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“Open the fucking door before I break it down, Alaric,” I say.

“Please don’t,” he says. “Look, just hear me out for a second. It’s better that you hear this from me.”

I stare at him, letting him know I am not in the mood for his games.

He exhales slowly.

“There’s something I’ve been hiding from you,” he says. “I should have told you a long time ago, but I put it off for too long, and then it just became awkward to even bring up.”

I narrow my eyes at him.

“It’s about the car accident,” he says. “I knew more about it than I led you to believe.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” I ask.

“I was there that night.” He clears his throat. “I was there because I was the one who orchestrated the whole thing.”

I continue staring at him. I really don’t have time for one of his jokes tonight.

But he doesn’t say anything. There’s no punchline. He continues staring at me with apologetic eyes.

“I thought it would be a clean hit,” he says. “I didn’t know then that the aftermath would get so messy.”

“You’re actually serious,” I say.

“I had a good reason,” he says.

“I can’t wait to hear it.” I look at him with incredulous eyes.

It’s one thing to be deceived by a woman I met a few months ago. It’s another thing entirely to be blindsided by someone you’ve known your entire life.

“Sera came to me a week before the car accident,” he says. “She confessed that she wanted to leave Richard. She said that the relationship was getting more and more toxic with every day that passed. I offered to step in, but she said that she wanted to deal with it on her own. A few days go by, and I see her at a restaurant with bruises that even makeup couldn’t hide. That’s when I realized just how toxic the relationship was.”

Every bone in my body hurts.

The thought of my little sister in that situation twists my insides.

“The night of the car accident, Sera came to me again. It was really bad, Klaus. She needed stitches. She broke down in front of me and told me that she couldn’t keep living like this. That’s when I decided to kill him. It wasn’t something I planned. It was an act of pure rage.”

I’m at a loss for words. I stand frozen on his doorstep as the chill of his words passes through me.

“I can’t believe you kept this from me the whole time,” I say.

“I thought he was alone in that car,” Alaric says. “I thought that getting rid of him would solve the problem, but I only ended up complicating everything.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?” I ask. “Why were you hiding this from me the whole time?”

“I never wanted to hide anything from you,” he says. “I was going to tell you, but you were dealing with your own stuff back then. Your nightmares and insomnia were worse than ever, and I didn’t want to burden you.”

I’m too heartbroken about Sera to be angry with Alaric.

My relationship with my sister had changed after I returned from Afghanistan. There were things I couldn’t bring myself to open up about, and it changed the dynamic between us. We weren’t as close as we used to be, but I thought it was implied that she could come to me for anything she needed. I thought she knew that I would drop everything to be there for her.

But she went to my best friend instead.

Alaric had always been like a second brother to her, but it still hurts that she went to him instead of me.

“Is there anything else I need to know?” I ask.