Page 170 of Sins of the Hidden

Maybe I didn't want to know. Maybe some things were better left buried.

But I found myself shifting in his arms, turning to face him.

"What's your sin?" The question escaped like a dying breath, barely audible even in the perfect quiet of the abandoned bakery.

His hand rose to cup my cheek, callused fingers leaving trails of heat against my skin. His thumb traced my bottom lip. V's fingers brushed the edge of my jaw. Slowly, painfully, he surrendered. "Mother was jealous."

A cold dread seeping into my veins. "Of what?"

"Me."

His eyes held mine, vacant depths revealing nothing yet somehow everything—an abyss containing universes of emptiness carefully cultivated and maintained. Those depths held no warmth, nothing suggesting empathy or normal emotion.

My hands found his face, framing the sharp angles that could cut glass. "Why would she be jealous of you?"

His gaze shifted away from me.

The world stopped.

V never looked away from me. Not once. Not ever.

His hand withdrew from my face, each finger retracting in sequence.

Then it happened.

I thought I knew pain. But I didn't. I knew bruises. I knew scrapes. Not this. Not wounds that don't bleed until someone finally sees them.

"Her boyfriends liked to use my mouth more than hers."

My lungs seized. The world didn't deserve oxygen after that.

There was no coming back from this. No world that could stitch itself whole after hearing something like that. He wasn't a monster. He was a crime scene that never stopped bleeding.

I shattered for him.

For the child who never stood a chance.

For the boy who was torn apart before he could speak.

For the man who looked alive but was already gone.

"V." My voice cracked over his name. "V, look at me. Please."

He didn't. His jaw set in a rigid line, not a single muscle twitching beneath his skin. He wasn't just trapped in the memory—he was drowning in it, in the shame that was never his to carry. He'd carried it alone for decades, this secret that had shaped him, molded him into the weapon he'd become. And now he'd trusted me with it—me, the woman he'd terrorized, claimed, protected, and somehow, impossibly, loved in the only way he knew how.

I pressed my palm against his cheek, trying to guide his face back to mine, but he resisted—this man who always yielded to my touch now refused it. His skin was cold beneath my fingers, clammy with sweat despite the chill in the atmosphere.

"Please," I begged, tears streaming unchecked down my face, burning trails that I couldn't feel through the numbing horror. "Please look at me."

His head pivoted slowly, gaze locking on mine.

What I saw shredded my soul to ribbons.

His eyes—those lethal, watchful eyes that had always held the cold calculation of a predator—remained unchanged. The obsidian pools that had never revealed emotion continued their endless blackness. No shame. No humiliation. Nothing human reflected in that endless dark.

The wall remained, the barrier intact, the carefully constructed nothingness absolute. There was no pain visible, just an absence so complete it consumed light.

Behind that emptiness lurked something unfathomable—not resignation, but utter detachment. The complete separation of a consciousness that had learned his body wasn't his own. That he was not a person but a weapon to be used. His pupils remained perfectly sized, not dilated, not contracted, revealing nothing of the memories buried beneath layers of impenetrable ice.

---