Rage

Chapter 2

Chapter Two

Arkady

S unlight. Morning dew. Fresh air.

Greeting the brisk fall mornings as a free man never got old.

I’d been out for all of two weeks now, and so far, all I’d managed to do was check in with a parole officer under my brother’s name, sign up for a room in a halfway house, and put in a call that wasn’t returned to my mother.

My grandmother would be sad to know she’d abandoned the wrong brother. Poor woman was probably rolling over in her grave right now.

I stretched my arms as I came to a slow walk at the end of the park path, preparing to turn around and do it all again. Running had become my new personal habit.

Probably lingering PTSD from not having more than eighty square feet to live in for the last five years, give or take.

Around me, the world moved on, with everyone focused on themselves. Things hadn’t changed much while I was locked up. Some guys I’d been in there with didn’t even know what a cell phone was, for fuck’s sake.

I checked the secondhand watch my parole officer had given me, insisting I would have no excuse to be late to anything, including my mandatory drug tests, if I had something to tell time with. A day later, I had a government-issued prepaid phone in my hands, but I still kept the watch. It was like a warning, sort of. A reminder not to fuck up so spectacularly again, to not let anyone get the upper hand.

It was a reminder that the clock was ticking and about to run out for my twin.

Eat shit and die, Antony. Karma was a bitch.

I crouched in the bushes behind my brother’s swanky hideout, surprised he’d even bothered to stay in the country once he got away with murder. This fucker was living it up like he shouldn’t be, in a new town, a new state, with a whole new life. Probably the smart move, to keep the ruse going until?—

Until what? What exactly did he think he’d do when I got out? Did he think I’d just go on being him? That I would forget all about him?

Fucker was probably so conceited he thought I’d never get out.

I might’ve flipped through the mail when dark fell, realizing he was one of those types who never brought it in until it was falling out of the box. I hated that shit.

There was no excuse not to pull the mail out on your way back into the house. Or on your way out. Except for sheer laziness.

I’d been here watching, waiting, for two hours, and so far, all I’d seen was the mailman, a delivery driver, and the neighborhood miscreants, who stopped to peek into the backyard over the fence. Nothing to indicate this guy even so much as lived in his house. I was debating whether or not to make a move and break in when a car pulled into the driveway, stopping just in front of the detached garage. I tightened the rope in my hands, prepared to take my brother down in his own backyard before he could even see me coming. The door swung open, and I scooted up in the bush line, inching closer to the fence, my heartbeat quickening. Revenge was on the tip of my tongue. I could practically taste it?—

“—like I said, I’ll have to decline this week’s brunch meeting. I have an appointment?—”

A very frazzled woman stepped out of the car, her eyes shielded from the sunlight by an oversized pair of sunglasses. Her drab orange hair was tossed casually into a loose bun, wisps of it falling down to frame her face. She turned to reach into the backseat for something, and I got a good look at her ass, encased in a tight pair of distressed denim jeans that looked like they belonged in the early 2000s, back when cellphones first flipped in half and girls put playboy bunny stickers on their hips before they got a tan.

God, she had a nice ass.

Not the first one I’d seen since getting out, but damn.

Of course the bastard had a hot girlfriend. He’s me.

I clenched the rope tighter, wondering if she knew the real him, or if he was still putting on a show for the world. Did this girl know he’d murdered the one that came before her, and possibly others? Or did she think she was safe as she laid down next to some schmuck every night, a smile on her lips and a dream of something bigger in her head?

“No, Annie. I told you that’s Frank’s project. We’re not doing that one. We’ve been moved to the spring line.” An exasperated huff punctuated the car door slam as she juggled a colossal purse and some shopping bags, heading for the door with the phone cradled between her shoulder and ear. “Listen, I’ve gotta go. I have to get dinner on the stove before—yeah, yeah, see you at work tomorrow.”

She fumbled the phone and rummaged in a pocket for her keys, dropping some of her groceries. With a swear under her breath, she knelt and started crawling around, reaching for the fruit that had rolled away from her before it could fall off the porch.

