"burn Those Who Burned Me!" Novels & Stories

Then the poetry. Handwritten. Sometimes sonnets. Sometimes messy, jagged pieces that felt like they’d been ripped straight from his chest. One read: If I could be the rain that slips down your shoulder, If I could be the sky you look up at in rage I’d let you strike me down, again and again, If only to stay close to your fire. I threw that one in the trash. Three hours later, it was tucked inside the cash register. And then came the books. First editions. Stories I’d loved. Stories I’d once read aloud to Damien in the Blackwood library when we were young and tangled in something that felt like forever.

My chest caved like a fist crushing bone. I gripped the wheel of my desk so tight I thought it would break. My knuckles split, blood smeared, but I couldn’t feel it. I couldn’t feel nothing but fire crawling through my veins, fire that screamed her name, fire that wanted to burn Rome, burn Valerio, burn Giovanni until nothing but ash. I whispered through my teeth, low and sharp so it cut my tongue: “Burn it all. Burn them all.”

Through the bronze mirror, I saw the floodwaters nearly reaching Raven's window. No wonder she was calling me. But still, she was the one begging for help, and she had the nerve to act all high and mighty. Her impatient voice rang out again. "Hey, why aren't you saying anything? I'm only agreeing to work with you because you're my sister. Don't be ungrateful." I gave her a mocking smile. "Oh, should I be thanking you, then?"

But for the future he had imagined,the laughter, the plans, the whispered dreams were all destroyed by the person he had trusted most. And in that silence, Jerome Liu understood one bitter truth: Some doors, once opened, can never be closed again. Some hearts, once broken, never truly heal. And some betrayals… linger in the soul, burning, haunting, and shaping everyt hing that comes after. Tonight, his soul had been scorched. And there was no turning back.

Be it out of old ties or kindness, my heart softened. Just as I stepped onto the stage, the entire refrigerated warehouse suddenly went dark with a loud hum. Sunlight pierced through the walls, and the temperature inside shot up. The crowd panicked, desperate to escape, but the scorching heat outside forced them back, their faces twisted in despair.

One review — the one that mattered, the critic who had said the second novel made staying feel like the bravest possible choice — wrote: The Morning is the final novel of the Burn Between Us sequence, and it does something I have never seen a four-novel sequence do: it ends by refusing to end. The last sentence is a morning. An ordinary morning, in a specific kitchen, with the coffee and the light and the person still asleep. Nothing happens in the last sentence except everything having been built. And the reader closes the book and looks up, and their own kitchen is there, and their own morning is coming tomorrow, and the novel has quietly handed you the only thing a novel can truly give: t

Every piece a puzzle to Ethan's empire. A small trail of gasoline trickled behind me like a fuse. I stood tall, flipping the lighter open. My thumb hesitated over the flame for just a second. "This is what he did to you," I whispered to myself. "He made you burn." The flame came to life. I tossed it. The warehouse exploded into light and heat behind me. I didn’t flinch. I walked away slowly, boots crunching gravel, eyes dead ahead. Let it burn. Let him burn.

Halfway through our reunion with some friends, my fiancée went missing. I was about to look for her when comments started popping right in front of me. "What's the second lead doing, coming to his car? The male and female lead are still going at it!" "I love seeing how his new car has become the stage for the lead characters' first time!" "That's what he gets for taking the male lead's spot for too long!" Our mutuals stopped us. "Helga's gone to get you a present. You should go back and wait." "Friends for life. They're covering up for the male and female leads," read one comment. "The beautiful female lead belongs to no one but the male lead! If I were there, I’d lie to that jerk too!

“Oh, of course you don’t. How stupid of me. But even if you no longer remember me, I haven’t forgotten you. There wasn’t a day that I forgot you. “You took my dad’s life, my mom’s sanity, and you took my supposed to be happy life! You took everything away from me! You are so greedy, Benedict! You left me with nothing. I don’t give a damn about the company anymore. You can have that all to yourself. But what about the life that you mercilessly took away?” My eyes brimmed with tears. “Stop this bullshit, McClennan, and return to your old self so you could pay for all your sins! Fight fair for once, damn you!” “Clarice.”

There was a moment of silence and the next minute, the thousand trainees/protesters obeyed, dropping to their knees in sync, the sound of their legs meeting the hard granite echoing. I raised my hand to my forehead to shield my eyes from the orange sunlight as the day was already coming to an end. "Pugnamus et nulla est misericordia donec vincamus!" I yelled, balling my fists and raising them to my shoulder. ~We fight and there's no mercy until we win! Even when I knew they didn't understand a word I said, they raised their balled fists and let out a loud cry. "To the Blackwood estate!" Siobahn yelled from behind me, leading everyone to chant happily in return.