by Stella Hart
“I’ve often wondered how much my son takes after his mother compared to how much he takes after me,” he went on. “I’ve always tried to mold him in my image so that he can carry on my legacy one day, but sometimes I’m not sure he has what it takes. So I decided to get you for him as a sort of… test. Not just a gift. If things with you proceed according to my plan, then I’ll know he’s a true King.”
“So what, you’re grooming him to be the next family patriarch or something?” I said.
“In a manner of speaking.” That nasty smile again.
“Well, I have a feeling you’re actually right about him not taking after you,” I said, boldly staring right back at him. “He’s not like you at all.”
Tobias sneered at me. “What do you mean?”
“He was surprised when I told him I didn’t sell myself to your awful little society. He seems to think all the girls are here as willing prostitutes. That gives me the impression he won’t be too happy with you when he finds out you’ve been lying to him all along.”
I thought Tobias would look shocked, but instead he started laughing again.
“What’s so funny?” I said indignantly.
“Elias knows,” he said, leaning close to me.
My heart skipped a beat. “What?”
“He is well aware of the fact that you’re here against your will. It was his idea to make you think he didn’t know. He thought it would be amusing to play with you and make you think you had some sort of chance with him. As if he’d fall in love with you and swoop in to rescue you the second he ‘discovered’ that you were here unwillingly. He’s been laughing about it behind your back for weeks.”
A monstrous bird seemed to unfurl its wings inside my chest, and my vision blurred around the edges. Then a red film seemed to descend over it. After all the horrible shit he’d done, all the horrible shit he’d said, this was the thing that sent me careening over the edge into pure, unadulterated rage.
All those times I thought I actually wanted Elias, all those times I thought I was feeling something for him… I was just crazed from the isolation, the naked defenselessness, the sheer hopelessness. I convinced myself it wasn’t Stockholm, but I was wrong.
So wrong.
I wasn’t falling for him at all. With the truth laid bare before me, all I felt was blinding hatred. He knew I didn’t belong here all along, and he and his nasty, evil father had been laughing behind my back about the whole thing, as if my illegal captivity and torture were nothing more than a hilarious game.
Adrenaline rushed through my body and my hands shook with fury. I wanted to make these King bastards pay, wanted to destroy them the way they’d tried to destroy me.
“Fuck you, Tobias,” I hissed through my teeth. “I’m going to get out of here, and I’m going to fucking ruin you and your son, even if it ends up killing me.”
“Again, that’s not very polite,” Tobias said breezily, lips turned up in amusement. “Very unbecoming for a young lady. Although I suppose we can’t expect much from a trashy little wh—”
“I said, fuck you!” I screamed, cutting him off. At the same time, I leapt onto the bed and grabbed the straightened bed spring I’d hidden in the wall vent all those weeks ago. “Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you!”
As I shrieked, I jammed the thin metal lance down into Tobias’s neck.
His eyes went wide. For the first time, I’d caught him off guard.
Nothing happened for a few seconds, and the whole world seemed to have gone silent. Blood suddenly began to spurt out, coating the white sheets in thick streaks of crimson, filling my nostrils with the scent of iron. Tobias gasped out something unintelligible, spluttering and choking, and he finally slumped to the floor.
Then his eyes closed.
18
Elias
The elevator hummed slightly as I rode it down to the underground level. A bouquet of pink carnations hung loosely in my left hand, and I looked down at them with a faint smile. I couldn’t wait to see Tatum’s face when I gave them to her.
My plan to make her fall for me was running smoothly. She was responding to me a lot better nowadays—aside from when she slapped me the other week, but I managed to turn that situation around to my benefit—and I could tell that the walls she’d built up around herself were falling, brick by brick.
I had a lot of shit to do back at Roden over the last week, so I’d left her here alone for several days just to give her time to miss me. Time to start craving me and my company again. After all, they say absence makes the heart grow fonder.
She was probably sitting in her cell right now, sighing and mooning over me, silently begging me to return and fuck her brains out again. When she saw the flowers in my hand, she’d probably melt all over the floor.
