Total pages in book: 106
Estimated words: 99917 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 500(@200wpm)___ 400(@250wpm)___ 333(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 99917 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 500(@200wpm)___ 400(@250wpm)___ 333(@300wpm)
“Are you kidding me? You know nothing about my relationship with Lilian. Every fucking choice I ever made was based upon her. To protect her, to ensure she wasn’t used as another fucking chess piece on our father’s board. I didn’t throw shit away.”
Arson’s laugh is low, humorless, the sound of someone twisting the knife because he knows exactly where to strike. I know he’s goading me, baiting me into a fight but I can’t stop myself from giving in to the rage. This has been a long time coming.
“Protect her?” he repeats, shaking his head. “All you did was hide behind excuses. You call it sacrifice—I call it cowardice. You never claimed her because deep down you knew you weren’t man enough to.”
My chair screeches against the floor as I shove to my feet, muscles coiled tight, fury searing through me. I don’t just stand—I rip the chair back and toss it aside, the crack of wood hitting the floor rings in my ears.
I don’t think. I don’t breathe.
I lunge and swing wildly, aiming for the brother who stole everything—my life, my freedom, and now the only woman I’ve ever given a fuck about, and maybe even loved. Arson sidesteps easily, a lifetime of fighting giving him reflexes I lack despite our identical genetics. I’m not thinking things through, not able to rationalize. I’m all anger, all pain. I just want to hurt him. To make him feel even a fraction of what he’s caused me.
“Aries, stop!” Lilian shouts, her fear-laced voice sinking in.
I pull back just in time to avoid hitting her, my heart thunders in my chest, and a fresh wave of horror ripples through me.
What am I becoming? What has he made me into?
“I’m done,” Lilian says, voice cracking with emotion. “With the fighting. The hatred. All of it. I locked you in that cell to try to fix the problem, but it seems all I did was make it worse. If all that matters to both of you is getting revenge and seeing how much you can make the other person hate you, then I want nothing to do with either of you. This is my life, too, and regardless of what you both think, I have a say in what happens in my own life.”
Why does it feel like she’s leaving, like she’s slipping through my fingers all over again? Because she is. She’s telling us that she isn’t going to be caught in the middle of our hate anymore, and she means it. I can see it in her eyes and feel it in the tremble of her voice. It kills her, but she’s willing to walk away from us both if we can’t figure this out, and that thought guts me. It cuts me right down the fucking middle.
Lilian moves from between us, and we both seem to turn in her direction, gravitating toward her like she is our sun.
Arson recovers first, taking a half step toward her before thinking better of it.
“Lilian—”
“No.” She cuts him off, eyes blazing. “I mean it. I’m not going to let you two tear each other apart over me. That’s not who I am. That’s not who I want to be. If your hate for one another is greater than your feelings for me, then you can have each other.” She looks between us, something like determination—or maybe resignation—settling in her blue eyes. “If you can’t figure it out and make it work, then I’ll do this on my own. All of it.”
The silence that follows is thick enough to choke on. Arson stares at her with an intensity that makes something twist in my gut—possessive, protective, something I’ve never seen from him before. The look doesn’t belong on my face, yet there it is, mirrored back at me in the most fucked-up way possible.
“Lilian,” he says again, voice uncharacteristically gentle. “It’s not safe for you to be alone. These men are dangerous. Whatever they want with Aries—”
“I don’t care.” She cuts him off. “Maybe with me out of the picture, you both will be able to figure things out—either that or you’ll kill each other.”
Her gaze shifts to me, those blue eyes that have haunted me for years now hardened with determination. “Aries, I understand your anger. I do. But this”—she gestures back and forth between us—”this hatred, this competition. It has to stop.”
“Easy for you to say,” I mutter, the bitterness I’ve been nursing for months spilling over. “You’re not the one who spent months in a cage while your twin played house with your—”
I stop myself again, that word still caught in my throat.
What was Lilian to me, really?
Something I’ve never been able to define because defining it would make it real?
“With what?” Lilian challenges, stepping closer. “Your what, Aries? Your girlfriend...because you sure as hell made sure I was never that.”