Page 55 of Reaper Flame

“You can’t play God with people’s lives, Zander!” I blurted out. “You need to put away your fucking violin and face the music.”

“I’m Briarly blood, Candy,” Zander said. For the first time, I thought I saw fear flicker across his face. His shoulders slumped in resolve. “It’s who I am.”

A hysterical laugh burst out of me. Zander’s jaw clenched as he put his hard mask back on. He narrowed his eyes. “What’s so funny?”

“You are Zander fucking Briarly,” I said. “History will only repeat itself if you keep acting like an asshole.”

He brushed my comments away. “Being a Briarly only ends one way. I’m toxic. My whole family is. We’re rotten to the fucking core, and, as soon as we kill Hiram, I want you to run and never look back.”

“What about Vixen?” I asked. “Is she toxic too?”

“Briarly blood doesn’t run through Vixen’s veins,” Zander snarled. “She still has a fucking chance.”

Zander may come from a family of psychopaths, but DNA doesn’t dictate our actions. We all have a choice. If Zander couldn’t see that, it was already too late.

“Your problems don’t lie in your genetics,” I said. “You think pushing people away will help, but it won’t. Your problem is that you can’t seeyouare the one running. Why did you walk out of the party?”

Zander grabbed a black shirt hooked on the bathroom door. He pulled it on roughly. The fabric rubbing against his wounds must have hurt like a bitch, but he didn’t wince.

“Because I want her to be happy.” His cheeks flushed in anger. “I’m not going to ruin her life, too.”

“She wants you there!” I insisted. “You’re her fucking brother!”

Zander ignored me and continued to talk. It was hard to tell whether he was talking to me or himself. “Vixen has found something that I’ll never have.”

“Cry me a fucking river! You have it all, Zander.” I scoffed. He had the looks, money, Briarly Manor and more power than most people could dream of. “You got revenge on your father. Isn’t that what you always wanted?”

“It used to be,” he replied, looking at me like he was trying to suck the soul from my body.

I averted my eyes. Could I really be feeling sorry for Zander Briarly? Like him, I believed happiness was something reserved for other people.

“Look at what I did to you,” Zander pointed out, stepping closer. The bathroom was small, and there was no room to slip around him. “Someone who does things like that doesn’t deserve to find what Vixen and Mieko have. I will spend the rest of my life killing and taking over my father’s legacy. No good will ever come from me.”

“Nothing is inevitable,” I said, my voice a few octaves higher than usual. “I’m living proof of it. You can keep feeling sorry for yourself and complaining about your daddy or do the fucking work. You can be the man you want to be or let your father win.”

His eyes widened in surprise. “Even after everything I’ve done, you still believe that?”

I shrugged. Some people were past redemption, like the men I killed without guilt because they had zero humanity left, but Zander? He inflicted pain to cope with emotions. Wasn’t that a sign of someone who felt remorse?

Despite the shit Bryce put him through, Zander turned his back on his father’s ways and started out on his own. When West’s father died, Zander used his influence to help a friend. He looked after Vixen when she had no one else and gave Rocky a safe place to call home. His psyche may be shrouded in darkness, but he had light inside him too.

“You should have killed me tonight,” Zander said. “I wouldn’t have blamed you.”

“I could have,” I replied, flicking my hair over my shoulder. “But I can’t take down Hiram alone. Besides, it would have been too easy.”

I didn’t want to mention that I knew how it felt to think I had Seven blood on my hands and didn’t want to go through that again.

“My words may not count for a lot, but I need you to know I meant everything I said tonight,” he said. His serious expression sucked all the air out of my lungs. “I saw my plan as the only way. I wanted you to be safe from him forever, Candy. Since the moment you walked into Lapland, you tore apart all my rules. When I saw who you really were, I knew you had to be mine.Ours.And I’d do anything to keep it that way.”

“Zander—”

“Shh, little one.” He pressed a finger to my lips. “If I don’t say it now, I never will. You have to know.”

My heart pounded. Was this the moment he wrapped his hands around my throat? Was Hiram on his way to collect me? Would Hiram and the Blackbird be boarding the yacht?

“I don’t deserve your heart, nor will I ever ask for it,” Zander said. He stroked my cheek bone with two fingers, making my legs feel like they were about to collapse. “But you have mine. Whether you choose to stay or leave, I want you to know that you have mine.”

I stepped back and stumbled, catching myself before I fell into the toilet. I needed to get back on the pole to work on my balance.

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