by C. Lymari
It fucking terrified me.
“Petal,” I hissed as I removed all my weight from her. Her eyes met mine, and they were dead. She blinked again, and everything she tried to keep locked inside was there, pouring out of her in waves.
Once upon a time, I wasn’t sure if I wanted to finish breaking her or protect her, but now I knew. There was a soft spot in her. Somewhere that she kept hidden deep in all the dark, she could lie to herself all she wanted, but I had gotten near it, and I thought that’s what scared her the most. The fact that I would see the real her.
She pushed me away and I let her. Her silver eyes were unguarded but not stormy. They were at peace. She sat at the edge of the bed, and I crouched in front of her. She smiled sadly at me.
“Oh, the irony,” she whispered. “The last time I was in this room, it was when Yoro came for me. My only safe place in the world stopped being safe.” Rage burned through me at the mere mention of his name, and I wanted to kill him all over again. The memory of him bent and screaming was enough to calm me down so that I could keep listening to her.
“My father wanted to do business with him, to have a share of everything his empire was going to profit from. I don’t know how he knew he liked younger girls, but that’s the thing about Ivan: he always found the thing you loved the most and exploited it. That’s who Damian learned from.”
“I’m going to kill every single person who has ever hurt you,” I vowed. “And once I’m in hell, I’ll find the ones I didn’t get to in this lifetime and make them suffer there too.”
She leaned forward and cupped my cheeks with both her hands. “You make me feel afraid. You make me forget and make me feel like I am not dying a bit inside every day, but I can’t have that. I learned to live without a heart, and I am okay with that. I have to be because if I forget everything I’ve been through, forget the ones who hurt me, and forget the pain, then everything I have been through will be in vain. Every single person who has been damaged by my people depend on me, and if I forget, then I am just like everyone who has turned their backs on the helpless. And if I have to sacrifice my own happiness, my own peace, for a war, I might not even win, I will do it, no questions asked. I won’t even bat an eyelash to trade what I want for what is right. If you keep pushing, I am going to keep pulling, and at the end of the day, I will do what I was trained to do—I’m going to kill you.” She closed her eyes, and a tear slid down her cheek, and I somehow managed to hold myself back. “Please,” she whispered. “Don’t make it so I have to kill you.”
“Why are you so afraid? I never took you for a fucking coward,” I spat because I was angry, but most of all, I was scared. We’d done this cat-and-mouse game but never like this. Never so raw that I felt her pain drip out of her pores, seeping into my soul. “What does Damian have against you? I don’t fucking get it, Petal.”
“That doesn’t matter.” She pushed my chest so I would allow her to leave.
“It does to me, and the only thing I can think of is that the fucker is in love with you, and you also broke his heart.”
Her chest shook with her macabre laughter. “Damian has no heart.”
“Then you better start talking, Petal, because I will go to him and tell him how you are planning to betray him.”
“That’s why he hates me,” she said, her voice cold and icy. “We are the last borns of the founding members. The only person with as much claim to the throne is me, and he knows that. It’s why he can’t kill me, but he will kill everything I hold dear. It’s why he watches me like a hawk because he knows I am coming for his throne.”
This time when she pushed me away, I let her. She got up and walked to the door. “I had hoped that if you survived Colombia, you’d hate me so much you’d stay away because I’d rather live in a world where you hated me than a world where you were dead.”
She was about to close the door when I spoke after her. “This changes nothing for me.”
This time Daphne didn’t turn back; she just walked out.
The next morning when I left my room, I almost tripped when I walked out the door. A long fur blanket laid neatly folded on my doorstep. I didn’t need to ask who had done it because I knew deep in my gut it had been her.
Once I had thrown the blankets back on my bed, I walked out toward Bastian’s room. His room was higher up because he said he didn’t like being in the lower levels. It felt suffocating. I’d call that trauma, but like hell if I’d tell him that. His door was semi-opened, so I pushed it and walked in.
He was most definitely up. He was in his bed, leaning back while two women made out right in front of him. He was in the middle of them, watching them with a bored expression.
“You aren’t having fun, love?” I told him as I sat on the chair that was by the fire.
He flicked me off. “Would you like to join us?”
The women stopped what they were doing and looked at me with interest.
“Why don’t you leave us alone? I like to keep him all to myself.” I winked at them.
“I’ll see you later,” Bas dismissed them.
We both watched as they got dressed and left the room.
“Mind putting your dick away, mate.” I leaned back and pulled a smoke.
“Aw, here I thought you were going to blow me.”
“If you want my dick in your mouth, all you had to do was ask, love.” I pretended to get up and unzip my trousers.
“Am I interrupting something?” Damian walked into the room, looking at Bastian and me with disgust. I looked at him, and there was something oddly familiar in him, but at the moment, I couldn’t bring myself to point out what. I had never stared at him intently, but I knew I was missing something.
“We were about to fuck each other,” Bastian said as he spread one of his legs, and you could tell he still had a boner. Damian’s lip curled in disgust.
“I didn’t realize you two were faggots.”
Bastian shrugged. “Guess you don’t know people like you thought you did.”
