Page 97 of The Reckoning
Aries catches me, lifting me bodily off my feet. His strong arms wrap around me from behind, pulling me away from the door despite my struggles. “No, Lilian. No.”
His voice in my ear is gentle despite the firmness of his grip. I fight against him anyway, kicking, twisting, desperate to get back to the door, to my mother, to stop what can’t be stopped.
“We can’t just—we can’t—” I can’t form a coherent thought, my mind fracturing under the weight of what’s happening.
Sobs tear from my throat, raw and primal, emotions I can’t even name overwhelming me. Aries carries me down the porch steps, his arms like steel bands around me despite his injuries.
I can feel the heat of his burns against my skin, but he doesn’t loosen his hold, doesn’t show any sign that he’s in pain. Behind us, I can see the fire growing through the windows, consuming the Mill House from the inside out. Black smoke billows from every opening, flames licking at the curtains, at the wooden window frames.
“Jesus Christ,” Drew breathes, watching in horrified fascination. “I’ll talk to the cops. Take care of that angle when they arrive.”
His face is pale beneath a streak of soot, eyes wide with shock. Next to him, Sebastian looks like he might be sick, hand pressed over his mouth.
Arson turns to Drew, his face set in hard lines. Unlike the rest of us, he seems completely composed, for once, untouched by the chaos around him. His clothes are singed, his face smudged with ash, but there’s a calm calculation in his eyes that’s almost frightening. “This wasn’t part of the plan.”
“Arson will take care of the damages,” Aries says, his voice strained. “He is, after all, the new COO of Hayes Enterprises.”
Something in his tone makes me look up through my tears.
There’s a smug satisfaction there, at odds with the chaos around us. A sense that, somehow, this was all part of some larger plan.
Arson steps toward us, his expression darkening. “What the fuck are you talking about?”
Aries smiles thinly. “The paperwork Father signed this morning. You’re the new COO, brother. Not me. And since it seems he’s gone with our stepmother in this terrible accident, well...”
“What?” Arson takes another threatening step toward his twin, wincing in sympathy as he catches sight of Aries’s burns.
The injuries appear worse in the bright outdoor light—angry, red, and blistering patches of skin, already peeling away. He needs medical attention, but his focus is entirely on his brother.
“You did this…forced this confrontation for power?” Arson’s voice is dangerously low, vibrating with barely controlled rage.
“No,” Aries shakes his head, unruffled by his brother’s anger. “I did it for you. The paperwork lists A. Hayes as COO—not Aries, but Arson. Father didn’t read carefully enough when he signed it. I signed it under your name.”
He says it so casually, as if discussing the weather rather than a manipulative power play that resulted in death anddestruction. The contrast between his calm demeanor and the chaos around us is jarring, unsettling.
My legs give out, and I sink to the ground, overwhelmed by everything—the smoke, the screams that have now stopped (oh God, they’ve stopped, what does that mean?), the revelation that Aries has been playing a deeper game all along. My knees hit the damp grass, the cold seeping through my jeans, but I barely feel it. I’m numb, disconnected, floating outside my body.
Arson’s attention immediately shifts from his brother to me. Something softens in his expression, anger giving way to concern. He crouches down and scoops me into his arms.
“Shhh,” he murmurs, his mouth against my hair. “I’ve got you.”
I press my face into his chest, inhaling his scent—smoke and sweat and something uniquely him beneath it all. His skin is too hot where it touches mine, fevered from the heat of the fire, but he doesn’t put me down, doesn’t let go.
Sirens wail in the distance, growing closer as the fire overtakes the bottom floor of the Mill House. The old building is going up faster than seems possible, flames shooting from every window now, the heat so intense we’re forced to move farther back across the lawn.
The crackling of the fire is deafening, punctuated by the sound of glass shattering as windows explode from the heat.
Arson holds me against his chest. Aries steps up to us, his skin hot and raw where I reach for him, but he doesn’t flinch away. Doesn’t show any sign that he’s in pain, though he must be in agony.
“Shh,” he murmurs into my hair, lips gentle against my temple. “It’s over. It’s done.” And he wraps his arms around us both.
The tenderness in his voice breaks something in me. The tears come harder now, my body shaking with the force ofthem. Great, heaving sobs that feel like they’re being torn from some deep, primal place inside me. I cry for everything—for the mother I thought I had and never did, for the years of lies and manipulation, for Arson and Aries and all they’ve suffered, for myself and the childhood I never got to have.
“She was awful,” I sob, the words catching in my throat. “She was a monster. But did she deserve to die like that? To burn alive?”
The question hangs between us, heavy with all its implications. The moral weight of what just happened, of what we just allowed to happen.
“Yes,” Arson says simply, no hesitation in his voice. “She did.”
