Stupid is exactly what Adam felt. The idea that Jacob, the scion of the Thorne family, the prudent businessman and philanthropist, his fucking big brother would choose to become a monster had never occurred to him. The man Adam had known was brilliant, fearless, and vain in his responsibility for the legacy of the Thorne family. This devolution was beneath him.
“Why?” Adam’s throat had tightened and the word came out in a broken croak.
Jacob straightened. “Don’t be dense.”
“You killed Mom and Dad. On purpose.” Fresh pain spread across Adam’s chest like blood from a mortal wound.
“Stop whining. They were going to die anyway, eventually.”
“You fed on them,” Adam said through clenched teeth.
“Like a babe to a mother’s teat.” Jacob sighed and grinned.
A hundred wonderful tortures sprang to Adam’s mind, held at bay these many years only by the burden of family duty.
But now, desperate fantasies grew in Adam’s mind like a dark garden of twisted flowers denied sustenance too long. Colorful creations that would trap and teach Jacob what a monster really was. Exercises in the limits of pain and loneliness. Acts that rivaled a wraith’s soul feeding.
First, Adam had to know why. “You had everything handed to you. Born to wealth, the best education, a loving family, opportunities to do anything you ever dreamed, a girlfriend who loved you. Hell, you had plans, years in the making, to build Thorne Industries to dominate global markets. Why this?”
Jacob shrugged. “I got a better offer.”
“What could possibly be better than what you had?” You ungrateful son of bitch.
“I got Forever. This—” Jacob looked around his cell, mouth pursed in distaste. “—this will pass. The world as we know it will pass, and after everything is gone, I will still be here. Then I can do anything I want, whenever I want. That’s global power.”
“Tell me how you did it.”
“You know I won’t.”
“What if I want to join you?”
Jacob snorted. “You don’t have the kind of long-term vision necessary. You’re stuck in the past with Jena and Michael.”
“That’s Mom and Dad, to you,” Adam bit out.
“See what I mean?”
Rage burned in Adam’s chest, cauterizing the wound that was the loss of his parents. “I will end you. I swear it. I will find the way to undo this mockery of immortality, and I will tear you apart with my bare hands.” Already his hands itched, ached, to enact the madness in his mind.
“Is that any way to talk to your older brother?”
Brother? How could that…that creature call himself his brother? Just because they shared the same gene pool? Adam didn’t think so. Not anymore. Siblings could be disowned. All natural feeling of connection and obligation severed. Happened all the time.
Adam closed his eyes and willed his heart away from the wraith in the cell. Not his brother. He sought cold indifference. A removal of all feeling. Not his brother.
Jacob laughed. A light, gleeful little chuckle that poured gasoline on the fire of Adam’s rage.
Adam choked. He had to get out of there.
He stumbled to the door, tapped numbers into the panel, and tripped out into the corridor beyond.
The guards brushed silently by, eyes askance, and resumed their watch within.
Custo leaned against the opposite wall, arms crossed, waiting.
“Why are you still here?” Adam yelled. “Why aren’t you off living your own life, away from this constant nightmare? Find a woman, settle down, and have a bunch of brats.”
“That bad, huh?” Custo lowered his gaze.
“Talia was right. He chose to become a wraith. Admitted it freely, as if I should have known all along. And I should have.” Adam fisted and released his hands. They shook uncontrollably. He didn’t know what to do with them short of wrapping them around Jacob’s neck.
“Not you. It’s not in your nature to think that someone close to you can be that destructive by design. You save people. It’s what you do. It’s what you have always done.”
I was blind.
“Did you know?” Adam asked. Had Custo known all along as well?
Custo pushed off the wall and gestured toward the elevator. “No, but it doesn’t matter. I’m not here for him. I’m here for you. You’re the closest thing to family I’ve ever known. And family sticks. You taught me that every time you pulled my sorry ass out of trouble.” Custo’s mouth curved. “Remember that business with the boat?”
Family sticks. What the fuck was family? Adam sure as hell didn’t have a clue anymore.
“I wanted to impress a girl,” Custo continued. “You took the blame.”
“You’d have been thrown out of school.” If Custo were trying to distract him, he was doing a piss-poor job. Memory lane was not exactly where Adam wanted to be.
“That’s part of why I did it, too. If I had been thrown out, maybe my family would’ve taken notice of me.” Custo had been dumped in a boarding school at nine. No visits. No communication.
“They never realized your value.”
Custo shook his head. “What I’m trying to say is that my family did take notice. My family was with me. I knew it the moment you told the cops that you stole the boat.”
Adam looked over at Custo. His right arm. His friend. In every way that mattered, his brother.
The anger inside Adam cooled somewhat, abated to a few degrees above that six-year-old steady burn. It allowed him to gulp at air and smooth his expression. He could live with this trade. Hell, he had been living with it, working toward answers because of Custo’s dogged support.
“Are we done being sappy yet?” Custo punched the elevator button.
“Yeah, I think so.” Adam fought to bring his shakes under control. Flexed the last of the tremors from his hands.
The door slid open. Custo glanced back as he entered. “By the way, if ever there was somebody who needed to settle down with a bunch of brats, it’s you.”
Bring children into this world? Never.
Through the peephole in the door, Talia watched Spencer swagger back to the elevator. She had to do something. Give Adam something. He might appear calm and controlled on the surface, but she’d felt the grief and pain that roiled beneath, and how close he was to becoming overwhelmed by the bright white fury that laced his being. He couldn’t go on like this for much longer.
And with Spencer spouting nonsense about how wraiths might be an evolutionary step up? No wonder Adam was sick over his brother.
The elevator pinged, Spencer stepped in, and the doors…finally…closed.
Talia eased out of her apartment, took a sharp right, and opted for the stairs. She coded herself into the stairwell and hurried down to the main level of the hotel portion. She exited by the kitchen, where the stairs terminated, and chanced the elevator—yes, empty!—to the office and laboratory subfloors.
If Adam already knew so much about her anyway, he might as well know what she’d discovered about Shadowman, her father. The research that had almost cost her life in the heat of Arizona.
None of it suggested how Shadowman could help kill Jacob and set Adam free. She didn’t even know what Shadowman was. A ghost, like Adam suggested? That didn’t feel right, and it didn’t account for her abilities either. And why would Jacob fear a ghost?
Talia coded into her office and headed directly for her laptop.
A thought niggled in her mind: What Adam needed—though she’d never tell him, no way never—was that other dev il, Death, the dark thing with the red eyes inside the black wind of her scream. The monster. The one who slaughtered the wraiths with a sweep of his scythe, and took Melanie down, too. Then had the perversion to—Talia shivered with the memory—to caress her cheek.