He was fucking with Damian, and it was working because his jaw went hard. To mess with him some more, I strolled to the bed and sat down next to Bastian.
“Does our sexual preference matter?” I asked, then took a drag of my smoke and blew it. “I fucked Yoro before I killed him. I didn’t think you cared.”
He didn’t have to know about the bloody armchair, but I enjoyed the look he was giving me now like he had underestimated me. He fucking had. He wanted to use me against Daphne, but it was me who was going to use her against him.
“I guess next time I need a princess, I’ll send one of you two. Unless you’re monogamous?” He took a step back.
Bas didn’t miss a beat. “I like to watch him get fucked.”
Damian looked like he was ready to break out in hives.
“Was there something you needed? As you can see, I need some tending to,” Bas said as he patted his dick.
“Did you manage to retrieve the object from Yoro’s house?”
“Yeah, it’s in my bag,” Bas said. I pretended not to care, but I was more curious than anything. Bas made a move to get up, but Damian stopped him, and I was thankful I didn’t need to see Bastian’s dick.
“Just make sure it’s on my desk tonight,” Damian said through gritted teeth before he left, slamming the door on the way out.
When the door closed, Bas put a finger up so I wouldn’t talk just in case he was by the door listening.
“I swear if you don’t cover your junk when you get up, I will chop it off,” I mumbled under my breath as Bas made a move to get up.
“If you wanted to touch my dick, all you had to do was ask. No need for violence,” he gloated as he got up.
I ashed my cigarette on his pillow.
Once Bastian put on his joggers and checked the door to make sure Damian was gone, he turned back to me.
“Two things.” I raised my middle and pointer finger in the air. “What the fuck was that all about. And what fucking object?�
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“I have a theory but never had the chance to act on it.”
“You know, I’m going to start to believe you really want to fucking date me,” I said to him.
Bastian touched his crotch. “You wouldn’t know what to do with this.”
“I need help. I don’t speak stupid—” The door opened, and Daphne walked in with an open laptop and glasses on her face. She stopped in the doorway and looked at Bastian, who was still holding on to his dick, and at me.
“Check this out for me and bring it to the lab when you have it figured out.” She handed him the laptop, then walked out of the room without another glance at me.
For now, I would let her go, but I’d be coming to the lab later on.
“Don’t you ever fucking close your door?” I asked as I got up from the bed.
“I have an open-door policy. Anyone can come in at any time, and they know it’s time to fuck.”
Of course he did.
“What object?” I snapped my fingers at him as I walked up and took the laptop from his hold.
Bastian made his way to one of his bags, and while he did that, I looked at the information on the laptop. It was a page on the black web where people exchanged information.
I quickly scanned it and saw they referenced a television show and food with a Disney movie. “What doesn’t she not get? These hints are pretty obvious.”
Bas grabbed the laptop, closed it, and threw it on the bed. “For you and me, yeah, but she grew up without a television; all her information came from Ivan. When she got older, she used the internet to read articles about history, world news, nothing pop culture.”
When he said it like that, I felt a churn in my gut. Despite not having my parents, I grew up with kids my own age, didn’t have sex until I was old enough—no sob case of molestation or anything like that.
“This is what Damian wants,” Bas said as he handed me a silver tiara.
Right away, I knew what it was—another one of Russia’s stolen jewels. If my memory served me correctly, that meant there was only one left. Daphne had the necklace, I had the brooch, and now Damian had the tiara.
“Does Daphne know about this?” I asked Bastian as I looked at him.
“I haven’t even told her that Yorovich is dead.”
That was fine with me. I was going to be the one to tell her that.
“And what was the whole deal with Damian?”
“He’s homophobic.”
I snorted. “Aren’t most Russians?”
“You don’t get it because you haven’t been here long enough. Yeah, sure, he doesn’t like gay people, but as a spy, you deal with that shit because it can blow your cover. He despises them to the point that his icy mask falls off, and you see hate on his eyes. If Ivan groomed and sold his own daughter, what was there to stop him from doing that to another child that wasn’t his? Why aren’t there more people here who are from the original families other than Daphne and Damian? It’s the only thing that makes sense, especially in how Damian got the throne.”
This was what I wanted to talk about this morning, especially after Daphne wishing to get it.
“How did he get the throne?”
“You haven’t been here long enough to try and call it.”
“Just give me the bloody information.”
“A member can call a blood duel.” I raised my brow because that sounded medieval and archaic. “The person calling upon the duel picks the weapon; it can’t be a gun or anything automatic. Then they duel until one of them dies. If the current head of the Sekt falls, the person who challenged them is now in charge.”
“Where the fuck is the lab?”
Tchaikovsky was playing in the room as I worked on a new serum I had been perfecting for the last couple of years.
This morning when I walked into Bas’s room, I kept my face straight, and over the night, I decided that I needed to treat Gideon like everyone else. Like he was of no importance to me. It was going to be the only way to survive this nightmare.
I was so lost in the music and in my thoughts that I didn’t hear the door open. My body was turned around, which was easy enough to do since the stool I sat on had wheels.
