Chapter 18
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
OREN
Simon’s arrival was a flurry of chaos. They’d managed to bring him back, but he wasn’t faring well. It was still too close to call, and Liam?
He continued to refuse medical attention, his focus entirely on the man hooked up to tubes and wires of machinery. I admired his dedication, his intense feelings for Simon. What would it feel like to love someone that much?
To be on the brink of faltering, of dying simply from the fact of someone else hurting?
I wish I knew, but I’d discarded that baggage. I had a job to complete, and while Matthew and Liam tended to Simon, I needed to tend to other matters.
Matters I’d waited too fucking long to do. Matters that would never haunt me again. Never… Never take root in my heart like Liam.
To love was frightening; look at the weakness it etched into his features. The way he crumbled to the ground as Simon remained unresponsive…
I couldn’t do that. Never again. Not anymore.
While Liam might not have caught on, Matthew knew.
The instant his gaze landed on mine, he saw the despair, the soullessness in my eyes, and I flicked them away quickly. I was beyond one of his lectures, and his hugs wouldn’t cure me this time.
There was one thing that would, and he’d been tossed into the interrogation room.
Wounds healed just enough per my father’s orders to maximize blood flow. To make him feel every hit I was about to inflict for my friends, my stolen life, and my nonexistent future.
I cracked my knuckles as I followed the familiar corridor, which I knew Thorne traveled through often. Did he feel this powerful, this full of rage each time he trekked down this hallway? Or did he feel remorse for those he’d fucked over?
I hoped he didn’t. I hoped he felt nothing, because that’s all he deserved after the shit he caused. Everything… Everything was his fault.
Pausing at the door, I took in a breath as I curled and uncurled my fingers. I couldn’t let an ounce of weakness show, not while my father watched.
This was the test.
Stuffing my black shirt into my camo pants, I ran my hands over my face once before entering.
There were two rooms: the room my father called the prep room, and the second, the interrogation room.
Running my hands over the weapons, I decided on a small blade, easy enough to conceal until I needed to inflict damage. I wanted Thorne to be surprised. I wanted him to think I’d rescued him, only to be cornered with a battery of my pain.
The very same pain he’d inflicted on Simon the first day of training.
He couldn’t die, father made that clear, but as he’d taught me, there were far worse things to suffer through than a simple death.
Stuffing the blade in my pocket, I painted my face with a look of shock and horror, one I easily managed. At least the theater would aid in my illusion before ripping him apart.
I ran to the door, fumbling it open like the damn idiot I used to be. “T-Thorne?”
Unconscious and slouched forward, they’d planted him in the chair, cuffing his wrists and ankles to its metal frame. A bandage curled around his bare stomach, concealing the freshly stitched wound. The reverberation of my voice seemed to be enough, and he stirred slightly, his lids fluttering.
I dropped in front of him, my hands cradling his face. “Fuck, Thorne!” God, this fucking sucked, but I needed him to believe it as he’d done with me.
Groaning softly, his eyes slowly opened, the lively gold I’d once bathed myself in dulled to a rusted brown. “O-Oren?” he breathed, his voice rough. “W-Where… is everyone? S-Simon…”
I swallowed my retort. “My father got you. Simon, he’s… he’s not doing well, and Liam’s broken.”
He huffed a weak and fractured laugh. “Leave it… to me… I try to protect you, and i-in the process… I-I nearly killed one of our friends…”
“Protect me?” I feigned innocence, trying to pull as much information from him as possible, as Dad taught me. “But… but they said you went rogue.”
“M-My last attempt… T-To keep them safe… For y-you…”
Fuck this.
“For me?” The mask dropped, a pit of nothingness staring at him as I laughed. “For me?”
My fist collided where he’d been stitched, patched together as if he deserved to heal. The first cry of anguish slipped through his parted lips, and I unraveled at the sound.
I sent another punch to his jaw, loving the spew of red, the warmth as it hit my face.
“Fuck you! You left me here, and your faulty judgment got Simon maimed. You’re a fucking curse, a plague that deserves to be eradicated, but unfortunately, I can’t kill you.
Fuck knows you deserve it, but you’re still needed. ”
I reached into my pocket and stabbed the blade into his shoulder, twisting it. “Everything you’ve done… It’s all been a game. A deliberate ploy.”
“Y-You really are like your father… aren’t you?” His jaw feathered as he swallowed the scream he wished to unleash. “Easily fooled… You believed what he said to you, about me? W-Where the fuck did your balls go?”
“Mine? I finally earned them. I’ve always been like my father, but I’ve been too frightened to act upon it. You solidified it. You turned me into this. You!” I shouted, twisting the blade once again.
“I solidified it when I was simply trying to keep you safe?” he spat through a fractured scream. “When I was falling in love with you?”
I yanked the blade, shaking it within his view. “You… you’re such a liar.”
Thorne took in a shaky breath, nostrils flared as he met my eyes. “My feelings for you have never been a lie.”
I furrowed my brows and spat in his face. “Stop lying! My father told me all the shit you said about me. Art school, huh? Pretty useless, right?”
“God, Oren! Are you that pliable? Your father made it clear? The same father who beat and psychologically abused you growing up? The same father you told me to wear a mask around to keep up this facade, a facade I wanted no part of? I said those things to feed his fucking ego, to make him believe I was the man you told me to continue to be!”
I covered my ears, shaking my head. “You… you shut up.” I heaved, too many voices… too many noises filling my head.
“I am not lying to you, Oren Valens. I fucking love you! I went to Venezuela, planning to go on that mission alone as a means to keep your friends safe. I kept you here, because I couldn’t fucking stomach losing you!”
“No, you don’t.” No. No, it was another fucking trick.
