Scarred Queen

by Nikita Slater

  The doctor gave her a clipped nod and pulled up one the plastic chairs so he was sitting opposite of her when he spoke. Casey respected him a little more when he pulled that move, considering her sentinels both stiffened and looked utterly unimpressed with the man’s proximity to his patient. Apparently, Reyes was finished with having these people anywhere near his woman. She squeezed his hand so he wouldn’t attack the man before she got her much needed information.

  The doctor addressed only her, plunging directly into his findings with no preliminaries. “Your initial bloodwork findings have come back normal, there doesn’t seem to be any hormonal issues that are causing your migraines, though we’ll send it away for further checks. And of course, as we explained earlier, research in this field is always developing.”

  Casey tried hard not to roll her eyes and waved her hand impatiently at him. He’d gone over most of this already. She’d been pretty positive her migraines weren’t hormone related. Obviously, he was stalling as he built toward what was actually wrong with her.

  He leaned forward, shifting in the chair. She thought she detected a slight wince. See, the chairs are horrible! You monsters torture us with the chairs and the MRI machines! she wanted to shout at him, but dug her fingers into the back of Reyes’ hand instead. He didn’t even twitch as she sank her nails into his flesh, knowing the pasty doctor was working his way toward a truth that would shatter her. She wondered where he was from. He really was quite pale, and to a woman with colour-blindness a person almost had to glow for that to become apparent. His accent seemed European or something. And his name… what was his name again? She frowned. Oh, his lips were moving again. Time to tune back in.

  “… Your MRI came back completely normal.”

  Casey frowned when he stopped talking and simply looked at her. She waited for him to go on with more of an explanation. There had to be something. Something to explain the migraines, the memory loss, the weird personality ticks, the drifts she took. It couldn’t all be the trauma of a failed marriage. It had to be physical. Or… or she was weak; too weak to run an empire with Reyes.

  When the doctor didn’t give her any further explanation, she said in a voice dripping with ice, “Then explain the memory loss.”

  The doctor’s face softened with sympathy and he reached out to take the hand that had clenched tightly in her lap. Reyes reacted immediately, snarling in response, “You’ve touched her enough for one day. Touch again without permission and lose a hand. Get on with your findings and move on to the next patient.”

  The doctor’s face blanched and his head snapped up. He gaped at Reyes for a solid ten seconds before he remembered what he was supposed to be doing. Casey would have felt bad for him if her butt wasn’t so numb. A private clinic really ought to afford better furniture!

  “Right!” The doctor hurried to open the file he’d been clutching between his legs. Casey glanced back sharply at Miguel who’d shifted uncomfortably and looked even more upset than before. Really, the man looked as though he was going to cry! They must now be approaching the upsetting news.

  “It’s a tumor, isn’t it?” Casey blurted out tearfully.

  “Of course not, Mrs. Reyes,” the other doctor that had remained silent throughout the entire procedure, and, in fact, most of the day, murmured soothingly. “You’re clear on any form of mass. Benign or otherwise.” She smiled kindly.

  Casey smiled back tremulously, grateful for the straight answer. Jesus, she’d wished that particular doctor had been the one giving her the news. She seemed to have a better bedside manner than all the men put together. And Casey would bet money that she’d pick better chairs too.

  “Then what the fuck is wrong with my wife?” Reyes snapped, finally losing patience and giving the room his favourite ‘I’m about to fuck shit up until I get all the answers’ glare. Casey giggled, despite her tension. She loved when he got all protective and angry. It made her feel warm and fuzzy.

  The doctor cleared his throat and leaned back in his chair, putting some distance between himself, the mafioso couple and their equally terrifying second-in-command. He spoke quickly and directly, “While Casey’s bloodwork and MRI are normal, her x-ray has shown anomalies. The fracture lines in her skull are not consistent with an impact from a car crash.”

