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)
“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.”
He bucks beneath me with sudden ferocity, flipping us over. Now he’s on top, pinning my shoulders with his knees, raining down blows that make stars explode behind my eyes. The fucked-up part is I’d rather feel pain, rather endure this, than anything else I have in the past.
“You aren’t the only one who suffered. As if I ever had a choice?” Each word is punctuated with another punch. “Richard—beat—the truth—into me!”
I catch his fist mid-swing, using his momentum to throw him sideways. We roll again, grappling in the dirt like animals, all pretense of humanity stripped away. His teeth find my shoulder, savage and primal.
I howl, grabbing a fistful of his hair, smashing his head against the ground.