippled by the sheer weight of the emotion inside them. As if they weren’t half mad with their need for her and the need to have eyes on her, hands on her at all times to ensure nothing happened to her.

What I was doing went against every single cell in my body. To be so far from her. Leaving her so vulnerable. But surely, there was no way walking around like I was could’ve been sustainable.

The reason I came there—beyond the fact that I had no one else to go to—was I’d seen it in my brother’s eyes when I’d delivered Brax to him—the fuck who had almost destroyed them, almost robbed him of his pregnant woman and then tried to kidnap his daughter.

But on that day, I’d seen it in my brother’s eyes. A darkness that hadn’t been there before. A resolution that he’d slay any and all dragons for Avery. I saw the way he looked at her, even beforetheir daughter was born. It was a look that said his heart beat for her. His previously aimless, wild existence had become nothing to him. There was something so fierce in my brother’s eyes, I couldn’t look at them. Something that stretched the chasm between us even further. He presented to me what I’d never be capable of, and I was glad for it because there was nothing in the dedication in my brother’s eyes that wasappealingto me.

To be so chained by a feeling, by another person, breakable and mortal and temporary, was beyond comprehension to me.

Until Piper.

And there I was, sitting in the sand, unravelling as nighttime cloaked the world.

There was no way I could talk to Kane at that point. That would require waiting until the sun rose. More time away from Piper. I was already at my limit, my skin prickling with unease caused by the distance between us.

Luck, for once, was on my side as I watched the door to the house open and my brother walked through it, coming to sit on the back porch.

It took a second for me to work up the nerve to make my presence known. This would forever change the dynamic between us. I’d kept as far away from Kane as I could throughout my life. So I didn’t tarnish him with my presence. Didn’t let him into my world. Nothing existed there but death.

But now there was life.

Now there was Piper, bursting from the seams, driving me fucking crazy.

Making mepaint.

The thing I’d done early on, after my first kill, thinking I was done killing once my abuser was worm food. ThinkingIcould be done. Thinking I could do something more than kill. Be more than a killer.

And it had been proven quickly that I couldn’t. That I wasn’t normal. I was wrong. Killing was my only option.

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