Chapter Six

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I WAS SICK TO fucking death of helicopters.

At least this one had its doors firmly shut and flew over a wintry city instead of a tropical sea. Larger than my own, it sat thirteen mercenaries plus me.

My one-hour handicap behind Drake had now been reduced to thirteen minutes. I’d bribed the tanker who refuelled us in Dubai and learned Drake had taken twenty-two minutes to fill his gas quota while I only took twelve.

Couple that with him driving to our parents’ estate instead of flying, I was shaving time every minute, stealing it back, hoarding the seconds and getting closer to the end.

“The other team will meet us there. They’re six minutes away.”

“Did Jon-Paul secure what I requested?” I tore my attention from the rooftops beneath me and focused on the eager killer for hire. I had no opinion over his or his colleagues’ career choice. No moral requirement not to use their services.

People were about to die, and I didn’t give a shit.

It was convenient I could rent such a team.

“Yes.” The blond guy nodded, his hands clenching between his legs. “Your phone call cleared the handover. All they had to do was land on the emergency helipad and a nurse was there with the package.”

“Good.” I turned back to the window, my mind still razor-sharp and shrewd. I hadn’t slept a wink the entire eternal journey from Indonesia. I didn’t need sleep. All fatigue, fury, and emotions had been stripped away.

I was clinical in all things, which allowed rationality to plot ahead.

If there was some chance of me surviving the inevitable death in my future, I owed it to Eleanor to at least attempt to reverse it.

It was Cal who dangled potential hope.

I wasn’t afraid of dying. I never had been. But I was afraid to leave the one person who’d made my life infinitely better.

Therefore, I’d activated a resuscitation plan. One chance to kill the old Sully and let a new one be reborn. Thanks to my connections within big Pharma, and my regular donations and breakthroughs to modern medicine, I had acquaintances in Geneva only too happy to give me the two items on my list.

A travel defib and a strong sedative.

A simple phone call, a rendezvous on the top of the hospital’s roof where mortally ill patients arrived by air, and a quick handover to the leader of the mercenaries following us, and it was done.

Whether or not it would work...I guess, we’ll find out.

Either way, Eleanor couldn’t be mad at me if I did die because at least I’d tried to stay with her. I did my best, and if I failed...that was fate’s choice.

“Three minutes, Sinclair,” an older mercenary muttered, touching his ear where an earpiece relayed information.

I nodded and pulled my cell phone free. Scrolling the copy of my contacts, I brought up the number for the head housekeeper of the Geneva estate. I hadn’t visited this place in years, but our staff were loyal because we paid well.

If Mrs. Betha Bixel still ran the household, she might give me loyalty over Drake who visited more often. He’d never been her favourite person after she’d been the one to clean up swan feathers after he’d snared one and plucked it, alive, in his bedroom.

I wished there was some explanation for Drake’s maliciousness—some excuse or cure for whatever psychosis he embraced. But the fact was, he was just born wrong. Rotten to his core and noxious in every way.

The phone rang as I pressed it to my ear and waited.

My heart didn’t skip.

My palms didn’t sweat.

I was so close to Eleanor, so near to finishing this, but my adrenaline didn’t spike. Every ounce had already been employed into drowning out my injuries and operated entirely under Tritec’s command.

“Hallo, we ist das?”

“Mrs. Bixel, it’s Sullivan Sinclair. Rose and James’ son.”

“Of course! You do not need to remind me, Sullivan. I know who you are. My favourite son.” Her Swiss-German accent filled my ear, half with comfort from our trips here and half with dread from what’d happened in that estate. “Your brother arrived ten minutes or so ago. He brought...friends.”

“Can I assume you will not inform him of this conversation?”

She tutted. “You assume correctly. I do not like that man.” Her voice lowered. “He brought a girl with him. Some poor thing dressed only in a man’s shirt. It’s early winter, Sullivan. A girl cannot be out in the snow in just a shirt.” Her disapproval poured down the line as she opened her mouth to berate me some more. “Why can’t he be caring...like you? You always were—”

“That girl. Is she hurt?” I cut her off. Already the helicopter had decreased its speed, flying closer to the sprawling acreage.

“No, but exhausted. She needs a bath and—”

“Where did he take her?”

“To the Blau lounge.”

“How many men are with him?”

“I did not get a full count. Perhaps six? Seven?”

“How many staff are on-site?”

“Why?” Her voice turned wary. “What is going on, Sull—”

“Round up your staff, Mrs. Bixel. Confine them to your quarters away from harm. I cannot promise they won’t get caught in the crossfires if they don’t.”

“Oh, my saints. Violence again? What is it with you two brothers—”

“Do what I say and do it now. I suggest you don’t come out of your quarters until someone comes to get you. You won’t like what you see if you do.”

I hung up before she could question me further.

The Sinclair Manor House appeared below us, the oak trees dusted with snow, the gardens painstakingly swept from the light fall overnight. The pond had ice crystals glittering around the perimeter, and the sight of the stone mansion made my hair stand on end.

The pilots swooped low, scooping out the gardens and choosing a landing site not far from the sweeping deck that’d been added on before my parents bought the place. I’d eaten many a breakfast on that terrace and smuggled titbits from the kitchen for the birds and wildlife.

