Page 81 of Phantasm
“Darian…” Her voice is so weak I have to lean in to hear her. Nervously, she wets her lips. “My father is dead.”
I rear back like I’ve been slapped. “Dead? No, he—” I look behind me, feeling lightheaded as I digest what she’s saying, but Cecilia’s hand on my arm brings me back to her. “He’s right there.”
“He died, Darian. Years ago.”
EARLIER THAT NIGHT
“Hey, Cecilia.” Sinclair catches up with me as I exit the estate, descending the steps to the circular driveway. Darian waits in the car, hidden behind tinted windows. I don’t know what awaits me, and that makes me anxious.
I turn on the last step, tired and ready to admit defeat. Lauren smiles softly as she walks past me to her lift.
What could Sinclair possibly want? I’ve already fucked up royally tonight. What was I thinking?
Sinclair towers over me, standing a step higher, which makes him look impossibly tall—taller than he already is. He holds out the USB, so I reach for it, but he doesn’t let go immediately. “How much do you know?”
His voice is clipped, but behind the sharp lash hides a softness, which stares back at me through his cautious eyes. Myheart jolts, and I clutch the USB as he lets go. What isn’t he saying? No one knows Darian better than Sinclair.
A cool breeze teases curls of hair across my cheeks. Reaching up, I slide them away.
Sinclair shoves his hands into his pockets and shrugs. “Well?”
“I know enough.”
He simply nods, a rueful look flickering across his features. “Darian was only a young kid when your father and a group of Pawns raped his mother and killed his father in front of him while he hid in the closet.”
My chest feels too tight, and while it’s on the tip of my tongue to shake my head and deny his accusations, I know he’s right. I saw the proof with my own eyes when I searched his laptop. Well, what little I could stomach.
“My father took Darian under his wing, but he was never the same. His night terrors led him to spend time in a treatment facility for a while.” Sinclair’s intense eyes sear into me, making me feel ten feet small. “As you might have guessed, the Exodus doesn’t take too kindly to weakness, so my father kept Darian’s whereabouts a secret from the Bishop.”
The USB burns in my hand as his words sink in. I feel an insane amount of guilt for searching through his laptop and invading his privacy.
“My father treated him like his own son, which is the only reason Darian survived. Of course, Darian would never tell you this himself because he’s proud. It was hammered into him that night that it’s dangerous to show weakness.”
It feels strangely intimate to hear him talk about his friend like this. I’m Darian’s wife, but he hasn’t yet entrusted me with this information, which makes my heart ache.
“Listen,” Sinclair says, wetting his lips and glancing at the car, the trees to our left and, finally, me. “There are truthsabout Darian you don’t know yet, but when you do, just…” He lifts his hand and rubs his mouth, clearly uncomfortable. “Don’t hurt him more, okay? He’s been through enough.”
My brows draw together, and I open my mouth to speak, but what do I say to that? Sinclair is a man who usually smiles and has an easy charm, even if it’s a camouflage to hide his hedonistic tendencies. And he wouldn’t hesitate to slice my throat if he perceived me as a threat, so to see him this ruffled raises my shackles.
“Why are you telling me this?” I ask.
“Because you’re the bleeding crack in his shell, and if you keep pushing, he’ll break. I mean, fuck…” He points back at the large estate. “There’s a chance it’s already too late. You didn’t see him tonight. What crawled out of him back there isn’t a side of him I ever thought I’d see.”
“What are you saying?”
“Darian suppressed his trauma by exerting control in every area of his life. Then you came along and now his carefully constructed control is seeping between his fingers like sand on a beach.” He drops his arm, shoulders slumping as he runs a hand through his hair, ruffling the strands, agitated and frustrated. “For a long time after his parents were murdered, he couldn’t remember that night, almost as if his mind erased it to protect him, a coping mechanism that got him through the day. The only time the memories would haunt him was at night.”
“He remembers that night now,” I point out as I recall how he stays up late drinking because he’s unable to sleep, haunted by the past.
“Yes, parts of it,” he admits almost reluctantly. “Darian sat in his father’s congealing blood for several hours, trying to rouse him, before my father found him. His mind, the mind of a five-year-old boy, broke that day. And though he grew into aman in a ruthless world of money and power, that boy never got over the trauma of witnessing his parents’ murders. You have to understand that Darian carries tremendous guilt for not protecting his parents, especially his mom.”
“He was only a child.”
“He doesn’t think that way.” Sinclair’s Adam’s apple jumps on a swallow. “I see how you look at him.”
My eyes widen with alarm. “Excuse me?”
“You’re in love with him.”
