The Consequence (The Evolution of Sin 3)

Then she blinked in that slow way of hers that hypnotized you and when her eyes opened again, they were narrowed with laser-like intensity.

“When?”

The word flung me like a dart through a butterfly’s wing, pining me to the wall, helpless against her scrutiny.

“We met in Mexico. I had no idea that he was your boyfriend and he had no idea that I was your sister. We knew each other only as Sinclair and Elle. We, well, we spent a lot of time together that trip and I fell in love with him. I fell in love with the person he made me believe that I could be.”

“An adulterer?” she asked mildly.

I had never been as afraid of anyone, not even Christopher, as I was of my sister in that moment.

“I left him thinking that I would never see him again but then there he was in Mama’s kitchen. There he was as your boyfriend.”

“He was more than a mere boyfriend,” she hissed.

I nodded. “I know. I knew that he was yours; that this was the man you had been with for the past four years. I knew that you two seemed perfect together.”

“We were. We are.”

I choked on her words and coughed. “We both refused to acknowledge what had happened, we wanted it to be in the past where it belonged but…” I chewed on my lip, focusing on the pain there instead of how hurtful it was to look at my sister, to prostrate myself, my heart, before her even though I knew how it would end.

Bloody, with her hand on the knife stuck deep in my chest.

I tried to remind myself that I deserved it but it didn’t ease the pain.

“We became friends again, just friends.” I whispered, more to myself than her.

Elena just sat there, cloaked in righteousness and arctic cold disdain.

“But I loved him so much even in those moments, I loved him so much, Elena, that it became bigger than anything else. Bigger than morality and sin, bigger than our circumstances, bigger even than our love for you.”

She was staring at me so hard. I could feel the weight of it like punishing gravity, crushing everything inside my body, folding me up into a crumpled little unrecognizable ball of waste. The beautifully pleated lines and contours of the origami figure I had constructed over the last few months with Sinclair, all those beautiful qualities I had grown to know that I had possessed, were destroyed with one slow blink.

I began to cry, which disgusted me because she was the victim, but I couldn’t stop.

“I fought it so hard, Elena. We both did. If you believe nothing else, please believe that we didn’t want to do this to you. But this wasn’t about a choice. If I denied myself my love of Sinclair,” an ugly sob burst through my lips and slapped wetly against the table, “I would have destroyed both him and myself.”

“So, instead, you chose to destroy me,” she said quietly.

I cried harder, burying my shameful face in my hands. Snot laced tears ran through my fingers and dripped to the table.

Elena watched me cry.

“You let him defile you, don’t you?”

I recoiled at her sharp question, my head flying up so that I could look at her.

She was sneering at me, her red lips twisted like a bloody smear.

“You let him beat you, don’t you? You like it when he hits you, when he ruts into you like a wild beast and marks your body as his own.” She laughed at my gasp, the sound sharp and high pitched like an auditory weapon. “You stupid slut. Daniel doesn’t love you, he is just using you.”

A whimper lodged in my throat. I wanted to beg her to shut up but I deserved her hatred, so I kept quiet.

She leaned forward, her gorgeous face more animated than I had ever seen it, warped harshly with revulsion. “You think he loves you? What is there about you to love? You are just the same meek, stupid, self-centered little girl who always gets what she wants and is shielded like a baby from every bad thing life throws at her. Do you know why Mama and the twins do that? Hmm? Because they know you are weak. They don’t love you so much as pity you. If your family can’t even respect you, how do you think a man like Daniel Sinclair could ever love you?”

She lifted her chin and looked down on me like the Queen Of Hearts condemning one of her subjects to the guillotine. “Daniel is the best person I have ever known. He is an intelligent, successful businessman and the son of the New York State Governor. And you think he loves you?”

Her laughter sliced me into ribbons. All I felt was pain and still, I sat there and absorbed it, ever the masochist.