The second the skids hit earth, the closest mercenary to the door ripped open the fuselage and leaped to the grass. The rest of the men spilled out, waiting for me as I grabbed the cane one of the mercenaries had given me when we’d landed in Geneva.

A walking stick instead of a helpless crutch.

I’d loathed the thought of a crutch. Just the sight of it made sickness and weakness come to mind. I was neither of those things. I was deadly, determined.

Seemed a mercenary had felt the same way as he’d presented me with a simple black cane when we’d disembarked the plane. Where the fuck he got it from, I didn’t know or care, but I’d accepted it and left the crutch behind.

With my hand wrapped around the smooth ball at the top, I commanded, “Sweep the house, shoot the men, leave the staff. If you can’t tell the difference, shoot first then ask questions. I expect cold-bloodedness, gentlemen. My brother is out of lives. If he doesn’t die today, you will. I fucking guarantee it.”

They nodded, unholstering their weapons.

“Three of you, follow me.” Sweeping my gaze over my black-clad audience, I added, “When the other team arrives, have them bring me the package.”

The men fanned out—faster than me, more able-bodied than me, and that was why I’d hired them. They could do the dirty work. I only had one life to steal today.

As I climbed the steps to the deck, my cane slipped on ice. My leg bellowed, sneaking past Tritec’s defences as I put more weight on my broken bones than I wanted. The bite of cold air was foreign after years in the tropics, but at least the colder weather matched the arctic chill inside me.

Sweat from pain just froze instead of rolled.

Flushes from agony had no place as I limped toward the many glass doors offering the weak winter sun to enter the family room and kitchen. The mercenaries had already run inside. Shots fired. Voices raised before being cut off quickly.

I was almost too late to witness the takeover as I stepped into the immaculate Regency home just in time to see the last man drop.

Three guards? That was all Drake had?

Bullshit.

Marching with a goddamn limp, I used my cane to point at the locked doors to blau lounge. German for blue, it’d been decorated by my father who had a love of dark spaces after working in bright labs. He and Drake had spent many a summer holed up in gloominess while I’d run wild in the sunny gardens.

“Shoot the lock,” I snarled.

The mercenary closest did as I requested, blowing apart the intricately carved door. Wood shards flew like shrapnel, and the doors swung inward thanks to his powerful kick.

A gun fired from within, lodging a bullet right into his forehead.

He fell to the floor just as my team let fire, shooting at the enemy who’d killed one of my men, completely eradicating the remaining guards inside the lounge protecting my brother.

“Don’t hurt the girl!” I yelled.

Two heavy thuds of corpses.

No returning fire.

Another few bullet volleys from my eager men.

“Enough!” The click of my cane on the grey flagstones echoed as I limped into the lounge, stepping over carcasses as if they were nothing more than roadkill.

And there.

In the centre of the room, tied to a couch and deep in the grips of Euphoria was Eleanor.

Eleanor.

Her hands were bound, the yellow shirt I’d dressed her in from a guest villa dangling off her elbows. Her skin glistened from oil and her eyes were wide, seeing things I couldn’t.

Fuck.

My hand curled around my cane. My teeth clenched. And my heart managed a painful thrum before Tritec took control again.

I allowed the iciness to drag me back.

Cricking my neck, I peered at Drake.

Equally as naked as Eleanor, they were both no longer in Geneva but whatever fantasy he’d shoved them into.

Which one?

What hallucination would become my brother’s casket?

Everything seemed to slow. I stayed cold and unscrupulous.

I limped toward them, taking in the scene, noticing the fatigue shadowing Eleanor and the whiteness of her skin.

A small moan escaped her parted lips as Drake reached for her. Tethered to the couch, she had nowhere to go. She fought him off with bound hands even as her skin flushed and lust made her shudder.

I shoved him away.

He crashed over the coffee table, an empty vial rolling from where he stepped on it. He grunted in pain but even flipping over a piece of furniture couldn’t stop his attention from locking entirely on Eleanor, his eyes glazed with a different reality, his mind somewhere I couldn’t touch.

The vial crashed against my shoe.

I swallowed a growl, unable to control the flush of raw fury.

Fucking bastard.

He’d given her elixir.

Again.

She’ll die.

How ill-fated our love story had turned out to be. We both might die today. We might be buried side by side before we’d even lived.

I’m ending this.

Now.

A mercenary on my payroll sidled up to me as I snatched my cell phone lying on the floor. The same phone Drake had stolen.

“Want me to shoot him?” He raised his gun, aiming it at Drake’s head.

It would be so easy.

So fucking tempting.

But they shared the same fantasy.

Kill Drake and kill Eleanor.

I can’t.

“He’s mine to deal with,” I growled. “Sweep the house. Kill any other intruders. I wish to be alone with my brother.”

The man nodded without question. “Call if you need us. We’ll station ourselves by the door.”

A helicopter screech cut off outside, signalling the other team had arrived. “Go collect the package.”

“Sure thing.” He nodded and jogged from the room.

