She’d read his mind in those frantic moments and knew the hatred he had for Aric on sight, simply because he was Breed. She had registered his alliance to violent rebel gangs like the ones who frequented this bar, and the ones who’d carried out this morning’s slayings just a few miles here.
“Portman’s dead,” she told her sister. “I killed him.”
Leah gaped. “Are you insane? Red was one of Angus’s men from back in the day.”
“Well, now he can meet him in hell.”
“You’re crazy.” Her twin let out a sigh and gave a hard shake of her head. “You can’t be here, Kaya. I don’t want to talk to you. I don’t ever want to see you again.”
“Why not? Do you have a reason to be afraid of me now?”
“Fuck you.” The response flew at Kaya like a slap to the face. She should have seen it coming. That was always her sister’s method for dealing with difficult conversations and hard choices. Lash out with cutting words and claws bared. “Why are you here? If you’re looking for some kind of teary, pathetic reunion, you can forget it.”
“No, that’s not what I was hoping for,” Kaya admitted quietly.
She’d all but given up on that idea a long time ago.
One of the last times they saw each other had been after their mother’s murder. The night sixteen-year-old Kaya had shot and killed the man responsible for her death, then fled into the city alone. She had run to the only person she knew and felt she could trust: her twin sister.
But Leah had problems of her own, even then. A runaway from the age of fourteen, she had turned out too much like their mother. Troubled. Addicted. Under the control of bad men. Heartless killers who spewed the same hate and lies the girls had been exposed to all their young lives.
Kaya had refused to stay for more than a handful of days. And Leah refused to leave. It was the last time they had seen each other. Until this very moment.
“I want you to know I’m with the Order now.”
Leah reeled back. “With them? What the hell does that mean?”
“I’m training with them here in Montreal, to become a warrior.”
Her sister gaped as if Kaya had just told her she intended to tear someone’s head off and drink from the stump of their neck. “I hope you didn’t come all the way down here just to tell me that.”
“No,” Kaya said. “I came to see if you know anything about a Breed family who were murdered this morning over in Pointe-Claire.”
Leah’s face was unreadable. “Why would I know anything about that?”
“Because whoever did it left quite a calling card. They broke into a Darkhaven and slaughtered the entire family--the parents and two little boys, one of them just an infant.”
Leah swallowed at that, the first reaction she gave that even hinted at emotion.
Kaya pressed on. “They savaged a young mother, Leah. Using her blood, they wrote awful things on the wall above her body. Things I used to hear quite a lot when our mother was alive. Things I heard from the people you call your friends--ignorant assholes like the one who owns this bar.”
Leah’s gaze flicked over her shoulder once more. She lowered her voice to a tight whisper. “If you’re trying to shock me by insinuating Angus or his men had something to do with a killing like that, save your breath. I know what he’s capable of.”
“And yet you stay with them. All this time, Leah, you’ve stayed.”
She didn’t respond, but a storm churned within the dark brown eyes that were so similar to Kaya’s own. There was torment in her gaze, but she refused to give it voice.
“If you know something about the attack on that Darkhaven, you need to tell me.”
Leah crossed her arms. “I don’t. But even if I did, talking to the Order is the last thing I would do.”
Kaya blew out a curse in frustration. “Don’t you care about what’s right or wrong? Doesn’t justice mean anything to you?”
“You have no idea what matters to me,” she shot back now, angry and defensive. “You never did. You were always the strong one, the smart one. Always whispering to me about your dreams and plans for your future, even when we were little kids. The only thing I ever wanted out of my fucked up life was to survive it.”
“At the end of the day, that’s all anyone wants,” Kaya replied.
She’d heard the pain in her sister’s voice. She understood it the way only a twin could, connected on a level that went deeper than basic siblings. But Leah wasn’t reaching out. She was pushing back, barring Kaya as if she were a stranger.
And maybe after all this time, that’s all they were to each other now.
Kaya recalibrated her feelings for her sister, resolved that she wasn’t talking to her twin but questioning a member of a hate group so tight-knit and steeped in doctrine it might as well be labeled a cult.
“Do they know you’re one of us too?” Leah’s question caught her off guard. It held a curious edge, but there was no mistaking the accusation in it, either. “Is that why they sent you here?”
“They didn’t send me. And I’m not one of you,” Kaya replied, but the denial lacked the venom she wanted it to have. “I haven’t been part of this world for a long time.”
Yet she’d been born into it, raised within it. For the first sixteen years of her life, all she’d known was the abhorrent, violent world that somehow still held her sister in its thrall. As much as she wanted to deny it, Kaya’s shame over that fact ran deep. It would likely never fade.
“Oh, my God,” Leah whispered, openly astonished. “They don’t know.”
Kaya felt her jaw clench. “Don’t try to make this about
