CHAPTER 68
I made my way inside the miserable, old mansion, and up the staircase, to the room where Lilia had slept the last two nights.
Once I’d gathered her cellphone and suitcase, I headed back toward the foyer, and stopped alongside the portrait hanging on the wall, of me, my father and Caed.
I remembered the day it was painted. Caedmon and I had gotten into a silly argument over a girl at school that I’d kissed.
One he was particularly fond of. In the portrait, my face held a smug expression, while his undoubtedly held back the anger burning inside of him.
Ten days later, a week after our seventeenth birthday, my brother was dragged from that closet, and I never saw him again.
And yet, he was alive.
First thing in the morning, I’d begin my search for him.
I carried Lilia’s suitcase down the winding staircase to the foyer, and as I reached the door, a prickling cold danced across the back of my neck. Turning around showed a figure mostly hidden in the shadows behind me.
“Caed?” I asked, squinting past the darkness that concealed him.
The obscure form stepped forward, illuminated by what little moonlight shined through the windows, and my suspicions were confirmed.
An ache stabbed my chest, crushing my lungs. Muscles locked and stiff, I dropped Lilia’s suitcase on a hard thud.
Fuck.
It was him.
Standing in the hallway like he’d never disappeared from the house.
As if I’d been transported sixteen years into my past, he looked no different to me. Perhaps slightly aged, but beneath all of that was the twin I remembered. Half my soul staring back at me like a dark reflection in the mirror.
The brother I’d prayed for every night, for years.
“Hello, Devryck,” he said in a voice as stoic as his expression.
Crystals of shock spun around my muscles, leaving me frozen in place.
Alive. My brother was alive.
Fucking alive.
My pulse thundered a deafening beat in my ears, as I stood stupefied, staring back at him, silently calculating the statistical improbability of the moment. “You haven’t changed,” was all I could manage, as if even my vocal cords were paralyzed.
With a sneer, he lowered his gaze, picking at his palm. “Oh, I’ve changed quite a bit.” Eyes that mirrored mine trailed over me. “But so have you, it seems. Gone is the boy who wouldn’t dare touch a corpse.”
“I’ve since found peace in death.”
“As have I.” As simple as his words might’ve been, they swelled with the weight of pain. Suffering. Whatever torment I couldn’t possibly imagine that he’d endured.
“I thought you were dead. I saw a video of them torch–” The word choked in my mouth, and I shook my head, refusing to slip into that memory again. “They sent what I thought were your ashes.”
“Angelo had a flair for the dramatic.”
“You’re telling me all of that was fake?”
“Oh, it was real.” He lifted his pant leg, where every inch of his shin was marred in grotesque scars. “As I said, a flair for drama.”
“Where’ve you been?” The stream of questions swirling inside my head was endless. I felt like Lilia, bombarding him with one after the next.
The repulsed curl of his lip told me I didn’t want to know the answer, which only amped the rage burning in my blood.
“I see you’ve done well for yourself,” he said, ignoring my question.
The hard edge in his voice gave breath to the animosity that must’ve ground him every day, thinking how different our lives must’ve been.
A stark contrast of pain and contentment. Death and life.
“Why didn’t you come to me?” I asked, ignoring his comment also. “Why stay hidden?”
“I want nothing to do with a Rook .” He spat the word like a bad taste on his tongue, his eyes blazing with bitter resentment. “You’re one of them. One of him .”
Whether he was talking about our father, or Lippincott, I couldn’t tell.
His jaw shifted, his hand balled into a fist. “You whored yourself out for power.”
“Is that what you think?” The accusation in his words stirred my own anger. This was hardly the reunion I’d dreamed of for so many years. “I was fucking dying! Have you forgotten?”
He twitched and rolled his head on his shoulders, rubbing the back of his neck.
The reaction had me frowning. “You would’ve never survived the shit they did to me.
” A haunting darkness clung to his words, and he twitched again, as if he was short-circuiting before my eyes.
As simple as the comment was, it felt like a blow to my chest. “You’re nothing.
A rich, prick asshole, and nothing more.
” He rested his hand against the holster at his hip.
Frustration escaped me on a mirthless chuckle. “You let me believe all these years that you were dead. And I’m the asshole? That’s rich. Who the fuck do you think took the brunt of our father’s rage? Who do you think he blamed every minute of every year that followed, huh?”