Drake scrambled over the coffee table, doing his best to return to Eleanor.

Urgency tried to undermine my precision. I wanted nothing more than to rip his fucking throat out, but they were linked. Their minds were threaded with hallucinations that were so real, so tangible, it became real.

I need her free from the fantasy.

Eleanor’s moans, as she continued to fight elixir, did their best to distract me.

Fire blazed in my blood for instant and brutal retribution.

The old Sully—the one impassioned and ruled by his love for this girl—would’ve carried her from the room and punched a hole in his fucking brother’s chest. He would’ve tried to skirt the very rules he’d coded for Euphoria and lost Eleanor in the process.

That man kept losing because he kept being controlled by his mistakes.

I wasn’t that man anymore.

Thanks to Tritec, I was clearheaded and methodical. It gave me the willpower to stand before my goddess and my brother all while he made his way back to her and reached to grab her.

I swallowed down my hatred. I quaked with my fury. And I permitted him to paw at her because I needed to do this right. I needed to not only kill him but fucking obliterate him.

And I know just how to do it.

Eleanor cried out, her tone full of disgust but also rapidly building need.

Elixir was winning.

Hold on, Jinx...hold on.

I couldn’t help her overcome elixir’s insidious consummation the same way I had on my island. She needed to be fucked so her overstimulated system didn’t kill her. It wasn’t about pleasure anymore, but survival. She needed orgasm after orgasm, and...I couldn’t give her that.

I’d put her through enough.

I’d hurt her past forgivable.

I had another plan.

A better plan.

One that I didn’t know for certain would work, but I had to try because nothing else was possible. I had no stamina to fuck her to the levels she needed, and I wouldn’t lay a hand on her while my motherfucking brother still breathed.

This is the only way.

A man ran into the room, holding out a medic bag complete with the travel defib and syringe in sterile packaging.

I accepted it.

He left immediately, leaving me alone with the woman I loved and the brother I cursed.

Placing the defib on the couch, I shoved Drake away again and untied Eleanor’s hands and ankle from the curtain tiebacks holding her prisoner.

The yellow shirt fell to the floor. My fingers sparked with electricity. My hands shook as I forced myself not to caress her, not to tangle her mind any more than it already was.

She shivered and groaned at my proximity, her breasts heavy, and lust trickling down her inner thigh. She had no idea I’d been the one to touch her, yet her skin flushed for me, her invitation heavy with her scent in the air.

Drake’s cock thickened at her cries, once again trying to get to her.

I braced, ready to keep him at bay. However, Eleanor was no longer tethered and she bolted.

She left Drake clutching at air and his hard-on bouncing in his haste to chase.

It took fucking everything to stand still while Eleanor tripped over a rug and fell to her knees, scurrying like a mouse, bumping into a bookcase in her hurry.

All instincts told me to protect her. Go after her. The primal need to kill Drake almost overrode my discipline.

You snap, she dies.

You kill Drake, she dies.

You do anything wrong, she dies.

So get it fucking right.

My teeth almost turned to dust as I ripped my gaze off the hunt in front of me and locked onto my cell phone.

In this world, I was a cripple.

But in that world...I was god.

I was the creator and architect. I could bend the rules to suit me. I could use Drake’s mind to break him, instead of his body.

If I couldn’t stop the fantasy, then...I would join in.

My desire for bloodshed unfolded with morbid magic.

It would be the worst thing I’d ever done.

I would step over every boundary and humanity I had left, embrace every shred of darkness in my soul.

And I would relish every fucking minute of it.

My thumbs flew over the screen as I typed new lines of code. I added a cypher, changed a character, conjured a new kind of nightmare. Every edit I made, Drake and Eleanor would witness each revision, their illusion morphing around them. As I snuffed out the sun and drenched them in darkness, they’d see all manner of changes.

Amendments that shouldn’t be possible.

Tricks that couldn’t be true.

My fingers flew faster, twisting the code past all realms of comprehensible.

This was to be Drake’s crypt. It was only fitting that I spared no expense to his demise.

Currently, Drake and Eleanor were in a campsite set in an American forest on the dawn of the Revolutionary War. A meagre camp where the guest who’d asked me to cypher such a fantasy wanted a bearskin tent, an avatar skilled at combat, and a native Indian girl who happened to be gathering water at a river. A girl who would be overpowered, overcome—a goddess high on elixir who would spread her legs for the illusion of forced conquering.

It’d proven to be a success.

The guest had left entirely satisfied.

Yet Drake would find death instead of pleasure.

My lips thinned as I typed faster and faster. New lines of text slipped into the old, distorting a fantasy within a fantasy, a world within a world.

A world unlike any explorer in the 18^th century would’ve found.

Only once I’d completed the amended falsity did I prepare to join them.

Grabbing a few boxes of my Euphoria supplies where Drake had left them scattered, I inserted eye lenses and earbuds. I didn’t bother with anything else, only requiring the bare essentials for my insertion.

Ensuring the lounge doors were closed, I grasped the sedative tight in my fist and hovered my thumb over the screen.

I pressed the button to load a third person into their delusion.

The world went white.

Geneva vanished.

And Sully...was no more.