  Reyes’ fingers bit deep into Casey’s shoulder causing her to squirm. She expected him to say something, to rage and demand answers. In fact, she waited breathlessly for him to do just that. When he remained silent at her side, continuing to bruise the tender flesh of her shoulder, she tilted her head back, her hair shifting against the hood of her sweater and gave him a questioning look. He looked back down at her, his own expression completely blank.

  Her lips parted and her eyes widened in accusation. “Y-you knew?” she whispered.

  She didn’t need an answer. His lack of reaction told her everything. She tried to force her frozen brain to work, tried to understand what was happening in the room around her. The subtle shifting of the bodies. The painful bite of Reyes fingers. She reached up and pried his fingers away. He allowed it. She was under no illusion that she could have removed his hand if he wanted to keep it there. No, he was giving her the distance she craved in that moment.

  He knew. He fucking knew. Which meant they’d come to Brazil not to find answers, but to find confirmation of some kind.

  She lifted accusatory eyes to his and said coldly, “Ignacio told you something, didn’t he? Before he died.”

  Still his face remained flat. She uncurled her fingers and tensed, preparing to fly at him, rake her fingers down his impassive, scarred face until he told her the truth, told her what her late husband had told him before Reyes killed him. How had she ever trusted this man? A heavy hand landed on Casey’s other shoulder, pinning her to the chair. She jumped, her head snapping around to confront the one that dared touch her while her heart was in the process of shattering.

  Alejandro gave her a slight shake of the head. He’d read her mind and was telling her not to attack Reyes. She took a deep breath and ruthlessly brought herself under control. He was right. She’d grown comfortable with Reyes as her lover, her confidant and even, sometimes, her friend. But he was still the Bolivian boss. If she attacked him in a room full of people, he would have to retaliate; to brutally, ruthlessly shut her down. He could not afford to show weakness. Not with her, not with anyone.

  With Alejandro’s warm, comforting touch and Reyes dark presence at her side she turned to the doctor and demanded, her voice imperious, “Tell me the rest.”

  He nodded, his eyes on hers, a mixture of awe and pity. He opened the file and removed the x-ray, holding it out for her to see. “It’s remarkable really, how well your brain has healed from the type of injury we’re seeing here. Your description of multiple surgeries and a five-week medically induced coma are consistent with this type of trauma. I believe that the migraines are probably a result of the original trauma that occurred when you were eighteen though we aren’t able to absolutely confirm this diagnosis. We can, however, give you better medications to help manage the symptoms.”

  She brushed off his reassurances and focused on the one important word he kept saying over and over again. “What trauma?”

  He dropped his eyes, finally refusing to look her in the face. The room seemed to go completely still and she realized every single person in the room knew the truth of what was on the x-ray except for her. She stared at it, forcing her brain to acknowledge what everyone else could see, but she was somehow missing.

  The doctor touched the photo and traced the tip of his fingernail along something she still couldn’t understand. A delicate pattern of some kind radiating out from a dark spot. Without looking up, he said softly, “Gunshot wound to the head.”

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  “Impossible!” Casey snapped after a moment of silence. “I was in a car wreck. It killed my entire family!”

  No one moved. No one said anything. They simply waited, statues in a
still room as denial crashed over her. She felt hot. Prickles of heat penetrating all down her skin as some kind of truth tried to sweep over her. She shook her head and then she pushed her shoulders up, shrugging Alejandro’s hand away. He knew. He knew just as much as Reyes had known. They’d all known.

  But they were wrong.

  Her family had died on a highway. She slammed her eyes shut and buried her hands in her hair, gripping the pale blond strands in tight fists as she forced herself to conjure a memory that wouldn’t come. Had never come. A memory of a happy family driving, screeching brakes, twisting metal, the smell of fire, people screaming, ambulance sirens. Nothing. There was nothing. There had never been any memories of the accident.

  Ignacio and his doctor had assured her the trauma was too great and that she would probably never remember. A sob escaped her lips. She opened her hand and smacked herself in the side of the head. Something was trying to surface. Another memory, something powerful was rising up. Dark and swirling, images flashing like a movie in fast forward. Glimpses of something she couldn’t hold on to.

