Page 14 of Where Sinners Repent

“No.”

My smile is dangerous. Barely matching the way my heart slows, ready for a fight that will end up with more blood. “Interesting,” I mutter. He doesn’t respond. Just stares at me with the blank face that makes everyone feel uncomfortable.

The face that people mistake for unfeeling.

A face born from feeling too much.

A cruel laugh spills from me, although I don’t find anything funny. “You fucked her.”

His silence is all the answer I need.

And for the first time in a long fucking time, my brother has managed to shock me.

We don’t do... that. Don’t fuck someone without the other there. Let’s call it a safety precaution.

My knife spins and spins.

Twenty-nine years of existing as the same mind split between two bodies, some fucking girl managed to make my brother step outside of us. With a psycho who likes to disfigure faces with sports toys.

Something angry beats beneath my ribs. The feeling is one I don’t recognise.

One I don’t like. It feels too much like something has been stolen from me.

“And you didn’t kill her?” I mock, all fake amusement dropping from my tone.

His eyes finally fall from mine, turning to the sack of meat. Circling it like a hungry shark. I should let it go. We have a mess to clean up and endless enemies who want to see us become the mess. We don’t have time for this.

But I can’t.

“Because you will kill her.” My voice is laced with cruelty. My brother needs to hear it. “Maybe you didn’t kill her this time. Maybe you won’t kill her the next. But you will. It’s the only certainty I know.”

I love my brother. He’s the only person I will ever love.

Yet sometimes I find myself wishing for him to give me more. Selfish, I know. I’m a selfish man.

How could I ever expect more from someone who’s been through the pain he has?

I’m lucky I have him at all.

Everything he is, I am. Everything I am, he is.

I am him and he is me.

We are the brothers with no last names.

He needs me. I won’t let him forget it.

“Is that what you want?” I continue watching Kai watch the blood seep out of the body. “To kill Maddy’s best friend because you couldn’t control yourself?”

Slowly, he circles the dead man. Painting the concrete floor in a map of blood. His fingers sift through the man’s ratty hair before slowly closing around it. Pulling, he contorts the head back, making blood gush onto the floor. His eyes flick to mine for a reaction.

I give him fucking nothing.

I may not be as expressionless as my brother. Not that anyone would notice. To the rest of the world, we are two cold soldiers. Empty faces cut from the same cloth. But I’m just as good at giving as little as he does.

Releasing the head, he turns. Disappearing into the shadows and leaving me alone again.

Leaving me to clean and dismember.