Most people these days disliked carnations and thought they were tacky, but I knew they were Tatum’s favorite. I didn’t get them because I actually liked her, of course. They simply served a purpose in my plan of making her think I genuinely cared about her interests, likes and dislikes.
Truth be told, I despised her more than ever, because the effect she had on me was driving me mad. I kept telling myself I didn’t give a fuck about her, but whenever I saw her wide blue eyes staring up at me, something deep down inside would twitch and a spark would ignite.
Like the stupid Bonding ceremony, for instance. I wasn’t supposed to give a fuck what she wanted, wasn’t supposed to ask for her permission or anything of the sort. I didn’t need to, because I already got her permission when she signed her life and all her rights over to Crown and Dagger.
And yet, seeing her lying on the altar all wide-eyed and trembling sent a strange protective urge flooding through my veins. I had to ask her if she really wanted it; if she really wanted me. Of course, she said yes. She fucking had to. It was literally in her contract that she had to give her master anything he might want, so it was stupid and pointless of me to even ask.
I hated her for making me feel like that. Hated her for turning some treacherous little part of me soft and sympathetic. I didn’t want to feel anything toward her other than the unbridled malice I felt the first time I heard her name.
The elevator door pinged and opened, and I stepped out into the hallway. Someone was shouting, and Tatum’s door appeared to be wide open. Farther down the hall, three guards were pushing a gurney at breakneck speed, toward the wider service elevator at the other end. “Keep the fucking pressure on it! Don’t let go!” one of them shouted at the others.
Shit. Tatum could be hurt….
I dropped the bouquet, showering the floor with pink petals.
“What the fuck is happening?” I shouted, dashing toward Tatum’s cell.
A grisly scene awaited me. Blood was everywhere: spatter flying up the white walls, trails criss-crosssing the concrete floor, wide smears on the door, thick puddles soaked into the sheets on the bed.
Oh, fuck.
Tatum was sitting in the corner of the room, drenched in blood as well. Two guards were standing in the room, keeping watch over her.
“Sir, you shouldn’t be here,” one of them said, turning to me.
“Why the hell not?”
“You should be with your father. They’re rushing him to the medical wing right now.”
My brows furrowed. “Wait… my father?”
He gestured to Tatum. “She managed to get a weapon somehow. Stabbed him in the side of the neck and nicked some sort of artery or major vein. He might’ve bled out before we even noticed, but luckily, she was screaming loud enough to make us want to come and check things out. We found him just in time. Jones knows some basic med stuff so he applied pressure immediately to try and stop the bleeding. Seemed to work, but obviously we’ll let the doc be the judge…” He trailed off uncertainly, scrubbing a hand across his chin.
It felt like the floor had just dropped out from under me as a knife jabbed directly into my heart. My eyes widened and I stared back over at Tatum. “You stabbed my father?
”
She smiled. Fucking smiled. “You’re lucky you weren’t here, or I would’ve done it to you too,” she said, voice laced with venom. The smile faded, and she spat in my direction. “Just wait, though. I’ll get you one day, you sack of shit.”
I stared at her in abject horror. I couldn’t fucking believe it. All this time, I thought my plan was progressing nicely, but I was wrong. So fucking wrong. Tatum wasn’t falling for me at all. Quite the opposite. She was a seething ball of hatred, hiding behind a mask of submission until this very moment.
A guttural roar echoed deep inside me, and my nostrils flared. “I’ll deal with you later,” I said through gritted teeth before turning and running out of the cell.
I headed upstairs and ran toward the medical wing as fast as I could, hoping and praying my father was okay. We didn’t always see eye to eye on things, but that didn’t mean I wanted him fucking hurt or dead.
I found the door closed and locked. “Hey!” I shouted. “Let me in!”
No answer.
I pounded on the door for several minutes, furiously slamming my hands on it until they were red raw, and finally, the nurse let me in. “Sorry, Mr. King,” she said. “We were too busy working on your father to open the door. I didn’t even realize it was locked.”
I pushed past her to see my father lying on a bed, eyes closed and a thick surgical dressing covering his neck. I’d never seen him look so pale. So powerless. He was hooked up to a heart monitor, and the resident doctor was standing over him.
“Dr. Paulson,” I said, striding over. “What’s going on?”
