Page 38 of Rage

There was no excuse not to pull the mail out on your way back into the house. Or on your way out. Except for sheer laziness.

I’d been here watching, waiting, for two hours, and so far, all I’d seen was the mailman, a delivery driver, and the neighborhood miscreants, who stopped to peek into the backyard over the fence. Nothing to indicate this guy even so much as lived in his house. I was debating whether or not tomake a move and break in when a car pulled into the driveway, stopping just in front of the detached garage. I tightened the rope in my hands, prepared to take my brother down in his own backyard before he could even see me coming. The door swung open, and I scooted up in the bush line, inching closer to the fence, my heartbeat quickening. Revenge was on the tip of my tongue. I could practically taste it?—

“—like I said, I’ll have to decline this week’s brunch meeting. I have an appointment?—”

A very frazzled woman stepped out of the car, her eyes shielded from the sunlight by an oversized pair of sunglasses. Her drab orange hair was tossed casually into a loose bun, wisps of it falling down to frame her face. She turned to reach into the backseat for something, and I got a good look at her ass, encased in a tight pair of distressed denim jeans that looked like they belonged in the early 2000s, back when cellphones first flipped in half and girls put playboy bunny stickers on their hips before they got a tan.

God, she had a nice ass.

Not the first one I’d seen since getting out, but damn.

Of course the bastard had a hot girlfriend. He’s me.

I clenched the rope tighter, wondering if she knew the real him, or if he was still putting on a show for the world. Did this girl know he’d murdered the one that came before her, and possibly others? Or did she think she was safe as she laid down next to some schmuck every night, a smile on her lips and a dream of something bigger in her head?

“No, Annie. I told you that’s Frank’s project. We’re not doing that one. We’ve been moved to the spring line.” An exasperated huff punctuated the car door slam as she juggled a colossal purse and some shopping bags, heading for the door with the phone cradled between her shoulder and ear. “Listen, I’ve gotta go. Ihave to get dinner on the stove before—yeah, yeah, see you at work tomorrow.”

She fumbled the phone and rummaged in a pocket for her keys, dropping some of her groceries. With a swear under her breath, she knelt and started crawling around, reaching for the fruit that had rolled away from her before it could fall off the porch.

Within seconds, one of her limes rolled into the flowerbed off the side of the steps, and the poor thing burst into tears, yanking off the sunglasses on her face to pinch the bridge of her nose.

Someone’s having a bad day.

But when she looked up, her eyes on the bushes where I stood, I noticed the black ring around her eye, and my rage only intensified.

That bastard was beating his women and using my name to do it.

Like fucking hell.

I decided then and there, as I watched this beautiful blue-eyed sad girl scramble to retrieve everything she’d dropped, picking up the pieces of her shattered life on her back porch, tears streaming down her face, that I would do everything in my power to right whatever wrongs he’d committed against her under my name.

There was one thing I couldn’t get out of my mind, though.

Something about her looked oddly familiar. I knew that face—or at least, I’d seen it before.

Maybe a closer look would give me the answers I needed.

Once she was safely inside, I snuck around to the back door and crept up the steps, careful not to give anything away as I wondered what she saw in my imposter. Did he shower her with money and gifts? Did he wine and dine her? Or was she a junkie, with him for the drug connections he no doubt still held onto?

Why did she stay with a man who blacked her eye?

My feet carried me into the mudroom just off the kitchen as she hummed to herself in the next room, putting things away with her back to me, that pert ass as tempting as a cheese chunk on a mousetrap. I wasn’t the kind to force a woman. That wasn’t my vibe. But damn if she didn’t make me want to do things I hadn’t done in years.

Technically, if I wanted to, I could pretend to be him—me—god damn, this was confusing.

Could I really pretend to be my brother like he’d done to me the last five years?

The more intriguing question was, had he pretended to be me so well that I might not even need to become him?

The shiny side of the silver washing machine I knelt next to caught my profile and reflected it to me, showing a surprisingly well-put-together man. I’d gone in with two hundred bucks in my pocket and a card for a bank account that belonged to someone not named me. So the first thing I’d done was hit an internet cafe, looked up myself—or rather, my brother—and modeled myself after him.

He’d let his hair grow out to match mine and kept it the way I preferred it—sort of long on top, shorter underneath, but still professional enough to pass for a bank employee. His active social media listed him as a bank loan manager, the position I had applied to before he stole my life.

Fucker even got my promotion. How ‘bout that?

“Should just dump this shit down the drain,” she muttered to herself as I watched her pull a couple of beers out of the fridge. “Fucking asshole when he’s drunk.”

I knew she wasn’t kidding, either. Tony hadalwaysbeen a lousy drunk. More than once, he put a hole in the wall of my college apartment after a bender.

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