Centuries of Sin : Book III

1.2

It was important to Francesca for everyone to think that her brother was dead. She had fully intended to kill him to take control, and manipulating him into attacking her was the way she had planned to make it easier on everyone.

She knew he would attack her, and she knew she would be able to get the better of him when he wasn’t thinking clearly. She had expected it to be over in seconds.

He wasn’t supposed to transform back. She had anticipated him continuing to fight her. She had challenged him the way any man who wanted his position would have done.

She had his throat in her jaws, and she was ready to end things. But she didn’t.

When he shifted back she was reminded of the night she had killed their father. He had done the same.

After a lifetime as a formidable and unstoppable force, his last words had been anticlimactic.

“Francesca, please don’t kill me.”

He had finally realized that she was the one he should fear, and not his son.

When her brother shifted back he didn’t beg for his life. He didn’t try to appeal to her or find an excuse for why she couldn’t possibly do it.

He knew that she was right. He was in no state to call himself Alpha of anything, and he saw no way out of his situation. Despite everything he had been through to be with Elizabeth, he hadn’t been able to keep her safe. Now his sister had finally forced him to confront the fact he was developing a drug problem, and he realized that the way he was treating Elizabeth was no better than the way Matt had done.

The day he had told her he loved her for the first time she had been terrified of Matt because he had broken into her home to threaten her. Now he was the one acting irrationally and rather than fearing him he had convinced her that it was something she should want. She deserved better than that, and he did not think he could offer her more than a life of fear and instability.

He saw that Francesca would be able to keep Elizabeth safe and that Elizabeth would never agree to let him go if he was alive.

He had accepted his fate.

She hadn’t killed him because she had felt the same way once before, and he was no longer a threat.

She pitied him, and she wanted to give him a chance to put things right.

She had let him go, and they had spoken for over an hour about what it would take for her to let him leave the room alive.

No one could know he was alive. It hurt him to think of how Elizabeth would feel when she thought he was dead, but there was no other way. If she knew he was alive she would try to find him, and if anyone else found out they would not consider accepting Francesca as his replacement.

They had to think he was dead, and that she had been the one to kill him.

She had made it clear that Elizabeth would think he was dead, and that he would never see her again if he was not able to stay clean. They could not meet in secret, or pass messages between each other. She had to learn that she could live without him, and he had to do the same.

She had given him very clear instructions about where he had to go, and what he had to do. He hadn’t argued even though he would rather have gone nearly anywhere else. Either he agreed to what she had decided or he wouldn’t leave the room.

He had asked her what would happen to him if he couldn’t get past this, and she had shrugged passively and told him that it wasn’t her concern.

She had dropped him off at the edge of their territory with nothing but his clothes and told him she would not bail him out this time. He didn’t even have the money to take a cab or stay somewhere overnight. He had one chance to prove himself, and he had to build himself back up from the bottom without her help.

After she had dropped him off she went back to the room and made sure there was no sign of them ever being there. She picked up the large book containing their family tree and took it back up to the library. She put it back onto the shelf next to the books containing their family history, then changed her mind and took it back again.

The book and the records it contained meant nothing to her. She had written Elizabeth’s name next to his because she had known that he was struggling to get over what had happened, and the side of her which craved power and control had spotted a weakness that she felt she could exploit if necessary.

Things like that happened frequently enough that listing Elizabeth as the mother of his child was entirely unnecessary. Writing her name in the book had been a calculated move.

It had worked. She had no more use for the book, and so there no reason that it needed to go back on the shelf next to the others.

Despite the fact it was blazing hot outside she lit a fire in the large open fireplace in the library and sat down on one of the armchairs as it took hold.

She opened the book, casually flicking through its pages and resenting each and every list of accomplishments under the names of the Alphas compared to the information that they had included about her female ancestors.

She skipped over the page with the family tree and flipped instead to the page with her mother’s name.

This represented all that she was.

A name, a date of birth, and date of death above the names of her only children. The space beneath that was left blank. She wasn’t supposed to die so soon.

She had lived for three days after her children were born, and Tobias had let her suffer for that long without even giving her something for the pain.

Constance had never spoken about her daughter in any detail, even when Francesca asked her directly.

All she really knew was that while she was like her father, her brother was more like their mother.

Exactly what that meant was unclear.

She closed the book and tossed it into the flames, watching them devour the book with a sense of satisfaction. There was nothing worthwhile on those pages.

She almost regretted the fact she hadn’t thought to do this before she dropped her brother off. It would probably have helped him a lot to know that it had been reduced to nothing but ash. But the entire point of this was forcing him to come to terms with the fact he wasn’t perfect. She didn’t want to comfort him, because that would only enable him to continue acting so infuriatingly.

If he ever earned the right to come back, and she did not think she would allow him to stay even if he did, she would tell him. And he would forgive her for everything and understand why she had done it because that was just who he was.

She made sure the fire had left no trace of the book, and that it had died down before she left.

There were still things she needed to do to make sure this was convincing.

She went out to the forest and sat in silence at their father’s grave for a while as she thought about everything that would happen over the coming days. This was going to be difficult for nearly everyone, but she believed that it was ultimately the right thing to do.

Her brother couldn’t keep them safe, and they were in more danger than anybody knew.

She knew that Shane and Mizuki were dead before Harper realized there was anything wrong, and she knew that they had been killed by Mutants.

She also knew that Constance was dead, and that rest of her mother’s pack had been killed within hours of returning from their visit. They had been killed by Mutants.

Both packs were days away from them, and there were no other attacks she could find evidence of.

She did not believe it was a coincidence that two packs connected to them were targeted. It was either a warning or an attempt to gain information about her pack.

Her brother could not handle that in the state he was in, and she could not risk their kind being wiped out while he was incapacitated by his emotions.