“What?”
“Or would you close your eyes so you wouldn’t have to see me every time I came near you?”
Something about the way he says it makes me stop and I remember how people looked at me after Scott and Mom died. I remember that pity. And what I see in his eyes is exactly how I felt whenever I’d look at any of them.
I try to wipe the pity from my expression. It’s a powerful thing, that. It can make a victim or a villain out of you. I know what it’s made of Lucas and I need to be very careful with him.
“What happened to you is terrible, but it doesn’t have to define you now. It doesn’t have to be the way it is between you and Damian. He loves you. He misses you.”
A moment of confusion creases his forehead, then he grins. “We’re way past psychoanalysis, sweetheart. Just answer my question.”
“You don’t want me, Lucas. You want to take what’s his. That’s what this is about. That’s all any of this has ever been about for you.”
He sighs, grins. “True that I want to take what’s his, but don’t underestimate yourself, sweetheart.” He shifts his grip to my arm and hauls me up. “I have one more surprise for my brother tonight,” he says as he drags me through my room and out the door.
“What are you doing?”
He doesn’t answer me as he forces me through the hallway and down the stairs.
“Everyone out!” he calls to the soldiers scattered on the first floor.
They begin to file out as we descend. As I take in the smell. Register what it is.
Gasoline.
Gallons and gallons of gasoline on their sides and emptied all over the living and dining rooms. Soaking our furniture and carpets, my mom’s favorite curtains.
“Lucas, what are you doing? Let me go!” I scream as I miss a step and he has to catch me before I go flying face-first down the rest of the stairs.
“I told you I have a surprise for my dear brother.”
I can guess what that surprise is. I smell it. Gasoline fills my nostrils, making me nauseous.
“No, Lucas…”
I watch his men file out of the front door. I see Joseph and the other two lying on the ground, one in the foyer, shot between the eyebrows. Joseph is still alive but barely conscious as he bleeds out and the other face down in the corner of the living room.
“You can’t leave them…you have to get them help!”
He just snorts.
The front window is smashed. That must have been the shattering glass I heard.
“Let me go!” I cry out, fighting with all I have as he drags me through the dining room and down the hall, past the photos I’d been looking at just hours earlier.
He doesn’t let me go. He just keeps walking and his grip is like a vise around my arm. For the second time tonight, I pass by our happy, smiling faces as he takes me toward my father’s study door.
“Lucas, please!” He opens the door and drags me in, then closes it behind us. “No!”
“Sit,” he says, pushing me into my father’s desk chair.
At least the smell isn’t as bad in here. I don’t see any empty canisters either.
“What are you doing?” He picks up a length of rope that he’d set on a chair and a flashback to that night eight years ago makes the scream catch in my throat. “Lucas?”
He doesn’t speak. Instead, he slips the loop around my neck.
Instinctively, I reach up for it, but he’s too strong and easily pulls it tight, forcing my head backward. He looks down at me and I see myself reflected in his eyes, eyes and mouth wide in shock and terror.
He grins and loosens the rope a little.
“Don’t worry, it’s not the same noose my father used to hang yours.” He gets to work, slinging it over the beam above my head.
“What are you doing?” Terror like I’ve never felt before grips me as I close both hands around the rope at my neck trying to give myself room to breathe.
He swings it again and tugs, and I’m up on my feet when he does.
“Lucas!”
“Relax. We have a little time yet,” he says, securing the rope somewhere behind me and coming to stand in front of me.
I’m up on my tiptoes and the breaths I manage to take are labored, painful. I’m barefoot, I remember, feeling the rough carpet beneath my toes. I didn’t have a chance to put my boots on.
He sits on the edge of the desk and looks up at me, cocking his head to the side, grinning like the fucking Joker himself.
“Answer my question, will you? Would you kiss me or turn your head if it were me and not—”
“Damian,” I choke out, cutting him off. Pissing him off.