Gideon towered over me, and he looked enraged. His whiskey eyes shone with madness, his jaw rigid and sharp. I could taste his rage, and it was all directed at me.
“For the love of all is holy, please fucking tell me you aren’t planning to duel the motherfucking bastard!”
The cannons on the music started to play at that time, and I couldn’t help at how comical it all looked that I started to shake and burst with laughter. Gideon, however, didn’t find this funny. His eyes searched the room until he found my speaker. He walked up to it and threw it against the wall, and I watched as the thing shattered into pieces.
“Do that again,” he demanded as he faced the wall. Slowly he turned around, and I saw as his chest rose and fell. “I’ve never heard you laugh.”
The remainder of my smile dropped. “You once told me not to do it.”
He walked back to where I was and pulled me out of my chair, then pushed aside what I had been working on and sat me on the metal table.
“You can’t just move my stuff,” I hissed as I turned and fixed the serum. I sometimes work with deadly viruses and pathogens—now that could have been catastrophic.
When I turned back around, he was sitting on my chair. As soon as our eyes met, he put his hands on my waist. The feeling was like being set on fire and liking the feel of the flames.
“I told you not to smile because I didn’t like the thought of anyone else seeing you like that.” Now it was me who couldn’t breathe, but he didn’t stop there. “I bet I can count on one hand the number of people who have seen you smile, and that’s still four too many.”
“That’s a bit irrational, don’t you think?” I said in a breathy voice because he made it hard to breathe—to think.
He stood up, his hands coming to my sides as he towered over me. “For as long as I can remember, nothing I’ve ever had was mine. Not my clothes, my bed, cot, or piece of the floor I slept on. Showing your body, sex, money, none of that has meaning to you, but that moment you smiled at me—fuck, it was like you stole a piece of me right there and then. Like my fucked-up soul recognized something in yours, and I knew I would kill the person who dared and come between that because, for the first time in my life, I found something that was just for me.”
The pressure on my chest was too much that it felt warm, but it also hurt. Like I wanted to rejoice and cry.
“There’s a softness to you, Petal, that most will never see, and I think of that part as mine.” His mouth was hovering over mine now, and I could feel the warmth of his breath teasing my skin. “That’s why I swallow every moan, whimper, the breathy way you say my name because I know you have never said anyone’s name like that, and Petal—” He pulled back so he could look at me. He looked deadly, ready for war, and I was breaking my walls, prepared to crack down and shatter all around—because of him.
“—no one ever will. For the first time, I have something that’s mine, and I will kill anyone who dares touch it. I don’t give a fuck if you want me to stay away. I’m selfish and cunning, and if I have to make you bend to my fucking will so that I can keep that softness that’s only ever been for me, I would do it with no remorse.”
I opened my mouth to try and protest, but he cut me off with his lips. The touch of his skin, the taste of his lips, all of it killed me. I’d been strong for so long, living in a world of pain and darkness, his kiss felt like lightness and hope despite the stains he carried in his soul.
“We”—my lips moved against his—“can’t.”
His hand came to my chin as he pulled away with one slow kiss. “Then prepare to fight a war on all ends, Petal. Fight Damian, the world, and me, because I will wear you down. And if you die before that happens, I will kill everyone. I don’t care if they are your enemies or your friends, I will kill everything so
your death will be in vain.”
I could see the truth in his eyes and taste revenge on his lips. “You’re not giving me a choice at all.”
His grip on my chin became harder, and he brought his head down so we were touching. His nose rubbed against my own. “I’m giving you the choice to be mine before I fucking make you.”
Willing my eyes to close was hard because I was lost in his eyes. Lost in the way he made me feel, but I couldn’t just agree to his demands. There was so much riding on my shoulders, and I was scared.
He might have grown up with nothing, and I might have had everything, but still, no one had ever given me what he had given me. He gave me his loyalty without demanding mine in return. He didn’t groom me to obey him. He didn’t join my section for me to be loyal to him. He didn’t give me affection because his wrongs rested on my shoulders. He just gave them to me, and the only thing he asked in return was for me to admit that I felt the same.
“You’re asking—”
“To let me in,” he finished. He pulled away and held my cheeks in his hands. “I’m going to give you some time to think about your answer.”
My shoulders sagged in relief.
“You have until the end of the night.”
I started to laugh at his cynicism. “You are—”
He smiled at me. “Charming, unbelievably good-looking, a beast in bed.”
Shaking my head, I started to push him away when someone spoke, making us both turn toward the hallway.
“Was really hoping you two were going to fuck.”
“Did you find what I asked you to?” I finished pushing Gideon away and made my way to Bastian. He handed me my laptop, and he was still on the chat I had asked him to decrypt for me. I was usually great myself if they used anything to do with history, but when they used celebrities, modern music, and movies, I was clueless.
“They’re talking about me.”
Putting the laptop on the table, I grabbed the stool, sat down, and reread the message.
I’d always thought it was funny how Edwin went missing from Dallas. Then he was spotted eating a hot dog without ketchup. And no word on Cinderella ever again, until she was found sleeping and they just threw diamonds and called it a day.
