Page 10 of Twins for the Enemy

I look down at the table saw. The blade glints from the light through the window. He must have bought this house to set me up. There are no coincidences, just consequences, and I'm about to suffer through mine.

"I'll come," I say, trying to keep my voice steady. "But if you expect us to become a loving family, you're sorely mistaken."

"I don't expect that. Nor do I want it."

His voice is sharp, slicing through me like the table saw cut through the wood. Deeply, with precision, and without needing to consider my past of living through natural disasters. He knows he can carve through me with the right tools.

I follow him out of the room. I can survive this too. He'll regret uprooting me and trying to turn me into another plank of wood.

Chapter four

~KIERAN~

For the first twenty minutes, Farah pretends to be disinterested in my plane, but as we approach a half hour, her eyes start to sneak in looks. She rubs her palm against the white leather chair as she looks over at the wooden table between us and the large-screen TV behind me.

Her stomach continues to growl.

Some people might call it karma. I'm not into sadism, but some people’s misfortune creates a bed of satisfaction. It's good to see people get what they deserve.

She still looks gorgeous, which is harming my judgment to an infuriating level. I need to keep a tight hold on the rage I'd been feeling toward her for the last two months. I need to think of Ellie’s burned skin instead of the rosiness to Farah’s cheeks that make her appear perpetually wonderstruck. I need to think of how Ellie’s hands had been trembling when I reached her at the hospital instead of how Farah’s hands have this tiny bone structure that makes me want to encase them to protect them. I need to think about how I slept with Farah while Ellie was being carried out of the fire Farah started, condemning me as a selfish brother and her as a sociopath.

She's carbon monoxide, which can cause suffocation and catastrophic fires, but it can also cause delusions. It will make you so high that the poison looks like an elixir.

I’ve always gotten what I wanted by being direct—making the threat obvious, letting people see exactly what they’re up against. But I’m starting to realize her way works just as well, maybe better. Maybethe ones who don’t make noise are the ones who get closest before they strike.

"Tell me about the Bettiol fire," I say, grabbing onto my drink. I'd poured her some juice, but she's ignored it. "Your boss told the police that he fired you because you were stealing."

She continues to look past me, focusing on the TV. "I wasn't stealing."

"If somebody falsely accused me, then fired me, I'd burn down their business."

She glares at me but doesn't say anything.

"You can't pretend you weren't angry," I say. "I saw the surveillance footage."

Her eyes widen, and her shoulders tense. "There was surveillance footage of the fire?"

Tension courses through my own body. She’s already trying to build her legal defense.

"No," I say. "I was talking about surveillance footage of you being fired. Were you worried thatyour boss hadn't turned off the surveillance cameras for the night and caught you? The police don't need it. They have motive, they have witnesses, and they have surveillance footage of the nearby restaurant, which you ran past. The court case should be quick and brutal."

She looks out the window. Clouds are layered so thick underneath us that it resembles snow clinging onto rocky terrain.

Part of me had been waiting for her to explain away all that evidence—her burned hand, and her refusing to go to the hospital after she crashed into me. It's not for any sympathy or affection toward her, but because I've never been so completely fooled by anyone. Considering her complete and utter disinterest in denying it, it appears that I'm not as good of a judge of character as I thought.

"The news stopped reporting about Helena Porter," she says. "Have you heard anything else about her? Is she doing okay?"

I try to keep my anger from flaring on my face, but she must see it in her periphery as she nervously glances at me.

I could tell her the truth, but she doesn't deserve to know. I also don't need her to know how deep my hate is and how she should have run when she first saw me. I'll wait out the next seven months, and once the twins are born, I'll send her to prison. It’ll be a fitting gift to Ellie as she begins the next stage of her life.

"Never mind," she murmurs. "I'll find out on my own."

Those soft wilderness eyes are trying to look at me in defiance, but it makes her look more like an injured fawn. It should trigger my kill instinct, but aggravatingly, it makes me consider all of the predators who’d prey on her and what I’ll need to do to keep her safe.

It’s because of the twins. Paternal instinct.

I take out my phone, avoiding those eyes. Seventy-four new emails. But even the ones about acquisitions seem trivial.

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