Page 72 of The Reckoning
“I think you’re forgetting that she came to me, not the other way around, fuckface. And she wouldn’t have been so infatuated with me if she hadn’t spent years obsessed withyou, a man who never truly saw her for the woman she is. So don’t act like I forced her into anything when I didn’t. All of this is your fault. All of it. I didn’t drag her into anything. If you didn’t want her to fall for me, maybe you should’ve done something about all that pent-up need before I came along.”
“You didn’t want her. You wanted to use her to hurt me, and that’s all on you. In fact, if you hadn’t let them lock me away for a crime I never committed, then there never would’ve been a plan in the first place.” The words explode out of me, eight years of rot and rage pouring from the wound he left in me.
Infection turned to fire. Fury turned to truth.
“SHUT THE FUCK UP!” he roars.
The golden-boy mask finally cracks, the sound echoing off the trees. I can’t stop myself from smiling. My lips tug up at the sides the moment I catch a glimpse of the monster hidden beneath.
“There he is. Welcome back, Brother,” I taunt, wanting him to lose control, wanting him to feel as close to the edge as I do. “Looks like you aren’t that different from me, after all.”
“I’m nothing like you.Nothing.” He spits the words at me as if they are knife blades.
“I think you’re right.” Confusion flickers in his eyes, and my smile becomes a full fucking grin. “You’re fucking worse.”
“Worse? I don’t think so. I wasn’t selfish enough to put Lilian in danger, unlike you.”
“At least I’m not a murderer?—”
“It was an accident! A fucking accident. You don’t have the first clue what happened to me after they took you! You think you’re the only one who suffered?” he snaps, his voice shaking. His identical hazel eyes shine with rage.
“An accident? That’s rich. Only you would downplay our mother’s death,” I spit, grinding my nose against his. “As soon as I was removed from the picture, you stepped into playing the role of the traumatized golden boy. Poor Aries living in a mansion, given opportunities that I never had. Sure, you might have suffered, but you didn’t suffer like I did. I got shock therapy and isolation rooms. I got pumped full of drugs that made me want to claw my own skin off while you reaped the benefits of freedom, of privilege.”
I’m so caught up in my own rage, on getting the words out, that I don’t notice his fist coming until it’s too late. It connects with my jaw, and the strike is as hard as a fucking sledgehammer. The wet, coppery, metallic taste of blood fills my mouth in an instant as my head snaps back from the impact.
Bright pain ripples across my cheek—sharp, hot, blooming outward like a lit fuse under my skin. It stuns me for a second, not because it hurts, but because it’s real. Honest. Direct.
Not like the clinical torture of the facility.
That was sterile. Cold. Detached.
This—this is pure animal rage.
I stagger a few feet back and spit a mouthful of blood onto the grass, red splattering against green like a fucking war painting. My lips pull into a grin—tight, skeletal. More of a death mask than a smile.
“Finally,” I rasp, my tongue thick and my jaw throbbing.
There’s no warning of my movements.
I launch at him, all teeth and fury, every second of captivity boiling to the surface. My body moves on instinct, violence baked into my bones. Our bodies collide and slam into the ground, the breath leaving our lungs in brutal unison.
A tangle of matching limbs. Two sides of the same cursed coin.
My fist finds his cheekbone with a sickening crunch. It echoes in my skull like music, and pain sears across my knuckles as the skin splits.I don’t even care.
“This is for the first night,” I snarl, my voice as jagged as glass as I drive my fist into his stomach. I feel the resistance of muscle, then he gags. The choking sound he makes is beautiful. “When they strapped me down and pumped me so full of drugs I pissed myself and couldn’t remember my own fucking name.”
He wheezes, doubling over like I knocked the soul out of him—then suddenly he lunges, headbutting me with a savage force. My vision whites out, pain detonating behind my eyes. For a heartbeat, I’m floating. Then I crash back into my skull.
“Fuck you,” he pants, blood streaming from his nose in thick rivulets.
“Oh, I’m sorry—did Daddy cut your allowance while I was being electroshocked into screaming and begging?”
He snarls and swings again, his fist connecting with my side. I grunt, and a laugh escapes me. The sound is wet, guttural, completely unhinged.
“Tell me, Brother—did they rough up your conscience in therapy? Or just make you watch while they ate your guilt with a silver spoon?”
“Are you really so naive to think that you’re the only one who suffered? I might not have been locked in a fucking cell, but I promise you, I suffered.”
