Page 34 of Seven+Four

“I do?”

“Your nose twitches a little. Plus I heard your conversation with Linda.”

Terror like I haven’t felt in years envelops me. “You-you did?” Oh my God. No! That’s not possible. He can’t know. I frantically try to remember what it was said, but I’m too panic-stricken to make sense of it. He looks furious…with me.

“Yes,” he answers with a snarl. His grip on my face tightens. “It ends today.” His words make my heart sink as all the blood leaves my face.

“Uri—” Linda starts, but I cut her off, not wanting to hear anything more.

“Need to go to the bathroom.”

I bat his hand away and flee out of the room. Tears roll down my face as I rush blindly toward the elevator. This can’t be happening. My worst nightmare has turned into reality. He is already looking at me differently.

Uriel

Dark possessiveness has invaded every particle of my body, and the only thing keeping me from going after Sari is the sight of Meg lying in the hospital bed. Nevertheless, I’m enraged thinking about Sari with someone else.Dating!That’s what he said to Linda.Fucking dating those motherfuckers, who aren’t even worthy to untie his shoes.

I’m an expert at keeping my tone bland, but when I saw those glassy aquamarine eyes and wet cheeks, and the way he pulled nervously on his braid, a growl was ripped out of my throat.

So fucking beautiful when he’s upset. I wanted to pull him so close we’d merge into a single being. But he swatted my hand away. It makes the anger in the pit of my stomach boil and sear.

“Is it just me, or is Uri kind of hot when he’s being all sociopathic?” Clover stage whispers. I met him in the lobby. He was eating a bag of pretzels and kept talking all the way up toMeg’s room. I’m very tempted to end his life, finding another thief like him won’t be that difficult, everyone is expendable. But Sari seems to like him. There’s also the matter of the family code. Damn it!

I move closer to the bed to look at Meg. The sound of the ventilator pumping air inside her lungs makes me uneasy. The fact that I wasn’t able to protect her adds fuel to the fire. The biggest fear for us sociopaths is losing something. Meg and Sari are my something—my brothers and Linda can take care of themselves.

All I want right now is to find who did this and shoot both their legs and arms until there’s more holes than smooth skin, then carefully, but painfully rip their still beating heart out of their chest and crush it under my boot.

Emotions are so confusing. Revenge, on the other hand, is exquisite.

“I heard Ezra came to see you,” Linda interrupts my enjoyably gory thoughts.

“Your doppelgänger?” Clover asks. Fuck, he’s a great thief but such a weird human being.

“His twin.” Linda huffs. She’s tiny, with long blond hair and blue deep eyes, but I’ve never made the mistake of underestimating her.

“He snuck inside the lake house. That was his last time, though. Serena now knows how to differentiate between us.”

“Rami told me. How was meeting him after all this time?”

“Awesome, I bet. A guy with my exact face. So many things we could do! The possibilities are endless,” Clover interjects. I haveno fucking idea what he’s on about. But having another little Asian Ninja thief running around would be too fucking much for me. I’d be forced to kill one or both.

I take out my switchblade and start the usual toss and catch, keeping a sharp gaze on Clover. “It was fucking unsettling at first; I wanted to shoot him.” I give them a wicked smirk. “But it seems like he has information regarding Phoenix.”

“So you decided to postpone killing your twin,” Clover says.

“That seems wise,” Linda utters slowly. “Just listen to what he has to say. He’s better alive than dead to us for now. The enemy of our enemy is our friend. And I don’t think Ezra wants us dead.”

I grab the knife and use the tip of the blade to scratch my chin. “It seems not. But that can easily change. I don’t know his intentions, yet. Sure as shit they aren’t pure.”

“Possibly. We don’t know much about him.”

It looks like he was kept by those scientists at least three more years after the rest of us were saved. We don’t know what happened after that. Now Ezra is an assassin, but under no one’s control. So, did he escape and was found by someone like my foster mothers? Meg and Linda are the ones who thaught me to give and take, to control myself, they put up boundaries when it was needed, and changed their approach as I grew up. Meg even showed us the files and dossiers about us that she’d compiled over the years. She wanted us to understand some of the decisions she and Linda had made and the approach they chose with each one of us.

The thing about psychopaths and sociopaths, though, is that there’s no actual approach or technique to keep us from turninginto whoever we’ll become. All psychopaths or sociopaths can be dangerous, even if we aren’t all murderers. We are still cannons ready to shoot; Meg and Linda simply turned our aim toward evil fuckers.

They raised five kids out of seven to become murderous vigilantes. I see that as a victory since I fucking like my life.I am a sociopath. They didn’t change that. Couldn’t. I’ll always have a lack of empathy for others, an impulsive nature; I’ll attempt to control others with threats or aggression, or use intelligence, charm, or charisma to manipulate them; I’ll lie for personal gain and show a tendency toward violence. It’s who I am. And fuck, I’m proud of myself.

“We know close to nothing about Ezra’s past except that he left the second facility somehow. Rami’s still digging, but it’s like looking for a ghost. He keeps following us around like a shadow and easily breaks into our houses, not in the least afraid of us.”

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