Page 7 of The Reckoning
Yet for Lilian...
“Let me speak to her,” I demand. “Prove she’s alive.”
A pause. “Very well.”
There’s shuffling on the other end of the line, murmured voices too low to make out. Then?—
“Arson?” Lilian’s voice, tight with fear but strong. She’s still fighting. “Don’t?—”
More shuffling and a muffled sound that might be a hand over her mouth. At that moment, I catch the tremor in her voice, the edge of panic she’s trying so hard to control. It makes something in my chest twist painfully.
“Satisfied?” the man asks, returning to the line.
“No,” I growl. “Put her back on.”
“I’m afraid that’s not possible at the moment. Miss Hayes is being moved to a more... secure location.”
Secure location. The clinical euphemism makes my skin crawl. I’ve been in “secure locations” before. Places where screams don’t carry. Where people can disappear without a trace.
“I want to speak to her again. Properly.”
He sighs as if I’m being unreasonable. “You’re in no position to make demands, Mr. Hayes.”
“Neither are you,” I counter, desperation making me reckless. “You need me to finish this. To take down Richard. That’s why you invested in me in the first place.”
The silence that follows is more threatening than any words could be. I’ve overplayed my hand and shown weakness. These men don’t respond well to that.
“Perhaps,” the voice concedes finally. “But you seem to have forgotten who holds the power here.”
There’s more background noise—a door opening, footsteps. Then, suddenly, a sharp scream cuts through me like a blade.
“ARSON!”
Lilian’s voice, raw with pain or fear or both, before it’s abruptly silenced.
Something inside me snaps. All the carefully constructed walls, the calculated planning, the cold logic I’ve prided myself on—it all crumbles in an instant, replaced by something primal and vicious.
“LILIAN!” I shout, white-hot rage surging through me. “What the fuck did you just do to her?”
I slam my fist into the concrete wall, skin splitting across my knuckles. The pain barely registers through my fury.
“A demonstration,” the voice says calmly, “of what will continue to happen should you fail to meet our deadline.”
Images flash through my mind—Lilian hurt, bleeding, terrified. Lilian with her quiet strength and her damn moral compass. Lilian, who saw something in me worth saving when all I saw was destruction.
“I’ll fucking kill you,” I snarl, feral and unhinged. “All of you. If she’s harmed?—”
“Focus, Mr. Hayes.” The voice cuts through my threats. “Richard Hayes. His head. Forty-eight hours. Or the girl dies. It’s that simple.”
The line goes dead before I can respond, leaving me clutching the phone, shaking with a rage I haven’t felt since those early days after my escape. The primal, all-consuming fury that drove me to this point in the first place.
Blood drips from my split knuckles onto the concrete floor, each drop a reminder of what’s at stake. Of what they’ve taken from me.
I turn to find Aries standing in the doorway, face pale. He heard everything.
“What did they do to her?” he demands, voice barely above a whisper.
I shake my head, unable to form words through the red haze of my anger. The phone creaks in my grip as the plastic bites into my palm. Drew appears behind Aries, expression grim.
