Page 64 of The Fall of Sin (The Sins of Saint 2)

I eased my palm against her wet cheek, her complexion sickeningly pale. “You’re going to be okay. I promise. Okay? I promise.”

Elena grabbed my hand, her breathing loud and rapid. “Listen to me, Mila,” she whispered, pulling me close. “You need to get out of here. You need to save yourself from him.”

“No.” I shook my head. “I’m not going to leave you here.”

Elena tightened her hold on my hand. “Don’t worry about me. Just…” she sucked in a heavy breath, “save yourself…and the life you’re carrying inside you.”

Ice spread through every bone, weighing me down and making it impossible to move. “What?”

A weak smile drew across her face, and she closed her eyes as she simply nodded.

“How do you—”

“The cards,” she whispered. “It was written in…in the cards.”

Suddenly, it all clicked in place. “The Empress? That’s what it meant. That’s why you didn’t want to complete the reading.”

Raphael grabbed my arm and yanked me up to my feet. I was too stunned to even try to fight back—to try to yank free.

He dragged me out of the room and slammed the door shut. “Sit the fuck down.” He pushed me toward the couch, my hip hitting the armrest and sending a shockwave of pain up my side. Instinctively, I wrapped my arms around my belly. “Why are you doing this?”

“Oh, God.” He rolled his eyes. “Are you slow? Are you one those special people who needs things explained to them a thousand times?” He took a seat across from me and reached for a tiny plastic bag that was set on the side table. “Aunt Elena was right.” He snickered as he poured white powder from the bag and onto the side of his fist. “I am high.” He snorted the cocaine, and a look of sheer ecstasy flashes across his face for a full fucking two seconds.

I watched with bated breath as he wiped at his nose and clutched the gun.

He held the bag out to me. “Want to try?”

I simply glared at him.

He shrugged. “Go on. If you’re high, you won’t feel a thing when I shoot a hole in your pretty face.”

“Stop,” I whispered. “Stop threatening me and just do it.” Adrenaline had spiked. It was making me reckless, and I was starting to feel nothing but undiluted anger. I sat up straight, not caring that one sleeve of my dress was torn and half my breast was on display. “If you want to kill me so badly, then just do it. Why stall? Why this fucking charade?”

His jaw clenched and nostrils flared. His eyes were nothing but pits of darkness. “You know,” he started and settled back in his seat, “throughout my entire childhood, I always felt like there was this disconnect between me and my father. As if he, I don’t know, didn’t like me. And when he died, I didn’t feel sad. Oh, no,” he smiled like a goddamn maniac, “I felt free. Free to be me and do what I want without having to worry about my father’s glare of disapproval. Yet I didn’t stop wondering why he always seemed to not like me.”

Raphael craned his neck and looked up at the ceiling. “Then my sister returns from the grave, alive and well, this whole fucking grim story of adoption and debts and shares, and fuck knows what else.” His gaze cut to mine. “And then I realized, it’s because of you. My father didn’t like me because whenever he looked at me, all he saw…was you. The daughter he gave away.” He stood from his seat, and I swallowed hard as his features darkened by the second. “You see, Mila, you’ve ruined my life even before you came back from the fucking dead. You’ve been ruining my life since the day I was born.”

I balled my fists, my insides coiled tight. “Or maybe our dad simply knew what a piece of shit you really are.”

The expression on his face was stone, his eyes glazed over. I stopped breathing due to his lack of reaction to how I provoked him. But then he burst out laughing, a loud cackle of alarming insanity. The sound vibrated down my spine with unsettling terror, and I had to inhale deeply in order to keep the panic from suffocating me.

Raphael slithered closer like the snake he was and lifted the gun, aiming it right at me.

Sweat trickled down my back as I desperately fought to hide my trembling fear.

“You’re a brave little girl, Mila. I’ll give you that. Too bad it won’t help you when you burn in hell.”

“I’m not afraid to die, Raphael.”

He straightened his aim. “Then you’ll have no problem with what happens next.”

My entire body shook with a force that could crack bone, my own heartbeat sounding in my ear. If Elena was right, Raphael wouldn’t just be robbing me of my life, but that of the life inside me as well.

A tear slipped down my cheek and across my trembling lips, but my mind was blank. Completely devoid of any memory. Any thought.

Then a knock on the door cut through the tension that hung like thick muck in the air.

“Raphael, are you in there?”

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