Sinful (WICKED #2) | ✓

43

KAI WAS SITTING IN front of her, something hanging in the air which she couldn't quite put a name on. It was a feeling between tension and curiosity, the both of them having moved a floor up. Kai had pulled the knife out of the wall, bending down to cut her ropes and telling her to follow. Ella had expected the others to protest, but to her surprise none of them had uttered a word. So here they were, alone, both of them sitting on the gray carpet, which Ella was fairly certain had been white once. The only other furniture in the room was a bed and a closet, both looking very unstable.

"So," Ella began," you're Levi's brother?"

"Yeah," Kai said, his gaze trained on her," I'm assuming this is the first time you've heard about me, seeing as Levi doesn't know I exist."

Well, that answered her question. Not like she thought Levi would hold something like that back, especially with how transparant he had been about his family. She supposed it wasn't a strange thought that Levi's dad did not care enough about his children to introduce them to each other. Seeing him now, knowing that he was Levi's brother, felt strange though. In a way they did look alike, their cold eyes and quiet confidence, but Kai carried something dangerous in his every movement, like he was a ticking time bomb ready to explode.

Kai parted his lips then, hesitant, as if the question he was about to ask was one he wasn't allowed the answer to.

"How is Levi?" he said.

"He was okay," Ella replied," that is, before one of these men whacked a brick at his head and told him to pay up a debt his father racked up. Now I imagine he's a bit angry."

Kai practically jumped upright, eyes flaming up.

"They hit him?"

"Did they tell you anything at all?" Ella asked, raising an eyebrow.

"I was... busy," Kai began," when they told me they'd find a way to make Vince pay I thought it best if I didn't meddle. Whenever I see him I am capable of committing murder after all and this is no time to escalate things."

"I'm a bit confused," Ella said," are you Levi's younger brother? How come he doesn't know you exist? Are you fully related? Normally I would apologize for all the questions, but you know, you did technically kidnap me, so the formalities are kind of out the window."

"Understandable," Kai nodded, lowering himself to the floor again," I'm Levi's older brother, by two years. We share the same parents, our mother gave me up for adoption at birth. I don't blame her, she couldn't take care of me." He breathed out, hand grazing across his arm. "Vince took me out of my most recent foster home when I was fourteen. I was naive and happy to finally have a father. I should have known better."

It was only then that Ella saw the faded scars on Kai's arms, like lightning slashing through a landscape. He didn't continue speaking, but he didn't have to. She wondered whether he knew that their mother was doing better, that she was recovering. It didn't feel like her place to tell him that though, but more than that, this also wasn't the time to have to ponder whether she was overstepping. Kai was her ticket out of here, after she was gone and had made sure Levi was okay, then she was ready to think about other things.

"Anyway," Kai said, interrupting her thoughts," things happened and we split up when I was sixteen. I've lived mostly on the streets and juvie, but it was when I met Vince again that he told me I had a brother. That his name was Levi and that he apparently was a good-for-nothing like me. I told him we must resemble him then and he suckerpunched me, so there's that."

"Did you look for him?" Ella said," Levi, I mean."

"I did," Kai smiled," and I found him. My little brother seems to have made a name for himself while fighting. I even gathered the courage to stand in front of his school one day, but when he walked out all I could do was stare at him. I guess I really do take after that man, because I too am a coward."