Built For Sin

Chapter 28

I head downstairs and I head to Sin. He was trying to blend in with the crowd but I needed to let him know that this is a dangerous game. I go to his side and I whisper to him trying to play it cool as if I was reaching for a drink behind him on the counter.

"Damon won't let Milena go, he is willing to play dirty" I tell him.

Silence. I look at his face a bit waiting to see a reaction or something. Then anger kicked in.

Fury was plastered on his face. I immediately rose my hand up and I put it on his chest to signal him to stop. I knew what thoughts were going on in his head. This isn't the time or place for that right now.

The realization came that I had just stepped between Sin and the lethal mistake of confronting Damon head-on, and in that moment, when his eyes met mine, the world outside our shared space dissolved.

"You stop me," he uttered to me, his voice a low vibration that traveled through my chest, settling deep in my core. His hands, which had been flexing, ready to tear Damon's empire apart brick by bloody brick, now rested lightly on my shoulders, a feather-light grip that promised absolute restraint, or absolute dominance.

"We don't do this his way," I whispered, my voice thick with something that wasn't just strategy, but pure, unadulterated need to survive this with him, for him.
"Damon wants us angry. He wants us to rush. He wants to watch us bleed" I remind him.

    Sin's gaze softened, but the darkness in them intensified. He pulled me forward, not roughly, but with the inevitable force of gravity, until the space between us ceased to exist. Feeling him in this way again intensified something again.
    "Smarter," he agreed, his breath ghosting over my ear, sending shivers down the length of my spine that had nothing to do with fear. "Tell me how smart you are, Brooke." I looked into his eyes and I realized in that moment, we needed to be alone.

    We left the others—my father, my cousins, the rest of the crew—in the main hall, their faces etched with anxiety and impatience. We lied and told them that the plan was no use and for them to go home. This needed to be thought out more but with no arguments or ignorance. Just a thought out plan and I knew that in this moment, Sin and I would come up with it together.

Sin led me back to the house, and we ended up in the office. I was ready to tell him my thoughts and how I could see this going. This wasn't about maps and blueprints; this was about merging minds, merging bodies, forging a weapon out of two broken, hungry souls.

    As we are in the office, it was dimly lit, the only sound was the candles that sparked but made echoes in the darkness. As he closed the door behind us, Sin didn't release me until my back was pressed against the cold marble wall. He caged me there, his body heat radiating, a promise of the inferno to come.

    "Milena is the leverage. Damon's masterpiece," he stated, his voice dropping to a conspiratorial rumble. "He thinks we will trade everything for her. He thinks you will break."

    "I won't break," I asserted, lifting my chin. "I will shatter him first."

    He eyed me down which that alone made my insides clench. "That is why I need you. Your thirst for vengeance is cleaner than mine. Mine is stained with history. Yours is pure."

    He moved then, his hands tracing the line of my jaw, tipping my head back until I was forced to look only at him. The conversation was about strategy, but the atmosphere was pure, dark seduction. Every word was a chess move, every touch a binding contract. He was trying so hard but to avoid me and not give in but here he is cracking at every second.

    "We need to know his defenses, his blind spots. He keeps her close, I know it," I said, trying to keep the focus on the mission, but the heat of his gaze was a distraction, pulling me under.

    Sin leaned in, his lips brushing against mine, a tantalizing, agonizing tease. "We need an inside man. Someone who hates Damon enough to risk everything, but is still trusted enough to walk his halls."

    I gasped, the contact sending a shockwave through me. This was the dark love I had never known I craved. A partnership forged not in comfort, but in mutual destruction.

    "I have a contact," I admitted, the name already forming on my tongue. "Victor. He runs the books for Damon's eastern operations at his job which now I know what that means. Anyway, he's always one misstep away from being collateral damage. He hates Damon's arrogance, but he loves the money."

    Sin pulled back just enough to study my face, his expression unreadable, calculating. "Greed and fear. Excellent motivators. But how do we guarantee his loyalty to us?"

    "We don't," I countered, reaching up to thread my fingers into the dark silk of his hair, pulling his head back down until our foreheads rested together. "We guarantee his survival. Damon is planning a massive trade shipment next week which are arms and illicit goods. Something that I've seen in his books, a shipment that always came frequently but I never thought anything of it but I know Victor is managing the manifest. We offer him escape, a new identity, and enough capital to start over, provided he gives us the schematics for Damon's fortress, the security rotations, and the precise location of Milena."

    Sin's eyes gleamed with approval. He finally closed the close distance between us, capturing my mouth in a kiss that was both a brutal claim and a promise of shared victory. It was raw, demanding, and tasted of the imminent danger we were willingly plunging into. My hands gripped his jacket, pulling him closer, anchoring myself to the solid, dangerous reality of him. This wasn't romance; this was necessity. We were two halves of a weapon, finally aligned.

    When he finally broke the kiss, we were both breathless, our minds razor-sharp.

    "The plan," Sin stated, his voice rough with suppressed passion, "is this: Victor delivers the intelligence. We use the chaos of the trade shipment as our distraction. I take a small, surgical team through the tunnels Victor provides. You, Brooke, you walk right through the front door."

    My eyebrows shot up. "Me? Why the front door?"

    "Because Damon expects me to come in the shadows. He expects the brute force. He does not expect the beauty that stopped me from committing suicide by fury," Sin explained, stroking my cheek with his thumb.
"You are the distraction. You are the bait that he will be too arrogant to refuse. You will demand a meeting. You will talk to him about the terms of Milena's release, buying us the window we need to extract her."

    I smiled, a slow, predatory curve of my lips. It was insane. It was brilliant. It was exactly the kind of move Damon wouldn't see coming. He saw me as a frantic woman; he didn't see me as a strategist willing to sacrifice my own safety for the endgame.

    "I walk in as the desperate granddaughter" I confirmed, feeling the power surge through me. "And I leave as the victor."

    "When you meet him, you will be wearing something that commands his attention. Something that makes him forget, for just a moment, that you are his enemy," Sin instructed, his eyes burning with a possessiveness that was profoundly satisfying. "And when I have Milena, I will send the signal. You will have exactly sixty seconds to get out before we burn them to the ground."

    He grasped my face, his thumbs pressing into my cheekbones, his gaze locking with mine in a solemn, dark vow. "If you break protocol, if you put yourself in unnecessary danger, I swear, I will drag you out of that hell myself. But, Brooke, if you succeed, if we get her back..."
    "Then I'll be heading back home, to my old life" I finished for him. He looks at me for a moment as if it wasn't the words he wanted to hear but he eventually accepted.
"You get your old life back" he stated.
    The plan was set. It was reckless, dangerous but I was willing to risk anything and everything. If I could be the one to restore this family and be able to leave and head back to my old life then I'll do it.

The worst part of this all is that I would be losing Sin. As much as I want to deny it, I can't deny it anymore. Sin has been the one who has kept me sane in this and now I can't imagine him not being in it.