Page 95 of The Reckoning
“I know what you’re thinking, and I promise you won’t get away with it,” she says, her voice dropping to a whisper that somehow carries over the crackling of the fire. “None of you will.”
“We already have,” Hector replies, his confidence unshakable. “It’s over, Patricia. The only question now is how it ends.”
The grandfather clock chimes the hour, the sound startlingly normal amid the surreal tableau. Outside, life continues unaware—students crossing the quad, professors preparing lectures, the ordinary rhythm of a college campus on an ordinary day. In here, time seems suspended, stretched taut like a wire about to snap.
Patricia’s eyes dart to the window, perhaps calculating if she could make it out before we reached her.There’s nowhere to run. Nowhere to hide.Her carefully constructed empire is crumbling around her, and for the first time in perhaps her entire life, she is truly cornered.
The realization settles over her features, hardening them into something terrible and resolute. The gun in her hand steadies, her finger tightening almost imperceptibly on the trigger.
“If I’m going down,” she says coldly, “I’m not going alone.”
TWENTY-SEVEN
LILIAN
Ican’t breathe.
Not because of my blown-out-of-proportion heart condition, but because my mother—the woman who raised me, who tucked me in at night, who held my hand through doctor visits—is pointing a gun at me with murder in her eyes.
Fear constricts my breath, slowly slithering up my spine like a snake. My mouth goes dry, and my tongue sticks to the roof of my mouth. The taste of copper floods my senses—I’ve bitten the inside of my cheek without realizing it. My heartbeat thunders in my ears, drowning out everything except my mother’s voice and the click of the safety being released on her gun. I could cower—no one would blame me right now—but I don’t. I force myself to stand straight. To not show it. Not with everything hanging in the balance. Not with Arson and Aries watching. I’ve spent my entire life being the fragile one, the broken one, the one who needs protection. Not today. Not now when it matters most.
God, Arson and Aries. How can it end like this? After everything they’ve been through—the separation, the torture, the years of planning—it can’t all come down to this moment in a crappy college common room with my psychopath motherwaving a gun around. The unfairness of it hits me hard, making my knees want to buckle.
All I can think about is getting them out of here. Both of them. Safe. The thought pounds through me with each heartbeat:get them out, get them out, get them out.
These two men who’ve survived so much already, who’ve clawed their way back from hell—they can’t die here. I won’t let them.
It feels like the room is closing in on me, the walls shrinking with each passing second. The heat from the fireplace is now stifling, sweat beading at my temples, at the nape of my neck, and trickling down between my shoulder blades.
I can smell the acrid tang of my own fear sweat. Time stretches and contracts, seconds feeling like hours as my mother’s finger tenses on the trigger.
Drew steps forward, hands raised in a placating gesture. “Mrs. Hayes,” he says carefully, “maybe I can help. I have connections with the State Attorney General. We could work something out.”
His voice sounds far away, like he’s speaking underwater. Everything has taken on a dreamlike quality, reality bending at the edges. Is this what shock feels like? The edges of my vision blur, darkness creeping in. I dig my fingernails into my palms, the sharp pain bringing me back to the present. I can’t check out now. I need to stay alert, stay ready.
My mother’s eyes flick to Drew, dismissive. The look she gives him—like he’s something she found stuck to the bottom of her designer shoe—makes my stomach clench. I’ve seen that look so many times growing up. It’s the look that precedes cruelty.
“Shut up, boy. This doesn’t concern you.” Her voice drips with contempt, each syllable a tiny blade.
“No,” Hector says firmly. “There will be no negotiation.” His voice is steel wrapped in velvet, smooth but unyielding. “You walk out with me, Patricia, and I might let Richard live. For now. That’s the only concession I’m willing to make.”
Mother laughs, the sound brittle and sharp as breaking glass.
It’s a sound I haven’t heard often—her real laugh, not the carefully modulated social titter she uses at charity events. This laugh comes from somewhere dark and twisted, a place I never wanted to know existed inside her.
“Let Richard live? Hilarious of you to think I care what happens to him.” Her gaze shifts to my stepfather, contempt etched into every line of her face. The mask is completely gone now, revealing the stranger beneath. “Weak, pathetic Richard. Couldn’t see what was happening right under his nose for years.”
Richard flinches, the words hitting him with each syllable. He looks smaller somehow, diminished, as if the truth of what my mother has done has physically shrunk him. His shoulders curve inward, his eyes hollow. For the first time, I feel something like pity for him. He’s as much a victim as any of us, in his way—blind, yes, but deliberately kept that way.
“Patricia,” he says, his voice barely above a whisper, “please. Don’t do this.”
It’s strange to hear him beg. Richard Hayes, titan of industry, reduced to pleading. His voice trembles, thick with grief and betrayal. I allow myself a reprieve, to see him not as the distant, cold stepfather I’ve known, but as a man whose entire world has just imploded. Who’s discovered that the last decade of his life was built on lies and manipulation, that the woman he thought he knew was a murderer who killed his first wife.
“Don’t do this?” she repeats, mockery dripping from each syllable. “It’s a bit late for that, wouldn’t you say? Years too late.”
She turns back to me, something shifting in her expression. The mask slips completely, revealing something I’ve never seenbefore—pure, undiluted hatred. This isn’t my mother anymore. This is a stranger wearing her face. The transformation is so complete, so terrifying, that I have to fight the urge to step back. To run. To hide.
I’m done running. Done hiding. Done being afraid.