Within seconds, one of her limes rolled into the flowerbed off the side of the steps, and the poor thing burst into tears, yanking off the sunglasses on her face to pinch the bridge of her nose.

Someone’s having a bad day.

But when she looked up, her eyes on the bushes where I stood, I noticed the black ring around her eye, and my rage only intensified.

That bastard was beating his women and using my name to do it.

Like fucking hell.

I decided then and there, as I watched this beautiful blue-eyed sad girl scramble to retrieve everything she’d dropped, picking up the pieces of her shattered life on her back porch, tears streaming down her face, that I would do everything in my power to right whatever wrongs he’d committed against her under my name.

There was one thing I couldn’t get out of my mind, though.

Something about her looked oddly familiar. I knew that face—or at least, I’d seen it before.

Maybe a closer look would give me the answers I needed.

Once she was safely inside, I snuck around to the back door and crept up the steps, careful not to give anything away as I wondered what she saw in my imposter. Did he shower her with money and gifts? Did he wine and dine her? Or was she a junkie, with him for the drug connections he no doubt still held onto?

Why did she stay with a man who blacked her eye?

My feet carried me into the mudroom just off the kitchen as she hummed to herself in the next room, putting things away with her back to me, that pert ass as tempting as a cheese chunk on a mousetrap. I wasn’t the kind to force a woman. That wasn’t my vibe. But damn if she didn’t make me want to do things I hadn’t done in years.

Technically, if I wanted to, I could pretend to be him— me —god damn, this was confusing.

Could I really pretend to be my brother like he’d done to me the last five years?

The more intriguing question was, had he pretended to be me so well that I might not even need to become him?

The shiny side of the silver washing machine I knelt next to caught my profile and reflected it to me, showing a surprisingly well-put-together man. I’d gone in with two hundred bucks in my pocket and a card for a bank account that belonged to someone not named me. So the first thing I’d done was hit an internet cafe, looked up myself—or rather, my brother—and modeled myself after him.

He’d let his hair grow out to match mine and kept it the way I preferred it—sort of long on top, shorter underneath, but still professional enough to pass for a bank employee. His active social media listed him as a bank loan manager, the position I had applied to before he stole my life.

Fucker even got my promotion. How ‘bout that?

“Should just dump this shit down the drain,” she muttered to herself as I watched her pull a couple of beers out of the fridge. “Fucking asshole when he’s drunk.”

I knew she wasn’t kidding, either. Tony had always been a lousy drunk. More than once, he put a hole in the wall of my college apartment after a bender.

The sound of her nails tapping on the counter as she emptied good alcohol down the drain revealed her nervousness. Meant she was aware enough to know what he’d done to her was wrong.

I snuck closer when she dipped out of the kitchen with a full bag of trash, heading for a side door. Flying by the seat of my pants wasn’t in the original plan, but that was the thing about the best-laid plans.

Sometimes they just went AWOL, and you had to make a new one on the fly.

I ducked into the front foyer, thanking my lucky stars this house was built just like all the old houses we’d lived in as kids. Up the stairs I went, managing to get to the second floor before she even came back inside.

I leaned down and removed my shoes, hoping to mask my footsteps, praying that these wood floors didn’t give me away.

The sound of running water downstairs emboldened me as I slipped into a nearby room, finding what looked like an office. It was littered with piles of boxes and storage containers, the desk coated in a layer of dust. Clearly, whatever the original intention, this was now a storage space. I moved on and opened the next door, cringing when it creaked a little. The sound of running water continued downstairs, so I pushed on, swallowing my crippling fear of being caught before I could do what I’d come here to do.

Steal my life back.

I needed something on him—anything, really, that would prove he wasn’t who he claimed to be. I needed something he’d hidden away, thinking it was safe as long as he kept it close. Tony was a cocky bastard, and he was too smug not to keep proof of his conquests and crimes somewhere. Like a fucking trophy.

If he’d had any more balls when he was born, he might’ve come out of the womb a murderer. He wrapped the umbilical cord around my neck before screaming his way into the world, effectively trying to eliminate the competition before it even had a chance to grow.

Shame I hadn’t had the same forethought. Bastard shoulda killed me when he had the chance.