“You left me here on purpose. You left me alone with my father, so I became what I was always meant to be. You lost me the moment you let me wake up in your room alone.” I gripped the hilt of the blade, his blood coating my hand as it dripped down from the silver.
“I left you in my room to give you a semblance of comfort. All I fucking wanted,” tears welled in his eyes, his chest hitching, “was for you to be safe.”
“I am safe. I don’t feel. I don’t have to think. I just act, and it keeps me safe.” I pointed at him. “Look who’s in the chair. Not me for once in my fucking life.”
“Then do whatever the fuck you want to me to get your thrill,” he spat, his glower meeting mine. “Because I’ve already lost you, and there’s no worse pain than that.”
“Like you know pain,” I said, tossing the blade to the side. “How can someone who spreads it know what it feels like? How can someone who death follows know what it’s like to experience it?”
“I don’t know, Oren.” His jaw feathered, knuckles whitening as he gripped the arms of the chair. “Why don’t you tell me the answer to your questions? Considering you’ve shifted into the spitting image of the man who destroyed your life. And now, look at you, doing just that to everyone else.”
“If I shifted into the spitting image of the man who destroyed my life, I’d look just as pathetic as you.
My father rebuilt me.” A manic laugh echoed as I kicked his side, the stitches opening further as red seeped through his shirt, trickling down to his pants.
“You wanna know how much? Should we talk about Lucas’s absence? ”
His brows furrowed, the question coming out as a near whisper. “What have you done, Oren?”
“What I had to,” I answered, pointing to the stain of his blood on the floor. “He bled for hours, Thorne. Another one of your men, and I fucking killed him because I had to. It was the only way to erase this,” I said as I stabbed my chest with my finger right above my heart.
He ripped against the cuffs, but their tightness made the movement practically useless. “WHAT THE FUCK HAVE YOU DONE?!”
But it wasn’t a question for me; he aimed it at the black window he knew my father was lingering behind.
“Never take your eyes off the man in front of you.” I curled my fingers, the blow cracking against his jaw before I sent another one to the wound I’d opened. “Oren Valens is dead, and you fucking killed him for good.”
He turned his chin back to me, his lip split as blood trickled from it. “I never wanted this for you, Oren. Not once… Not. Fucking. Once.”
“Neither did I, but as you told me, running is all I’m good at. I changed my destiny. I’m not weak anymore, not a burden, not… not anything… no, not anyone that can be fucking toyed with again.”
“And how do you think Simon will feel about that? Liam?”
I clenched my jaw, flicking my gaze away. “I lost them, too. Having friends… having people to cherish is a weakness I can’t afford anymore. I’ve always been alone, but now? Now I’ve learned to embrace it.”
“So you’re going to shatter them more than they’ve already been shattered?”
“They have each other. They’ll be more than fine without me.” It was true. To protect them, to protect myself from hurting anyone ever again, I had to let them go.
He shook his head, scoffing in disbelief. “You couldn’t be further from the truth. The two never ceased to remind me how much I’d failed you, they fought for you, and now you’re discarding them without a moment of consideration?”
“They were wrong. I’m not worth fighting for. You taught me that best,” I spat.
“Then go into the infirmary and tell Simon that. Tell him to stop fighting, to die.”
“Maybe he should!” My chest expanded, my innermost thoughts spewing. “Dying is merciful compared to this hellhole of a life.”
“You’re pathetic,” he snarled. “You gave up on yourself this easily, on your mother this easily? You never loved her.”
“No, I didn’t. I thought I did, but I’m just my father’s son. A worthless, useless piece of shit.”
You never loved her.
“If that’s true, go get her ashes and bring them here. Dissolve them in water, in front of me, because as far as I’m concerned, you’re a fucking liar.”
“I don’t have to prove anything to you.”
“You’re right. You don’t. But even better…” He leaned forward in the chair, his lips curling into a sneer. “You won’t, because you’re a coward and you’re afraid of reawakening your light.”
“I’m… I’m not a coward.” I ran a hand over my hair, pacing back and forth.
“Oh, yes, you are, Oren.” His tongue clicked against the roof of his mouth. “Because only cowards cave to men like your father. And while I can admit that I’m one, you’re too fearful, too pathetic to stand on that truth.”
“Yeah? Well, if I were such a fucking coward, would I have destroyed those hidden pictures in your room? The letter? The photo of your mom and sister?”
He faltered, his eyes widening. “W-What…”
“I told you before, I’m not rational. You broke me, so I destroyed everything you held dear, like you did to me in the bathroom. Only difference? I wasn’t ordered to.”
He shook his head, denial in his pained expression. His chest heaved, the sound I’d heard before, one he’d released in the training room as he was spiraling. “N-No… No no no…”
“You’ll see your welcome gift on your bed,” I muttered, the bite I’d held earlier gone. I couldn’t… no. I did not feel sorry for him. Not at all.
His breathing quickened, his shoulders rising and falling with the ensuing panic. With an unfocused gaze, he looked past me, disassociation taking hold. Struggling to catch his breath, his lids flickered, a fractured whimper escaping him.
“T-That’s all… That’s all I h-had… Left…”
“It’s unbearable, isn’t it? To be broken beyond repair?”
His bottom lip wavered, and his body slacked in the chair. The man who’d been challenging me, the man who’d been spewing nonsense, was gone—that easily.
Too easily. Almost as if he had been telling the truth, that he had loved me.
“I hope it hurts just as much as it did for me.” I swallowed the growing lump in my throat and turned on my heels. I flicked my gaze to the window of black, knowing my father was judging, because I was faltering. Goddamn it, I was faltering, but I’d made my choice.
I had to stick with it now, no matter the consequences. To falter here would be idiotic, pathetic, and I wasn’t that type of man anymore.