[Notice for sensitive readers: this Chapter contains descriptions of physical violence. If you think you may have a hard ti reading it, you can email at for a summary or ssage on Facebook.]
- DEX -
Lawson is stumbling to his feet in the bathroom when I return, blood pouring from his nose from when his face hit the door fra. He hikes up his pants, cursing angrily, tears streaming down his face.
"I’m grieving, Dex," he spits at while I stand as still as stone in the doorway. "It’s how I grieve. What’s your problem?"
A strange thing happened when I decided to kill my brother. The rage that was radiating out of returned and sunk into my skin, no longer threatening to spill over and make lose control. Now it’s settled into my body, making everything feel like steel—impenetrable, unfeeling.
Lawson could beg and plead at my feet, and I’m certain not a hint of emotion would be found in my eyes. My brother is going to die, and I’m going to be the one to choke the final breaths from him.
"Do you hear ?" Lawson hisses, leaning on the sink rather than advancing on .
Does he sense the death that has decided to claim him? I’m blocking his only way out, and there is no getting past . He doesn’t have a chance.
"Dex?"
The mont fear begins to needle my brother, I see it. Lawson’s bristling anger flattens like ears against his head, and he takes a step back, eyeing warily.
"She was just a fucking whore," he tries, bending over himself and wiping the blood from his face. "Why do you care so much?"
The steels turns to teeth inside my skin, jabbing with every stupid fucking word he says. The wrongness of him. The twisted rationality that he uses. It’s all poison.
"What was her na?" I ask, fists clenching at my sides, teeth clenching in my jaw, preparing now for the end that I’m going to deliver. I’m going to make it painful.
"What?" He chuckles. "The whore?"
"The woman," I grind out.
"That wasn’t a woman, Dex," he says, his voice sohow able to strike a condescending tone despite the position he is in. "She was an object. She made herself one the mont she stepped into this room."
I have to close my eyes with the rage that slams into until it buries itself into my skin again. More steel solidifying under my flesh.
"What was her na?"
"I don’t know," he chuckles. "I didn’t ask."
"What did you call her?"
Lawson freezes at the question, and for so odd reason, it makes laugh.
I take a few steps into the bathroom and stop, lifting my chin, eyes narrowing. Then the thunderous rush of blood assails like an ocean in my ears, and I barely make out Lawson’s response: "It didn’t an anything."
Like fuck it didn’t an anything.
He was imagining Raya’s throat under his hand, Raya’s tears streaming down her face, Raya’s body penetrated by his. And I know. If Raya wouldn’t have gotten away and locked herself in my room that day, it would have been her suffering my brother’s abuse and not the woman who was just here.
I don’t know when I start hitting Lawson. I don’t feel my fists. I don’t feel his retaliation. The only thing I see and hear is the scene from my nightmare the previous night—Raya unable to get away and unable to reach her. My brother and Kenneth Rider the predators and the woman I love their prey.
When my vision fully returns, I still only hear the ocean of blood rushing through , seeking to carry my brother’s soul along with it. I’m on top of him with my hands around his neck, dodging his attempts to claw and grab my face.
Apparently I already hit him several tis. There is a cut bleeding and swelling over his eye and one splitting his cheek. Red petechiae spots have blood in the whites of his eyes to match the color of his face as he goes without oxygen.
But he doesn’t look sorry. He doesn’t look repentant. There is only rage and desperation, and when his arms finally give up their battle and go limp against the floor, a spear of regret slices through the steel around my heart because I didn’t make him beg. I didn’t make him say he was fucking sorry. His soul is slipping out of his body still sohow believing that he was right.
"No," I growl, lifting his head from the floor before slamming it back down. It bobs to the side without reflex, his eyes glassy and unseeing, fixed on a random spot in the bathroom.
"No, fuck you Lawson." My teeth are clenched as I shake him, trying to get him to regain consciousness again so that he can tell he knows that he was wrong. So that he can beg for his life before I take it.
Finally, I give up with a snarl and let go of him. My fists won’t uncurl, though. They are bent in position from gripping him so tightly for so long. If I could, I would check for a pulse, but I doubt I would be able to feel it even if there is one. My hands don’t feel like my own anymore.
I push off of him and walk to the sink, turning the water on and hissing when it hits my knuckles. Blood runs off and swirls in the water before disappearing down the drain only to be followed by more—a constant river of blood beneath my hands.
When I finally glance up at the mirror, idly wondering if I’m covered in scratches from Lawson’s struggling, I’m surprised to see that there aren’t any. But my neck didn’t escape unscathed. I grit my teeth, reaching up to touch the scratches there that are evidence of my brother fighting for his life. How am I going to explain that? I’m going to need to wear collared shirts for awhile.
Lawson remains in the sa place, unmoving, and I strip out of my clothes, making sure there is no blood on when I stalk through the suite back to my room to take a shower and change. When I’m pulling a shirt on, my phone rings from an unknown number.
"Hello?"
"Dex. Where are you?" It’s Uncle Saul. I recognize the gruff voice.
"New York."
"I have friends in New York that owe a favor. Don’t go anywhere or do anything else until I call you again from this number."
"Thank you, Zio."
"I’m using important contacts for you."
"I understand."
"I hope you do. Because this, my son, qualifies as a favor."
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