The third door was clearly to a bedroom, and I grinned wickedly as I rifled through the stupidly large closet, flipping through his tie collection and perfectly hung suits, wondering why a man with so much money bothered with a dinky house like this. He didn’t have kids that I could see. No pets. A pretty girlfriend, a nice job, clearly well-off. Why not just spring for a nice high-rise apartment in the city? Live it up if you can afford it.

I moved out of the closet and headed for a nearby dresser, hoping to find a false bottom for a drawer or something. Instead, I was greeted with a handful of brightly colored bra and panty sets, all looking barely worn, some with the tags still attached. I fingered the soft silk of the top one, jealousy filling me at the thought my brother got to see something so pretty wrapped up in a package this nice.

My eyes drifted over the top of the bureau, skimming over photos of a couple clearly in love—or doing a good job of faking it. There stood Tony, on the edge of some tall ass mountain, ski goggles shoved up on his head, holding those fucking poles like he was some sort of seasoned pro or something. Next to him was a less-enthused woman with her ski goggles still over her face, her body leaning slightly away from him even with his arm around her shoulders.

Okay, so maybe not so happy, after all.

The next one was the two of them with my mother, all three of them in heavy knit sweaters—my mother’s specialty. A fir tree with decorations in the background hinted at a Christmas gathering, and they were all smiling, though this time, my brother’s grin looked too wide, too forced. The look in his eyes was nothing but predatory, and as he gazed down at the girl in the photo, I had to resist the urge to gag.

It looked like someone considering a new car. Not someone admiring a lover, a lifemate.

This one wasn’t in a frame but taped to the adjoining photo’s frame. I pulled it down and flipped it over, wondering how long ago it was taken.

My mother’s familiar handwriting was scrawled across the blank side, like she did with all the photos she took and then printed for her family to admire.

Winter 2023, family Christmas dinner. Arkadios, Tara, and Mama. See you again next year!

I flipped the photo back over again, staring hard at the girl I knew I’d seen somewhere. Was she an old coworker or something? Maybe a neighbor who just happened to chance across my brother and catch his eye?

“Tara, Taraaaaa, who are you?”

I heard the click of a pistol’s hammer cocking behind me, and slowly raised my hands, the picture still gripped tightly in my left one.

“I think the better question is, who are you, and why are you in my house?”

Realization slammed into me in a flash, memories of half-drunken nights at the local college pub flashing before my eyes with startling vividness. Our graduation celebration, the pub crawls, even a few nights when we’d gotten so wasted we got handsy and made out in the back booth, never quite going all the way, embarrassed for the following week as we staunchly avoided each other and went on with our lives like it’d never happened.

Tara Hallowell. A girl I’d had several college classes with who shared the same major as me. A girl I’d have hooked up with if she didn’t seem utterly uninterested in anything but her schooling.

He was dating someone from my college days.

The bastard really had no shame. And some mighty big balls.

“Well, hello to you, too, Tara,” I muttered, turning slowly, giving her ample time to shoot me if that was how it was really supposed to end here.

Her eyes were exactly how I remembered them—deep, swirling, expressive pools of the most adorable shade of blue-grey. They pinned me with a glare that turned to shock, then suspicion as she lowered the gun, then hesitated, leaving it pointed somewhere around my groin area, still dangerous, but not life-threatening. Well, only slightly less life-threatening.

“Arkady?” Her eyes narrowed as she took me in, her lizard brain telling her something was not right, but her eyes telling her I was someone she knew, someone she cared for, someone who?—

“You’re not supposed to be home this early.” Her eyes traveled down the length of me, then back up, stopping at the open drawer of her dresser. “Why are you wearing different clothes than you left in? And what are you doing rummaging through my dresser?”

The suspicion in her eyes only grew the longer she looked at me. When she stepped closer, her eyes burned a hole straight to my soul as she relaxed her stance and stretched a hand up to touch the stubble starting to form on my jaw. Her fingertips grazed the soft skin under my chin, and her eyes widened.

“You’re not—you’re not him!” She recoiled like a snake had bitten her, and that gun came right back up again, fear replacing curiosity and suspicion in a flash. “Who are you?”