Page 224 of Poison Aches

Something has happened to my brother.

He mentioned something about someone—a certainhe—knows.

Which means the only person that knows and is coming after me is…

A ripple of suddenly heightened awareness hits me square in my chest as everything falls into place and clicks like a once difficult puzzle now unraveled into nothing.

Slowly, with the weight of guilt, fear, panic, and anxiety on my shoulders and in my veins, I look up at the man sitting leisurely on the bed across from me in the spacious bedroom.

The alarms that had been sounding at the back of my head start raging.

The phone in my hand slips and drops to the floor.

My body is covered in a sheen of sweat…

And I’m now paralyzed, frozen, with my lips quivering as I finally identify the look Emmett has been giving me from the moment I woke up.

Vengeance.

“Emmett…” I start.

Suddenly, there’s a clap of lightning that strokes so fast and so hard, I jump.

It’s immediately followed by a loud, eerie rumble of thunder as the storm clouds roll in over the city.

Car horns start blaring. Darkness has fallen over the city in a matter of seconds, and yet nothing is as dark, as cold, and as dangerous, as this moment right now with me, a sinner, facing the devil that I wronged, several times.

“Why, Angel?” Emmett finally speaks … and suddenly I can’t take the softness of his voice.

“I…” Fat, hot tears start falling down my cheeks.

It’s clear that Emmett found out something my brother was doing… most definitely an act of war against the Eastons.

Even though Samuel has lied to me that he had since dropped his revenge plans against Emmett because of me, I still pretended like I didn’t know he was lying.

And now…

“After everything you’ve done, I decided to let you go because you are useless to me, but you of all people connived and conspired with the man I always thought of as a brother to take me down?”

His words cut to the bone… not because I can hear any hurt or the pain of betrayal in them, but because of the pure, raw honesty in them.

Samuel has always been regarded as a big brother to all the Blue Boys.

He’s the one they always go to when they need help or advise with anything.

But… all this time, even behind my back, Samuel still went ahead and…

“No, he’s still loyal to you!” I rush to say, blindly scooting forward to sit at the edge of the bed. “Something must’ve gotten messed up! I don’t know what’s going on, but I know whatever it is, Samuel would never conspire to take you down or harm you in any way!”

Emmett merely glances at me, but I can see that nothing I’m saying is getting through to him.

“Even now, you have the audacity to lie to me…about something you did?”

“What?”

“You act naïve and lost, as if you weren’t the Grand Poobah, the sole architect of the superb coding that created that site.”

Superb coding…

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