Page 52 of Before the Fall

I stare down at my older brother lying on the grass at my feet and think about how when I was a boy I idolized Victor. He was so confident compared to me. Our father always thought he’d succeed him because only Victor was strong like him. I wanted to be like this person, and now all I want to do is kill him.

“Just fucking do it, Ryker. Have the balls after all to do what’s necessary. Then you can go back to your life of wedded bliss. You’ll be haunted by my death at your hands, though. I let you live when I didn’t have to. Remember that.”

Victor has always known what to say to get into my head. It’s why I’ve hesitated all these months to do what was needed when it came to him. I knew what he was up to and how he was a risk to all the people I cared about, but I couldn’t forget the time he had me in a very similar situation as right now with his gun pointed at my head and let me go.

That was a long time ago, though. I was a different person. Maybe he was too. I don’t know. So much has changed in the time since that day. I swore I’d never let myself be put in that position again and walked away from the way he wanted to run our family.

And now, we’ve come full circle. Now, he’s the one who needs me to show him mercy.

But I can’t do that. He’s done things that are unforgivable, even in our world. He hurt the woman I love. His actions have hurt the Varens name. He’s out of control and has been for far too long.

So now I have to do the worst thing a brother can do.

“I never wanted things to come to this,” I say, staring down into eyes that remind me so much of mine.

I’m shocked at how he looks these days. In my mind, he’s always been bigger than life, but now he’s just a bloated old man. Then I look again and see how much he resembles our father at the end of his life. Overweight and worn down by years of corruption and living a life full of hurting others, including his family, our father wore the ugliness of his soul on the outside of his body.

“Since you’ve sat on your hands forever, I knew you didn’t want to do this. You still don’t. I would have killed you the second I saw you if you took something I cared about. You’ve always been like this, though. Our father knew that. It’s why he put me in charge of the business.”

I smile at his sad attempt to stoke my rage. “He chose you because you were older and just like him. It was that simple.”

“He knew I could make the Varens name even greater than he made it. He was right,” my brother smugly declares.

I think I always knew this moment would have to happen. If I was younger and didn’t have Kaia and Maxim when he went off the rails, I may have been as eager as Jaxon to snuff out Victor’s life. I’m older now, though. I’ve got other priorities than the business, so maybe my brother is right. Maybe he was better at leading the family.

It doesn’t change what I must do.

“Jaxon wanted to be the one to kill you for what you did to him and Tia. Your son wouldn’t mind being the one to send you to hell either. What does that tell you, Victor?”

He doesn’t even bother to think about my question before he practically spits the answer out. “It tells me they’re fucking pathetic like you. Once I’m gone, what are you going to blame everything on? Once I’m not around, who is Jaxon or Cason going to say is making their lives terrible? You need me.”

I look up and see Cason watching his father taunt me. He frowns and shakes his head before looking away.

“See? Even your kid doesn’t think you’re worth it. What you never understood was we were all family. You didn’t have to try to get rid of us. All you had to do was remember we’re your blood.”

Victor looks back at Cason and laughs. “He was always too much like his mother anyway.”

Even seconds before he’s going to die, he still doesn’t have a kind word for his son. What a legacy to leave this world with.

My finger twitches on the gun as my hand begins to shake. “Tell Dad I was the one who did it.”

A moment later, the bullet explodes out of my gun, killing my older brother with one shot to the head.

The world feels like it stops for a long time, as if it ceases turning as I stand here staring down at my brother dead by my own hand. Some part of me always knew this day would come. I didn’t want to admit that for a long time, but once I did, I still couldn’t bring myself to imagine it would be because of me that Victor would come to this end.

I hear my father’s words echo in my brain. “Ryker, to be a leader, you must do what’s necessary. That isn’t always the right thing or the thing that makes you feel good, but it’s what must be done.”

He used to say things like that to me all the time, and I never understood why since Victor was always going to be the head of the family. That’s the way my father wanted it, so what would I need to know about being a leader?

So many times, I asked myself that question since I could never ask him that, but the answer eluded me. For many years, I assumed my father said that to me as a way of justifying Victor’s actions that I’d have to deal with in years to come.

Now I know that wasn’t true. My father likely knew at some point I would want to lead the Varens family, and to do that, I would have to eliminate the one person who would stand in my way.

My brother Victor.

I watch the blood flow from his body, the last sign of his life, and wonder if I should feel anything after all he did in this world. If so, then there must be something wrong with me because I feel empty. That’s it. Empty. Not sad. Not unhappy.

Just empty, like a void.