The Sinner

CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE

SIN

“HOW THE FUCK did you know to bring us here?” I demand, the same gun I used to kill James and fuck his daughter with is pointed right at his head.

“Sin?” Elli’s hands grip the back of my shirt. “What’s going on?”

We both ignore her. Nicholas places his hands in his front pockets, not caring that I’m about to shoot him between the eyes. I guess when you’ve been dead to the world for nine years, death doesn’t really matter.

“I used to come here. A lot, actually,” he answers, looking around. “I hate to admit this, but I would bring women here. Not down here particularly, but to this house.”

“You cheated on Mom?” she asks, letting go of me. Elli goes to walk around me, but I push her behind me again, my gun still trained on him. “How could you do that? I thought you loved her?”

He gives her a sympathetic look. “The Lords are all about appearances, Elli. While out in public, but behind closed doors, things are different.” Then his eyes go back to mine. “I recognized it right away when I saw the photo you had of Ellington that fell out of your back pocket.”

“What photo?” she demands, but we still pay her no attention.

“Get to the point,” I demand. “This is your place, right? After you died, James found it and would bring her here.” That’s the only thing I can think of. He had documents of this place where he brought his whores back at their home and James used this place to his advantage. Laura probably had no clue it exists.

“What are you talking about, Sin? I’ve never been here,” she argues.

“Yes, you have,” he informs Elli, his eyes going to hers. I feel her body stiffen against my back.

“No—”

“I’ve seen the picture,” he goes on with a nod. “I spent enough time here to recognize what I saw in it.”

I feel her hands slide into both of my back pockets and I’m not fast enough to stop her. Spinning around, she already has the picture in her hands, staring down at it. The gun drops to hang at my thigh as silence fills the room.

She lifts her eyes to look at mine through her dark lashes. They’re filled with tears.

I step toward her. “Elli—”

She steps back, sniffing. “Why do you have this?”

I run a hand through my hair, letting out a long breath. “I needed to find out who the second guy in the photo is,” I answer honestly.

“I know who it is,” her father speaks.

I turn to face him, and demand, “Who?”

“The owner of this house,” he states through gritted teeth.

“Which is?” I snap. I need him to get to the fucking point.

“Your father.”

ELLINGTON

ANOTHER SILENCE FALLS over the cold room and I try not to let the first tear fall. How long has Sin had this picture of me? How many more are there? Where did he get it?

I remember James taking pictures of me. He would tell me that I was too pretty to not capture the moment. Or that he wanted something to look at later when he was alone. I couldn’t stop him from taking them. He would wait until I was tied up and unable to fight it. I would close my eyes most of the time due to the shame I felt over the fact that I enjoyed what he did to me, but I never stopped to think where they went. Or who he showed them to.

Sin turns to face me once again. “Did my father rape you?” he commands.

I flinch at his bluntness. My already racing heart skipping a beat. “No,” I whisper.

“How do you know?” he goes on, pointing down at the picture that’s in my hand. “You’re blindfolded.” His body stiffens and his wide eyes meet mine, making my breath catch. “Just like when I fucked you and you thought I was David,” he whispers more to himself than me, and I watch him readjust his gun in his hand. His fingers flexing before his fist tightens on the grip.

The tears spill over my bottom lashes, unable to hold them back any longer. “I’ve never been here,” I whisper to myself, refusing to believe that I’ve slept with his father.

He reaches out, ripping the picture from my hand and holds it up over the dingy bed. It’s the same one. I can’t deny that. It just doesn’t look as old as it does now. Then he points to the wall where a mirror hangs at my refusal to acknowledge it’s the same. The glass shattered in the upper right-hand corner looking like a spiderweb.

“It’s this very room, Elli!” he shouts.

I wrap my arms around myself. I’ve never felt so dirty in my life. After everything that I let James do to me, then Sin when I thought he was the masked stranger—hell, even David didn’t make me feel this way. Sin’s father? If James let him fuck me, how many more were there that I don’t know about?

I started doing drugs at sixteen, so it wouldn’t have been hard for James to wait until I was fucked up, take me from the house to a remote location, and let others fuck me. Then take me back home so I woke in my bed the next morning. “I … I don’t know,” I say truthfully through the knot in my throat.

“Sin,” comes my father’s soft voice.

“What?” he snaps, his chest heaving.

“Your father and my wife were the only two who knew my brother existed.”