He keeps going like he didn’t hear me. “At Twentieth Bank, over on Fourth Street, there’s half a million dollars under your name. Just show them your ID.”
Alarms are going off in my mind. “Why are you telling me this?” He sounds like a man giving instructions for his own funeral, and I don’t like it. Not one bit.
Outside, thunder cracks the sky.
Finally, his eyes flick to mine, then dart away, but not before I see the rage simmering there, the kind of quiet fury that destroys everything in its path, including the person who wields it.
“I’m going to kill Jackson, which means his father will have me executed.” He lets out a single low laugh that has my stomach twisting with dread.
“It’s a violation of one of the many rules of The Order.” He deepens his voice into a mocking cadence and recites, “A brother cannot harm another brother without just and proven cause.” Another laugh, this one even more chilling.
“What a load of bullshit.” A breath whooshes out of him as his head drops forward. He laces his fingers together behind his neck and squeezes his eyes closed. “Jackson’s father will string me up,” he mutters, “and mine will hand him the rope.”
A ragged breath escapes him. The rest comes pouring out, thick with guilt.
“Which is exactly what I deserve. You should’ve seen the fingerprints on her. The bruises.” His voice cracks. “It’s my fault she suffered like that. My fault she’s dead. I thought I had more time. I—”
“Stop, Carrson, just…you have to stop,” I interrupt, my heart in my throat.
“Why?” He meets my gaze, and the anguish in his eyes is deep enough to drown in.
“Because you’re right. You’ll die too.” What I don’t say is how the thought of that guts me. How even now, heartbroken, shaken by everything that’s happened, I still can’t bear the idea of this world without him in it.
Carrson terrifies me. Confuses me. But I don’t want him gone.
Not even close.
His head lifts, eyes locking on mine like he heard the words I didn’t speak. “Then tell me what to do,” he rasps. “Because all I want right now is to rage. I want to tear it all down.”
I reach for his hand, flattening it with mine, feeling the tension vibrating under his skin. “Then we do it the right way. We make him pay.” A plan is forming in my mind, puzzle pieces clickingtogether.
Carrson pulls away and looks at me suspiciously. “Why would you help me? You hate me for what I did to Richardson.”
“I’m not doing it for you. I’m doing it for Staci.” I exhale, slow and conflicted. “Also, Idohate what you did to Richardson, but that’s not the same as hating you. Part of me gets it, how if you let one brother take advantage of the system and cheat, it snowballs into two, and three, and soon there’s no,” I wince at the word, “order anymore.”
He’s silent for a second, then he frowns. “I knew you were in the dining hall. The entire time, I sensed you.”
My head snaps up. “Why didn’t you say something? You could have told me to go away. Closed the door.”
“Because I’m not hiding from you,” he says simply. “I won’t trick you. Promise you something I’m not.”
His hand traces the curve of my cheek, his calloused fingers dropping to caress my jaw. I feel the tremor in him, held in check by sheer will. He’s still on the edge of something dangerous.
I should pull away from his touch. I’m angry at him. Don’t trust him. Apparently my body didn’t get the memo. It relaxes at the first brush of his fingertips. I lean into him, an instinctive response, easy as breathing. His fingers trail lower. Down my throat until they rest at the hollow of my collarbone, where he must feel my pulse stuttering.
“I don’t regret what I did to Richardson,” he says, the words harsh, even though his touch is devastatingly gentle. “Not even a little bit. It was necessary.”
I pull back slowly, carefully, because I need space after that statement. His hand lingers in midair, fingers twitching like he wants to reach for me again, but, after a second, it drops to his side.
“I know that’s how you feel,” I tell him. “That doesn’t mean I have to agree with it or like it.” My voice catches. “Idon’tlike it.”
Silence stretches between us, taut and pulsing. In that quiet, the rain sounds louder, sharp splatters against the windowpane, a steady tap-tap-tapping as if the ghosts of this ancient house want to be let in.
“But…,” I glance away, my breath shallow, “I’m starting to realize I don’t fully understand the rules here. The way this place works.”
I let my gaze drop to the fresh cut on his forearm, the one he carved into his own skin when he was punishing Richardson. The wound is angry, red, and raw. Does it mean anything, I wonder, that he turned the knife on himself rather than inflict it on his brother?
My next words are quieter. “Maybe I need to learn that, to figure it out, before I pass judgment on you or anyone else.”