  “Leave.”

  Casey barely registered his voice as Reyes ordered everyone out of the room. She wanted him to go too. Wanted him to leave her alone while she floundered in the murky blackness of her own brain. But she knew he wouldn’t. He would relentlessly watch over her. Whether she wanted it or not.

  She felt the heat of Alejandro leave her side. Felt the coolness down her side and registered the closing of the door as they were left alone together. Deciding her ass had been numb for long enough she tried pushing herself off the chair, but her body had other ideas and she slid to the floor instead, landing with a thump on her knees on the cheap linoleum. Reyes tried reaching for her, but Casey snarled and slashed her hand at him.

  “Don’t touch me!” she yelled, her voice echoing in the room.

  She felt the instant tension snap through his body, knew he wouldn’t allow this kind of insult pass from anyone else, no matter what kind of day they were having. She waited for retaliation, waited for him to haul her to her feet and force her compliance. She was weakening before his eyes. She wasn’t the woman he’d been spending weeks loving and building up, preparing for a position at his side. She was the pathetic creature he’d found in Miami.

  He didn’t say a word though. He just stared down at her as she continued to sink into the pit of swirling dizziness capturing her mind and sweeping her along on a tidal wave of madness. Shot in the head. She’d been shot in the head. She should be dead… but she wasn’t. Her family was though. She lifted accusing eyes to the man that could give her the answers.

  Her voice was hoarse but strong when she spoke. “They were shot too, weren’t they?” she demanded. “There was never any car wreck. All of them were shot. My mom, my dad, my brother and sisters. All murdered.”

  He didn’t even hesitate. “Yes.”

  She screamed, the sound tearing from her throat as rage and sorrow crashed through her chest and erupted out of her mouth. It echoed through the room. She rocked back on her heels and screamed until she couldn’t anymore, until her voice died away into soft cries. Reyes didn’t try to touch her this time though. She saw him flinch for just a second and something like anguish cross his features before he reverted to his impassive expression. He felt her pain as it rippled through her body. As denial fell away and reality settled on her shoulders like a bleak, shadowy cloak. She pictured the horrific way in which her family had died. Had they died one at a time, execution-style or had they been slaughtered like animals as they’d tried to run?

  “But I survived,” she said, drawing herself up on her knees. Awe, terror and despair mixed in her voice as she processed the magnitude of her new truth. “I survived getting shot in the fucking head.”

  He nodded, his eyes meeting hers. He allowed her to see his vulnerability, the sheer relief he felt that she’d survived. He wasn’t even going to pretend that he was detached about the possibility of her having died. They’d gone past that point in their relationship. Too much had happened to them.

  Casey struggled to her feet. Reyes reached out to help her but she slapped his arm away and then gave him a hard shove for good measure. She could feel the tightening of his body, the need for him to grab her, to take what he wanted regardless of her feelings. She saw the powerful ripple of muscle down his arms and the tendons in his neck stand out as he gritted his teeth and glared at her.

  She stood her ground though, fists clenched and hissed at him, “You knew and you brought me here!”

  He nodded in confirmation, but said, “Choose your words carefully, nena. I know you’re hurting, but I am still your master, your king.”

  She bared her teeth at him. “What are you going to do, Reyes, finish the job?” she snarled, pointing a finger at his chest.

  He grabbed her wrist so swiftly she barely had a chance to back up before he was slamming her into the wall behind them. “Is that what you want, Casey?” he growled into her face, reaching for her other wrist and dragging her arms over her head. “You want me to finish the job? Because I won’t allow this. Mi reina will stand strong or she will die. You decide.”

  She thrust her chin out at him, growling back in defiance, tempted to tell him that he was welcome to finish the job, but then something pushed at the edge of her consciousness; a memory that was waking up slowly, stalking forward. She gasped, her vision flooding with something. A horrible, terrible colour. Red maybe… yes it must be red, this terrible thing that washed over everything. Then the memory flooded in as though it had been waiting for this moment, whispering in the wings of her subconscious, fluttering until she was either strong enough to handle it or weak enough that she could no longer deny it.

