Page 37 of The Reckoning (Oakmount Elite #7)

TWENTY-ONE

ARSON

“ S he’s gone,” Aries says, stating the fucking obvious as he stares at the empty space where Lilian stood seconds ago.

“No shit, Sherlock.” I shove past him, rage clawing at my insides like it wants out—like it wants blood.

My shoulder slams into his with enough force to bruise, to break, to ignite.

And it does. Something feral snaps loose inside me.

The need to hurt. To ruin. To finally make my perfect fucking reflection feel a fraction of what I’ve suffered.

He whirls around and grabs my arm, fingers biting into flesh. Then spins me back so fast I hear something pop.

“Where the fuck do you think you’re going?” he growls. “This is your fault.”

“My fault?” A jagged laugh tears from my throat, sharp and broken like shattered glass.

“Of course you’d twist this around and make me the villain.

” I lunge at him, the desire to wrap my hands around his throat and squeeze until he understands almost overpowering me.

“If you weren’t such a self-righteous prick—if you could’ve given her five fucking minutes without hovering like she was made of glass—maybe she wouldn’t have run. ”

His features twist into something that looks like disgust. “Fuck you. Like always, you deflect and refuse to admit fault. If you hadn’t kidnapped me…” he snarls.

We’re chest to chest now, and I can feel the rage simmering in his veins, feeling the feral beast threatening to break free. “She wouldn’t be in this situation if you hadn’t dragged her into your sick revenge fantasy?—”

“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 with you , 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.”

That question—those fucking words—slice through me like barbed wire.

He dares. He fucking dares to compare his pampered, guilt-ridden conscience to my hell?

The nerve of him breathing the word suffered like he earned it.

Rage floods my veins, thick and hot, and I see nothing but red.

He fights back harder than I expected for someone who spent months locked in my cage. We throw jabs at one another, and then his fist lands against my ribs. Something gives with a sickening crack that fills my ears, followed by a jolt of white-hot agony.

I grunt, doubling over but not dropping.

I didn’t make it this far to wave a white flag of defeat.

“You had everything !” I roar, surging forward and slamming him against a tree trunk.

The crack of impact is vicious, and I hear the air whoosh out of his lungs.

I pin him there, forearm grinding into his throat, watching his face begin to turn a mottled shade of purple.

“The family. The name. The life that should’ve been OURS! ”

He claws at my arm, gasping, but I don’t let up.

“You let them take me,” I snarl, fury boiling over.

“You stood there and said nothing while they dragged me away like I was already dead!” I drive my knee into his gut, and he folds over with a strangled sound, but I hold him upright, refusing to give him the dignity of falling.

“Your silence was the loudest fucking betrayal of all.”

His chest heaves, and something dark and lifeless trickles into his eyes. A look I know all too well. “I was only fourteen!!”

“Me fucking too, or did you forget? Forget that we’re identical in every single way, that your brain is wired the same as mine? I was a child when I was abandoned by my family—by my own fucking brother.”

With unexpected strength, he shoves me off him, his jaw twitching, his entire body vibrating like an animal in a cage. “I didn’t abandon you! They told me you were dangerous. That you’d killed Mom. I didn’t have any other way to try to save you.”

All I can do is shake my head. Disappointment and anger so hot it burns me to ash sears my insides.

“That’s the worst part, that you fucking believed them!

” I’m on him, tackling him to the ground with such force the air leaves his lungs in a harsh wheeze.

My fists find his face—one, two, three brutal blows that snap his head to the side. “Over your own fucking brother!”

He catches my wrist on the fourth swing, twisting until something pops. Pain lances up my arm, but I barely feel it. I’m consumed with rage, with anger, with the need to make him feel as broken and abandoned as I felt in that place.

“I tried to stop them!” he screams, and his voice cracks at the edges while his eyes bleed into mine, willing me to believe him. “I begged our father not to send you away!”

“LIAR!” I slam my forehead into his nose, hearing it crunch beneath the impact.

More blood sprays between us. “I might believe that if you had made an attempt to stop them, if you had tried to intervene, but you didn’t.

You didn’t even try. Instead, you stood there like a coward and watched them drag me away.

I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised when you didn’t come to visit, not even once in the eight fucking years I was there.

You didn’t even try, didn’t make a fucking effort. ”