Page 10 of Sin

“Cassidy,” Sin calls, grabbing me by the shoulder and spinning me around, his touch sending sparks through me. And that’s when I ignite. He just tried to bribe me to disappear because he doesn’t want me anywhere near him and still—still—Sin can make me crave him body and soul.

“Fuck you,” I fling him back from me with a surprising strength fueled by rage, “and fuck your money.”

He just stares at me through those goddamned glasses.

I reach over and pluck them off his face, throw them to the ground, stomp on them thoroughly, and receive an evil satisfaction from hearing the crunch of thousand-dollar glasses under my feet.

I’m not surprised to see his now uncovered, handsome face not react as he watches me destroy his property. Sin, even at his wildest and most uncontrollable, keeps a careful chain on his feelings, never letting anyone see more than what he wants them to. It’s seeing the storm of pain brewing in his gray eyes that surprises—no shocks—me. The fury fueling me begins to dampen, but then a voice of reason saves me.He’s manipulating you. He couldn’t buy you, so now he’s trying to play you. He knows he’s your weakness.

The idea of it adds gasoline to my fury. I’m done being weak. I’m done chasing Sin. There will be no more waiting for a smile, a word, or a touch that tells me I matter to him.

“I don’t care how much money you offer me,” I yell at him, “I’m not taking it.” He begins to speak, but I cut him off. “You don’t want me anywhere near you? Then stay the hell out of my way, cause I’m not going anywhere.”

With that, I turn and start walking away from him, and realize I have one more piece of business. I whip back around. “Tell me what the doctor’s visit cost this morning, and I’ll start a payment plan. It might take most of my life to pay you back, but?—”

“That appointment was to make sure the next asthma attack doesn’t end up killing you,” he interrupts, sounding almost as angry as I am. “I don’t want your money.”

“Too bad,” I tell him. An hour ago, I thought the connection I had with him couldn’t be severed, but I’ll hack away at it and my debt to him a millimeter at a time if I have to because I don’t want to be tied to him anymore in any way. “I don’t want to owe anything to you. I’m done with you.”

I storm off, and it’s not until I’m almost to the main entrance that I notice Gideon pulled his car up to the house instead of the garage. From the surprised look on my mother’s face as she’s exiting the passenger side of the Mercedes, they probably witnessed most of my outburst. Maybe I’ll care later, but for now, I ignore my mother calling my name and rush past their car and into the house, where I can go to my room and try to forget Sinclair Brandt once and for all.

Chapter 5

Sin

I watch Cassidy storm off. Every instinct tells me to follow him and beg his forgiveness. Promise him anything, as long as he doesn’t look up at me with those huge, hurt eyes any longer. A sight I’ve seen and been the cause of too many times since I’ve known him.

But it’s better to let him hate me, so I go looking for a strong drink instead.

“Sin,” my father calls out, using the name he gave me from my birth in what he says was in recognition of his only child’s congenital wickedness. “Come to my study.”

I backtrack to my father’s study. My body tenses, as it always does, at the doorway with too many terrible memories. I ignore them and enter the room that I hate with every atom of my being.

There, my father sits behind a huge, shiny mahogany desk that dominates the space. Behind it is a huge oil portrait of him delivering a sermon. The rest of the walls are covered in pictures of him with various celebrities and politicians. None of the pictures include me, Cassidy, or even my stepmonster, Sheila. The room is decorated in what I like to call “narcissist chic.”

“Sit down,” he orders, not bothering to look up from next week’s sermon that’s strewn across the desk. He has his deacons write them for him, and then he adds his own notes of hate and judgment in the margins.

With a sigh, I slump into the intentionally uncomfortable wingback chair that faces him. He ignores my presence, one of his favorite power moves. I hate the surge of helplessness I feel in these moments. Like I’m still the kid sitting there as the minutes tick by, waiting for what my father liked to call my corrections, where he tried to find new ways to break me.

When he finally looks up at me, I don’t see the face ofAmerica’s Pastoras the conservative news channels like to call him. Instead of a middle-aged, boyishly handsome preacher, I only see a monster.

Thank fuck that when I look in the mirror every morning, I don’t see any resemblance to his bland good looks. I inherited my mother’s blue eyes, blond hair, and my maternal grandfather’s features and build.

His eyes do a slow, critical sweep over me, and his ever-present smile transforms into one of a fiery rage. It’s his true face, the one he only ever shows to me. “You walked out in the middle of my sermon,” he accuses.

“I was thirsty,” I slur slightly. Let him think I’m drunk or high. The more he thinks he’s broken me, the less of an enemy he’ll believe me to be. “Figured leaving was better optics than drinking from my flask in the middle of your sermon.”

He shakes his head in disgust. “You are a fiend of Satan,” he chastises me. He then goes on to call me all of his pet names:The devil’s seed,bastard son of perdition.Mother-killer. He shouts them at me with the same fire and brimstone he uses on his parishioners as he warns them of the damnation of their eternal souls from his pulpit.

Unlike his flock, who quake at his promises of fiery judgement, I laugh in his face, fully reveling in my given name and holding no hope for my own eternal soul. After all, I am my father’s son, and it’s his fetid blood flowing through my veins. A man who calls himself a servant of God, but whose soul is as dark and rotted as carrion. I embrace my inherited wickedness because it takes evil to destroy evil, and if it’s the last thing I do, I will destroy my father.

He doesn’t see it coming. He thinks that he’s broken me and that I’m only concerned about my next fuck or my next high. He underestimates me—just like he did my mother. That mistake will cost him everything.

“You are on a path to hell and damnation,” he says, finally finishing his verbal abuse dressed up in scripture.

I shrug unconcernedly and put my feet up on his desk. “According to you, I’ve been heading there on a highway with no exit ramps since the day I was born.”

He looks down at the muddy footprint the sole of my Tom Ford boots leaves on one of the pages of his sermon. A line tries to form on his botoxed brow, but instead of showing his anger, it just makes him look constipated. “You were born with a diseased soul.”

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