Page 5 of The Reckoning
I press my thumb against the edge of the phone until it hurts, focusing on the physical pain to drown out the emotional one. Pain is familiar. Pain I can handle. This other feeling—this guilt—is unfamiliar territory.
Lilian’s face on that security footage haunts me. The fear in her eyes when those suits approached her. The way she fought—briefly, desperately—before being forced into that sleek black sedan. All because of me. Because she decided to help me. Because I let her.
Because I couldn’t keep my fucking hands off her.
I drag my hand across my face, feeling the stubble that’s grown there over the past twenty-four hours. The warehouse’s fluorescent lights buzz overhead, a persistent reminder of how long we’ve been at this. How long has she been gone?
The security room feels smaller with three people in it. Aries paces like a caged animal—five steps one way, turn, five steps back. His captivity has changed him, stripping away the polished veneer he has always worn, and made him rawer. More like me than either of us would care to admit.
Drew leans against the wall, watching us both with the careful assessment of someone who’s spent years playing both sides.
That’s a reckoning for another day. And it’s Aries’s problem to solve, not mine. Drew Marshall means nothing to me.
“Are you going to call them or just stare at the phone?” Aries asks, voice tight with barely controlled rage.
I don’t answer immediately because I can’t bring myself to look at him. The mirror image of my face, but with none of the scars beneath the surface.
The golden child. The chosen one.
The one I’ve kept locked in a concrete box for months while I destroyed his life piece by piece. Yet here we are, united by the only thing we seem to have in common: Lilian.
“Give me a minute,” I mutter, moving away from both of them, needing space to think.
Drew watches me with unconcealed hostility. “We don’t have minutes to spare.”
“You think I don’t know that?” I snap, fighting the urge to put my fist through his face. “These aren’t the kind of men you rush into calling without a plan.”
My fingers clench around the phone, plastic creaking under the pressure. These men—my so-called backers—are the kind who calculate every variable before making a move. The kind who probably had a contingency plan for my failure before I even began. The kind who view human lives as collateral damage in business transactions.
And I invited them into this. Sort of. They found me first, but I was the one who brought them my revenge plan, as if it were a corporate merger that needed investors.
I step into the corridor, needing distance from my brother and his asshole friend. The warehouse feels different now—less like the fortress I’ve built and more like a tomb. The concrete walls press in, reminding me of another prison in another time. Years spent in isolation, in darkness. In rage.
The Facility. Where Richard Hayes discarded his defective son and pretended I never existed.
The irony isn’t lost on me. I escaped one prison only to build another, becoming exactly what I hated most.
I lean against the wall, the coldness of the concrete seeping through my shirt. My mind drifts back to Lilian—to the look in her eyes when she first discovered the truth about me. Not fear, like I expected. Not disgust. But understanding. Recognition.
She saw me. The real me beneath the lies and the hatred and the carefully constructed persona. And instead of running, she offered to help.
Now she’s paying the price for her kindness—her innocence.
My fingers hover over the keypad. The number is seared into my memory—ten digits connecting me to men whose real names I don’t even know. Men who provided the funds, the resources, the untraceable supplies that started me on my path to revenge.
Men who have now taken Lilian. Another wave of guilt rolls through me.
I press the numbers methodically, each digit bringing me closer to a conversation I never wanted to have. The phone rings once, twice. On the third ring, it connects.
“Mr. Hayes.” The voice is professional, detached. Like we’re discussing a business merger instead of a kidnapping. “We’ve been expecting your call.”
I recognize the voice immediately—the older of the two men, the one who always takes the lead in our meetings. The one whose eyes never quite match his pleasant smile.
“Where is she?” I demand, skipping the pleasantries.
“Safe.” A pause. “For now.”
The implication hangs in the air between us. I grip the phone tighter, knuckles white with strain.
