Page 4 of The Reckoning
The fear hits me like a physical blow, followed immediately by white-hot rage that needs somewhere to go. I turn on Arson, grabbing him by the shirt and slamming him against the wall hard enough to rattle his teeth.
“This is your fucking fault,” I snarl, inches from his face. “Your revenge, your backers, your goddamn games. Now she’s paying the price for it.”
He doesn’t fight back, which only makes me angrier. Just stares at me with those eyes that are exactly like mine, reflecting the same terror I’m trying to bury under fury.
“You think I don’t know that?” he says quietly, and the broken edge in his voice deflates some of my rage. “You think I’m not imagining what they’re doing to her right now?”
I release him, stepping back, hands shaking with the need to hit something, to break something, to make someone else hurt as much as the thought of Lilian in pain is destroying me.
The brutal reality settles over us, silencing the room. I close my eyes briefly, trying to push away the images my mind conjures. Lilian was terrified, hurt, and used as leverage. When I open them again, I find both men watching me, waiting for something...another explosion or for me to finally break down. I don’t know what the fuck they want from me.
It’s strange—after weeks of powerlessness, of being the captive rather than the captor, they’re looking at me for direction now. Like they expect me to have a plan. To take control. To be the man I was before all this.
The irony doesn’t escape me. Before my captivity, I was becoming exactly what our father wanted—calculated, ruthless, focused on the Hayes legacy above all else. Well, focused on destroying it, but my father didn’t need to know that until it was too late.
Now, stripped of everything, I’m finally acting out of genuine conviction rather than revenge.
“Fine, then we need a plan,” I say, pushing aside the fear threatening to overwhelm me. “And we need it now.”
Arson looks at me, then at Drew, calculation evident in his expression. “They’ll expect me to come alone. To fix the problem and get us back on schedule.”
“Which means what?” Drew asks.
“Which means,” Arson says slowly, “they will be expectingme.”
Our eyes meet again, identical faces reflecting identical determination. For the first time since childhood, we’re completely aligned in purpose if not in method.
“We need weapons,” I say. “Information. Floor plans of wherever they’re keeping her. Can we get her out while you’re distracting them?”
“No, they will just kill all of us and do something else. We have to give them what they want…the destruction of Richard and all of the Hayes’s influence and business.”
“I don’t care what we have to do. Whatever gets her out safely.”
I don’t care if it means giving up my father and my relationship, such as it was, with him. That was never real, anyway. Not like Lilian is real. Even after repeatedly pushing her away, I know her feelings for me—herlovefor me—are there, constant, unchanged, unmoving.
I can’t say the same for my father.
Arson nods, already shifting toward another cabinet. “I can get it. I can call them and then…see what they want. Give it to them in exchange for her. Maybe buy us some time. I’ll walk into Richard’s office right now and put a bullet in his brain if they’ll release her.”
“Fine by me. It won’t change shit between us, but if it means they release Lilian, I’ll work with you to get it done,” I agree coldly.
Drew glances between us, shaking his head in disbelief. “You two are seriously fucked up, and you have some serious shit to work through, shit I want nothing to do with, but I will do whatever I can to get Lilian back. If only for not getting her out of his shit show sooner.”
“Great, then let’s get started,” Arson says, pulling out a laptop and a tablet. “Because every minute we waste is anotherminute she’s with them. And these men aren’t known for their patience.”
I sink into a chair beside him, pushing aside exhaustion, hunger, and the burning hatred that’s defined me for months. My body bears the evidence of captivity—weight loss, muscle atrophy, the lingering weakness that comes from confinement—but my mind feels sharper than it has in years.Focused. Clear.
Lilian’s face appears in my mind—not the frightened figure from the security footage, but how she looked at me in those final moments before the flood, when all pretense was stripped away. When I finally stopped lying to both of us about what I wanted. What I felt.
I owe her more than I can ever repay, and God knows she deserves better, but to let her go would be like ripping my still beating heart out of my chest, and I won’t do that.I can’t.I need to get her back and protect her, no matter what the cost. Everything else—the betrayal, the revenge, the eventual confrontation with my so-called friend and brother—all of that can wait.
TWO
ARSON
Guilt isn’t an emotion I’m accustomed to feeling. For years, I’ve cultivated a carefully constructed wall of hatred and rage—brick by fucking brick—until nothing else could penetrate. Until nothing else mattered but making the Hayes family pay for what they did to me.
Yet here it is—raw and acidic, burning through my chest as I stare at the burner phone in my hand.