  She saw them all. Lined up on their knees, begging for their lives. Her parents begging for the lives of their children as they were shot one at a time execution-style by a group of men. Then she saw… she saw… Ignacio… standing over her, a look of almost longing or maybe loss on his face as he turned away and pulled the trigger. Then she fell. But she was still conscious as she lay on the floor, blood seeping from her head, across her face, dripping from her chin as she watched her family die. She blinked. Mother down. Blink. Sister down. Blink. All down.

  Red. Is that what this colour is? This shadowy thing spreading out across the floor from her face as Ignacio and his men walked away from her.

  Blink. Inky, cold blackness.

  “Casey?” Reyes’ voice pulled her back, his hands tightened on her wrists reminding her that she had always been his pawn.

  “You brought me here, to the clinic, to find out for sure. Didn’t you?” she whispered.

  He didn’t lie to her. That was one thing she admired about Reyes, even while he gripped something inside of her and crushed it. “Yes, nena, I needed to know if Ignacio was confessing the truth. Not all men are honest under torture,” he told her brutally. “But I also wanted to know if they could help you here. Give you something to ease your headaches.”

  She stared up at him with something approaching hatred. “Take your hands off me! Leave me alone!” she snarled.

  “Never!” he thundered back at her, finally snapping under the pressure of seeing his woman take constant hits and being unable to do anything about it. “I will never leave you alone, Casey Reyes.”

  “Reyes is not my name,” she said scathingly, fury vibrating through every word. “I am not your wife. The name I carry is tainted with the blood of my family.”

  “You will marry me, nena, and you will take my name,” he snarled, lowering his mouth to hers and pressing it gently against the curve of her trembling lips despite the violence swirling around them. “Nothing less is acceptable. You have belonged to me from the moment I set eyes on you. From your fucked-up eyes, the grey world you live in, the pain in your head to the mark on your hand. It all belongs to me. It’s mine, Casey, you understand?”

  Her heart pounded at the intensity of his words while tears seeped from her
eyes as visions of her dead family continued to flash through her brain, tormenting her in a vivid re-play like it had happened only yesterday instead of a decade ago. He continued to brush his lips against hers, soothingly, possessively.

  “You want to marry me, Reyes?” she whispered, her breath shuddering against him as his tongue dipped out to taste the edge of her mouth. “You want to keep me forever? Willing and heart whole?”

  He opened his eyes and looked into hers. Burning heat from that dark, possessive gaze. She knew what he was telling her. He could take her and keep her without her permission. He’d already done it. But she also sensed the longing within him. The longing for his queen; the woman that could willingly stand strong and reign by his side.

  “What will it take?” he asked.

  She smiled without warmth, her lips curving against his. “I want everyone involved in the death of my family. The person that gave the order, the people that covered it up, the men that pulled the triggers. Everyone. I want to kill them all, Reyes.”

  She felt the catch in his breath. His fingers bit into the flesh of her hip and he slammed her against the wall, pressing his hard erection against the cradle of her thighs. Her bloodthirsty declaration had turned him on. “You have my word, mi reina,” he growled against her mouth before slanting his lips over hers. Casey tugged her wrists from his restraining hold, buried her hands in his hair and kissed him back.

  I want to see red, she thought, I won’t rest until I see red again, as she drifted in a haze of hate and desire.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  “Casey, ven aqui ahora!”

  The thunder in Reyes’ voice was enough to send the birds in the bushes fleeing for the skies. Casey stiffened but didn’t turn to look at the man emerging from the house to shout at her back. When she didn’t immediately respond to his demand, she felt the snapping anger in his demeanor reach out for her across the expansive yard. Then she heard him stalk toward her as he moved with the lethal grace of a jungle cat. She could tell from the edginess of the nearby guards that he was making his way toward her. She stiffened her posture, but maintained her position next to the fountain at the back of their colossal mansion.