While he may have looked the same, a replica of me, the man standing before me was not the brother I remembered and loved. Whatever hell he’d suffered had turned him colder, detached.
“So you got cozy with Lippincott. Even went so far as to fuck his only daughter. Is that how you learned how to forgive him?” A malicious smirk lifted the corner of his lips. “Maybe I should’ve fucked her, too.”
The fury exploded inside of me, and I curled my hands into tight fists, the will to keep my temper in check gnawing at my spine.
As if sensing my anger, he tipped his head and smiled.
“Oh, it seems I’ve found a weakness, Brother.
” His anger made no sense to me. His desire to taunt left me baffled, as I fought the urge to smash his teeth.
“She tell you I watched her sleep? How easily I could’ve fucked her, pretending to be you. ”
“I’d have fucking killed you myself for touching her.”
Something flashed over his face, and he twitched again. “What’d you say?” The tone of his voice dared me to say it again.
I wanted to, just to see what the hell he’d do, but something told me he was waiting for that. Much as his words goaded my violence, I didn’t want to fight him. “What the hell did they do to you, Caed?”
His spine snapped. Like a bull seeing red, he barreled straight into me, the shock of pain from where I’d been shot spiraling up my arm into my neck.
The impact knocked me to the floor on a jarring zap that struck my spine.
He scrambled over top of me, his pupils blown, crazed like a rabid animal.
In a haze of blinding rage, he hammered his fist into my face, kicking my head to the side.
As he drew back for another hit, I slammed my stronger fist into his flank with a sickening thud, and the moment he curled himself into the hit, I twisted to the side, knocking him just enough to plow another punch to his jaw.
We rollicked across the floor, all fists and growls, until I got the upper hand and pinned him beneath me. I pounded two quick punches to his temple. Another spurred blood from his nose. A hint of a smile played on his lips like he enjoyed the hits.
I railed another to the other side his face, and he let out a sound of pleasure.
“What the fuck is wrong with you?” I drew my fist back again, but a sharp blow struck my ribs, knocking the wind out of me.
He drilled another powerful blow to my wounded shoulder, and I shook away the jagged flashes of pain that flickered behind my eyes.
The moment of distraction cost me, as Caed plowed me over again, knocking me onto my back, and in two quick moves, he propped his blade at my throat, bringing my movements to a halt.
The razor thin edge of the knife scraped against my stubble, casting a slight burn where he must’ve cut me.
Body shaking with adrenaline, I stared up at him, into eyes that held so much enmity and hate, I was certain he’d slice me open.
“Impervious,” I gritted, the rims of my eyes stinging as I lifted my chin, giving him full access to my throat.
His brows came together in a tight frown, and his cheeks twitched as if the emotions inside his head cross-wired.
“Impervious,” I said again, and eyes screwed shut, he shook his head.
“No.” A rage-filled growl vibrated out of him.
“Do it. Kill me.” I kept on with my taunting that seemed to be breaching the haze clouding his head. “The day they dragged you from that closet, my whole fucking world caved in, and I’ve been living in death ever since.”
“Shut the fuck up! Shut the fuck up!” He pushed off me and clutched his temples, as if something rattled inside his head. A war between his thoughts and my words. “Shut the fuck up!”
He was coming undone.
I fought the emotions brimming to the surface as I watched it happen before my eyes. Decades of pain, confusion, and anger. Anger that I had to stuff into the quiet recesses of my head, hardening my heart. “You were my protector. My whole fucking world.” Voice faltering, I cleared my throat.
He scrambled away and backed himself into the wall beside us, where he struck the butt of his knife against his temple and whispered something in a string of incoherent words that I couldn’t make out.
“You remember, don’t you?”
Another angry growl broke from his chest, and he punched his temples harder. “Shut up!”
I reached for his arm, and he recoiled, scrambling away.
“Don’t fucking touch me!” As he held the blade out toward me, I caught the high shine of tears in his eyes. “IamashadowIamaghostIamnothingIamashadowIamaghostIamnothing,” he whispered over and over.
“You’re no ghost, nor shadow. You are my brother.” I edged closer, careful to keep some distance between me and the business end of that blade. “It’s me, Caed.”