Page 119 of Sweet as Sin (Bad Habit 1)
The smile faded from Michael’s face. His gaze turned haunted. “Amy. I want Amy back.”
Something about the way he said it, some odd inflection i
n his tone, rang an alarm bell in the back of my mind. The way he spoke her name was perversely possessive. “I can’t do anything about that, Michael. No one can.”
His throat worked. His voice came in a low, choked rasp. “I loved her.”
What the hell is he talking about? What the hell does he want? “I know you did—”
“No you don’t!” Michael shouted suddenly. His face flushed with color. “I told you at the wake: you don’t know anything!”
I flinched. Fear screamed along my nerve endings, scraped cold fingernails down my back. Every sense honed. His rage was so palpable I almost tasted it. I held myself perfectly still as Michael struggled to get himself under control, flexing his hands open and closed over and over, his chest rising and falling with his ragged breaths.
He said, “I loved her. I was in love with her. And she loved me. We were more than just brother and sister, Kat. We were everything to each other. We were best friends.” His voice cracked. Tears spilled down his cheeks. He whispered, “We were lovers.”
I gasped, feeling sick and shocked and repulsed, all at once.
“She tried to fight it. That’s why she ran away with Juan Carlos; she thought another man would make a difference. She thought distance would make a difference.” He laughed. It was a harsh, ugly sound in the quiet room. “And boy, did it. But not in the way she thought. Three years, she whored for him, locked up like a bird in a cage. And when the day came that some filthy john passed out on top of her with his cell phone in his shirt pocket, who do you think she called? Me. She called me. Because I was the only one who ever really loved her, Kat. And she knew it. She knew I’d do anything to get her away from him. Anything.”
With growing horror, I remembered what Nico had told me about the phone call Avery made to him from Brazil, when she said she was coming home. He had said he knew Juan Carlos was dead . . . and he thought his sister had something to do with it.
“It was you,” I whispered. Goose bumps broke out all over my arms. “You killed Juan Carlos.”
Like a cornered animal, Michael bared his teeth. “You’re goddamn right I killed him! She told me where to find her and I hunted down that bastard and killed him like the insect that he was! Then I brought her back, and Nico barely even noticed I’d been gone, he was so wrapped up in his own bullshit!” His voice gentled, became stroking and strange. “So Avery and I were together again, only this time both of us knew it was for good. It was meant to be. And we were happy.”
My stomach twisted. I felt an almost overpowering urge to throw up. “Happy? My God, Michael! She was an addict—she was molested by your father, she was forced to work in a brothel—how could you do that to her? How could you take advantage of someone so damaged in that way? She was your sister!”
He screamed, “She was my life!”
Terrified, I jumped. On a gut level, I knew he was a grave danger to me. One wrong move, and I’d be dead.
He prowled slowly closer. My hands were ice. I couldn’t breathe. My mind hurtled through space at a thousand miles per hour, but my body was rooted in place.
Michael’s voice dropped to just above a whisper. “And when Nico found out about us, he took away the only thing I ever loved and threatened to kill me if I ever went near her again. He told her I was sick, I was just like our father, and she listened to him. They cut me off, and I never saw her again until the day they lowered her fucking coffin into the ground!”
I now understood with bloodcurdling clarity why Nico had been so upset when he’d seen Michael kiss me, and when I’d told him I was glad it had been Michael watching us that night at the house and not some stranger. Here was the reason Nico hadn’t spoken to his brother in five years. God only knew how he’d found out. I hoped with all my heart Nico hadn’t walked in on the two of them together.
Michael reached into the waistband of his jeans. He produced a shiny black revolver, and pointed it at my heart.
My face flushed hot. My entire body began to shake. I almost fainted with terror. “Killing me won’t bring her back.”
“Of course it won’t,” he answered through gritted teeth. “This isn’t about you, Kat. It’s about him. After we came to LA, his entire life was handed to him on a silver platter. Money, fame, success, now love . . . he has everything. And I have nothing. I want him to suffer like he made me suffer. I want him to know exactly what it feels like to be thrown away by the person you love more than anything else on earth. I want to watch that.”
I blinked. Watch that?
His face twisted into an ugly grimace. “I’m not really interested in killing you, Kat. That would hurt my brother, but in the end, he’d have closure. It would be over too quickly. It would be too clean. Also, I have no interest in going to prison. So that only leaves one other choice.”
I didn’t understand. Wordlessly, I slowly shook my head.
Michael said, “You’re going to leave him.”
“No!” I said it instantly, without thinking. He ignored me and kept talking, a wild glint shining in his eye.
“If you leave him, if you tell him you’ve changed your mind, that you don’t really love him and turn your back on him, it’ll tear him apart. I know him. He’ll never get over it. He’ll pine over you for the rest of his life. He’s never been in love before. Ridiculous, isn’t it, for a man his age? A man with beautiful women throwing themselves at him left and right as he walks down the street?”
He nodded, agreeing with himself. “Ridiculous. I almost didn’t think he had it in him. But, lucky for me, he does. And now I finally have my chance to prove to him that there are far worse things in this world than death. Do you know what’s worse than death, Kat?”
Swallowing back the bile rising in my throat, I stared at him.
