Page 49 of The Reckoning
I’m facing it as myself—whoever that turns out to be.
FIFTEEN
ARIES
The warehouse door bangs open, the sound echoing off concrete walls like a gunshot. My heart lurches inside my chest as they enter—Arson first, his body coiled tight like a predator ready to strike. The tailored clothes—my clothes—hang on him wrong, like a costume that can’t quite hide the animal beneath.
But it’s Lilian’s body language that makes my blood run cold. She follows him, one step behind, her face drained of color, eyes vacant and hollow. She looks like a corpse walking—something vital ripped out of her, leaving just the shell.
“What the fuck happened?” I demand, moving toward them before I can stop myself. My hands itch to touch her, to check for injuries, to pull her against me, but I hold back. The memory of finding her in his bed, in his arms, claws at my insides like a living thing.
“Patricia happened,” Arson spits, his voice scraped raw with rage. “And that fucking butcher Winters.”
“I’m fine,” Lilian says, though the lie is so obvious it’s almost painful to hear. Her voice is flat, dead. “Just…tired.”
“Bullshit,” I counter, studying her face. Something’s changed in her—something harder, sharper, like glass that’s beenshattered and put back together wrong. “Tell me what happened. All of it.”
Arson yanks off his jacket—my jacket—and hurls it onto a chair with enough force to make it slide. “They’ve got a medical power of attorney. Signed on her eighteenth birthday. Gives Patricia complete fucking control over her healthcare decisions.”
“What?” The word rips from my throat. “How the hell is that possible?”
“She buried it in the trust fund paperwork,” Lilian explains, collapsing onto the couch like her legs can’t hold her anymore. She looks small, fragile, crushed by the weight of betrayal. “The inheritance from my father. I signed without reading. Stupid, I know.”
“Not stupid,” I say automatically, feeling protective fury rise in my chest. “Trusting. There’s a difference.”
Arson makes a sound like a dog choking on something bitter. “In the Hayes family? Fuck no, there isn’t.”
I ignore him, focusing on Lilian, on the way her hands tremble slightly as she tucks her hair behind her ear. “What else? What do they want?”
“They’ve scheduled some ‘procedure’ for next Friday,” she says, pressing her fingers against her temples like she’s trying to keep her skull from splitting open. “Won’t tell me exactly what it is, just that it’s supposedly going to fix my heart condition permanently.”
“You don’t believe them.”
Not a question. I know her well enough—the set of her jaw, the slight narrowing of her eyes—to see the skepticism burning beneath the exhaustion.
“The doctor let something slip,” Arson interjects, stalking back and forth like a tiger in a cage too small. His footsteps echo off the concrete, marking time like a metronome counting down to disaster. “Said something about ‘donors’ being ready, thencaught himself. Went white as a sheet when he realized what he’d said.”
A chill slithers down my spine, cold and sick. “No, I took it as donors to the research, money donors, to fund whatever they are trying to create, using Lilian as the guinea pig.”
“We need to find out more,” Lilian says, her voice stronger now, edged with determination that cuts through her exhaustion. “But whatever it is, they’re planning to do it with or without my consent. The power of attorney makes sure of that.”
The implications sink in slowly, each one more grotesque than the last. Medical procedures. Donations. Legal control over her body. It sounds like something from a horror movie, not the family I grew up in. Yet even as the thought forms, I know it’s naive. I’ve spent the last few months chained in a concrete cell, courtesy of my own twin brother. Nothing should surprise me anymore.
“We’ve got a week,” Arson says, stopping by the window. The fading daylight carves harsh shadows across his face—my face, but twisted with a darkness I recognize in my worst moments, in my darkest thoughts. “Seven days to figure out what sick shit they’re planning and how to stop it. Not to mention the five days left we have to bring down Richard.”
“And to find out more about my father,” Lilian adds, her voice smaller now, more vulnerable.
“Your father?” I turn to her, caught off guard. “David? Why bring him up now?”
“Because whatever’s happening now, I think it might be connected to him somehow,” she explains, eyes fixed on some distant point, seeing ghosts. “He died when I was so young, right after my diagnosis. Well, left first. Then…car accident, I think. Mother’s always been vague about the details.”
“With good reason, probably,” Arson mutters, his lips curling in a sneer. “Ten to one he either knew too much or didn’tagree with whatever fucked-up thing they were planning, so they found a way to make him disappear.”
“Or he really did die in that car accident like your mother said,” I suggest, repeating the story Patricia had told over the years. Even as I say it, doubt curdles in my stomach. “Not everything is a conspiracy.”
Arson snorts, the sound dripping with contempt. “Do you really believe that shit? After everything we’ve learned about the family and their lies?”
“I’m saying we shouldn’t jump to conclusions,” I reply, frustration building like a pressure cooker about to blow. “Not everyone is part of some grand conspiracy.”
