Page 16

I don’t tap. I let him pummel me, each blow driving the fog from my mind. Physical pain is so much simpler than the twisted knot of emotions choking me. So much cleaner than wondering if I’m falling apart, wondering if what Aurelia told me could possibly be real .

What if I just... don’t stop him? Let this behemoth beat me to death right here on the mat where I’ve claimed so many victories? No more responsibilities. No more Inferno Consortium. No more trying to fill shoes that were never meant for me.

No more torment about what’s true and what’s a lie.

No more carrying the weight my father left behind, broken and corrupted.

No more bearing another day without my big brother.

I swallow blood then cough it back up, my eyes so swollen now I can barely see. My entire body has become numb, each new punch to my jaw, chest, stomach just a muted ringing in my ears.

Fuck. I need my brother more than I ever realized. My big brother. My role model. Adrian was cold sometimes, distant often, but he always knew what to do. He was the responsible one and he always fucking knew . He had a plan, always had a plan, even when we were kids facing Lucian’s fists together.

The man above me throws another punch, splitting my eyebrow. Blood runs into my eye, and I don’t even try to wipe it away. I don’t raise my hands to defend myself. I just lie there, letting my body absorb the hits, hoping that I’ll soon choke and drown on my own blood and all of this will be… over.

“Stop! Fuck—somebody stop this!”

Emeric’s voice cuts through the fog of pain. Suddenly the weight on my chest lifts as he hauls my opponent off me, shoving him back with help from two other guys.

“What the bloody hell is wrong with you?” Emeric shouts, more at me than the beast of a man who was just turning my face to pulp. His British accent thickens with alarm, his open vowels trying to tighten in his tone. “Get him up! Now!”

Hands grab me, lifting me from the mat. My limbs are heavy, uncooperative. Blood drips from my mouth, my nose, trickles into my eye from the split eyebrow. Down my body. Fuck, it’s everywhere and someone is going to have a hell of a night cleaning this ring.

Everything hurts and nothing hurts enough.

They half-carry, half-drag me to the back room where we usually stitch up fighters after particularly brutal matches. My head drops helplessly to the side, vision blurring as they deposit me on the medical table. The fluorescent lights above me are too bright, stabbing into my retinas like needles.

“Everyone out!” Emeric orders, and the room clears except for one of the medical staff we keep on retainer. The guy approaches with gauze and antiseptic, but I shove him away with what little strength I have left.

“Get the fuck out,” I growl through split lips. “Leave us.”

The medic looks to Emeric, who nods once before sighing—my best friend knows what a stubborn ass I can be. When the door shuts behind the medic, leaving just me and Emeric, the silence expands, ready to burst.

“Have you lost your bloody mind?” Emeric paces in front of me, running his hands through his curly hair. “Did someone fucking drug you? What the hell was that?” He gestures wildly toward the door, toward the ring beyond it. “You weren’t fighting back! He could have killed you!”

I try to laugh, but it comes out as a wet, choking sound. “That was the point.”

Emeric stops pacing. The look on his face—shock, fear, concern—it’s too much. Too real. Too much like something Adrian might have shown if he were here to see me falling apart. He rarely showed emotion, but he has a few times when it comes to me.

Adrian isn’t here. Adrian is never going to be here again.

Something cracks inside me, a rift the size of the Grand Canyon, of time and space itself. Something fundamental and load-bearing that I’ve relied on my entire life. The dam I’ve built to hold back everything—every emotion, every fear, every moment of weakness—simply collapses into a pitiful heap.

The first sob tears from my throat like it’s being ripped out with pliers. My body curls in on itself as I fold forward, crimson hands covering my face as tears mix with sweat and blood. I can’t stop it. Can’t control it. Can’t do anything but let it consume me.

“He’s gone,” I choke out between sobs. “Adrian’s fucking gone. And that bitch… she…” I can’t even finish the sentence.

Emeric stands frozen, probably having no idea what to do with this version of me.

No one except my mother has ever seen me like this.

Not Aurelia, not even Adrian. I’ve spent my entire life building walls, creating the image everyone wants—the cocky, untouchable Julian Harrow who fears nothing and feels less .

“He was supposed to be here ,” I continue, unable to stem the tide of words now that they’ve started flowing.

“He was supposed to lead, not me. I’m not cut out for this shit.

And Aurelia—” My voice breaks on her name.

“I love her. I fucking love her, and she killed him. She killed my brother. What am I supposed to do with that?”

I look up at Emeric with my vision blurred by tears and blood. “What the fuck is wrong with me? I’m still in love with her. I had her locked up, and I still—” I shake my head, shame burning through me at the memory of taking her in Adrian’s bed. “I’m a fucking piece of shit. Just like him .”

Just like Lucian.

Fuck! I need Adrian here. I’ve always needed him. Even when I hated him for being perfect. Even when I resented him for having everything or not being there enough to help our mother. He kept me… balanced. Now I’m supposed to do this alone? I can’t…

I swipe at my eyes with the back of my hand, smearing blood across my face and feeling like a fucking five year old.

Emeric stands there for what feels like forever, just staring with wide eyes. I half expect him to back away, to make some excuse and leave me to drown in my own fucked up life.

Instead, he sits beside me on the medical table, the metal frame creaking under our combined weight. “Shit, mate,” he whispers, his voice rough. “I don’t know what to say.”

“Then don’t say anything,” I mutter, scrubbing at my face, trying to regain a semblance of control over something as pathetic as emotions. But it’s too late. The monster is out of the cage, and I can’t shove it back in. More tears wet my cheeks.

Emeric’s hand lands on my shoulder, hesitant at first, then firmer. “I didn’t know you felt this way. About any of it.”

A bitter laugh erupts from my throat. “That was the fucking point.”

His hand squeezes my shoulder. He’s uncomfortable—I can feel the tension in his fingers. But to his credit, he doesn’t run. Doesn’t make this about him. Just sits there, like trying to tether me as I’m caught in a storm.

“Just let it out,” he finally says. “No need to keep it in, mate. It’s just me and you here.”

The permission breaks me again. I lean into him, and he wraps an arm around my shoulders in an awkward side-hug. But there’s nothing awkward about the way my body crumples, how my fingers clutch at his shirt while sobs wrack through me.

I haven’t cried like this since I was a kid—not since the night I found my mother lying unconscious in a pool of her own blood after one of Lucian’s rages.

I was six then, and I thought she was dead.

I’d crawled under the bed and sobbed until Adrian found me, pulled me out, and told me she was still alive.

“She’s strong,” he’d told me. “So are you. Now get up. You can do this. Let’s get her cleaned up.”

With his confidence in me, I quickly dried my tears. He taught me I had to be strong, like him. Always had to be the strong one. Never show weakness, especially to our father .

Lucian’s voice slithers through my memory, cold and cutting: “Cry again, and I’ll kill your mother,” Lucian had snarled when he caught me with wet cheeks after he’d broken my arm during a drunken fit. I was nine. “Understand?”

Then later, when I was sixteen and he found me comforting my mother after he’d beaten her. “You’re pathetic. No wonder Adrian’s my heir. At least he has a fucking spine.”

And again, just last year, when Adrian and I stood at attention in his office after a shipment went missing. “Your brother understands what it means to be a Harrow. You? You’re just a disappointment wearing my name.”

My head is filled with so many of his taunts and cruel words, and I have no idea how to get them out.

But he’s dead. The bastard is finally dead.

The realization washes through me, offering a strange sense of relief despite the grief and confusion. He can’t hurt us anymore. Can’t hurt my mother. Can’t make me feel like I’m nothing.

That has to count for something in this fucked-up world.