He rubbed his hooked nose and sighed. “It’s not great, Elias. I managed to seal the wound and stop the hemorrhaging, but he lost a lot of blood. I suspect he’s in hypovolemic shock.”
“What’s that?”
“A condition caused by massive blood loss. The loss of fluid makes it nearly impossible for the heart to continue pumping sufficient blood around the body. It can lead to multiple organ failure.”
“Shit.”
“The guards have radioed for a MEDEVAC airlift to the nearest hospital. Obviously, we can’t treat him properly here. We aren’t properly equipped for situations like this.”
I rubbed my jaw. My pulse seemed to be racing a million miles a minute. “When will the helicopter arrive?”
He sighed again. “The weather outside isn’t great at the moment, as you know. Very strong winds. They said it could take up to thirty minutes to get here.”
“Thirty fucking minutes?” My right hand reflexively curled into a fist. “That’s not good enough. He could be fucking dead in half an hour.”
Dr. Paulson nodded miserably. “I won’t lie to you, Elias. It’s going to be a very tight situation. But I’m doing my best, and he’s holding on for now.”
I waved my hand around the crisp white-walled room. “Isn’t there anything else you can do here?”
“No. He needs a blood transfusion to increase the fluid volume inside him and get his heart pumping properly again. But we don’t have any O-neg here, or any blood bags at all, for that matter. This facility is basically a glorified birth control dispensary and STI testing lab for all the young ladies here.”
“Fuck!” I clenched my hands into tight fists again. “Wait… could you give him some of my blood?”
“Are you O-negative?”
“No. B-positive.”
He shook his head. “Sorry. O-neg is the universal donor type. Not yours.”
“But we’re the same blood type! Doesn’t that make it okay?”
The doctor frowned. “Are you sure? How do you know?”
I hurriedly told him about my childhood antics, when I used to hunt around the house for anything to do with my mother.
“I ended up finding all this stuff on her, including old medical records and blood donation cards,” I went on. “I know for a fact she was A-negative. And I know I’m B-positive. That means my father is too, doesn’t it?”
“Not necessarily. He could be AB-positive.”
“Oh. Yeah. But a B can give blood to an AB, right?” I racked my brains, trying to remember everything from my prep school bio classes.
“Well, yes. But still, I can’t just put your blood into someone when I’m not a hundred percent sure. That’s not how this works. Luckily, there’s a simple way to find out his type,” he said, briskly stepping over to a computer. “I’ll quickly look at his medical records to confirm. Yours too. If you’re indeed an appropriate donor, we can take some blood from you and give it to him.”
He tapped at the keyboard, then swore under his breath.
“What is it?” I asked.
“The damn winds outside… they must’ve knocked out the phone lines. I can’t get online, and that means I can’t access his medical records.”
“Are you fucking kidding me?” I snapped, slamming my fist into a nearby table. “Jesus, just give him my fucking blood!”
Dr. Paulson’s eyes widened. “Elias, I told you I have to be sure. Giving someone the wrong blood type can be catastrophic, especially when they’re already compromised. It causes a very serious immune response. If he’s somehow actually an O-type and we—”
I cut him off. “I told you, he’s not. If my mother was A-negative, then he has to be either B-positive or AB-positive, which is compatible with my type! Right? And you said yourself, he needs blood as soon as possible. So give him mine! Even if it’s not much, it’ll still buy him some more time before we can get him airlifted to a proper hospital, won’t it?”
He rubbed his chin and sighed. “Yes, it would. Shit…” He let out another sigh.
“If for some reason it all goes wrong, I’ll take the blame, okay?” I put my hands up. “I’ll tell everyone I forced you to do it; threatened to kill you or something. Your license won’t be at any risk.”
My father’s heart monitor began to beep even slower, and the doctor finally relented. “Fine. Sit down and roll up your left sleeve. I don’t have any blood bags, so we’re going to have to do an old-style person-to-person transfusion.”
“Fine by me.”
He busied himself setting the transfusion up, and I sat and watched my blood flow out of my arm a moment later, streaming directly from me into my father’s veins.
“I can only take so much,” Dr. Paulson said as he hovered over us. “It won’t be enough to fix the situation, but it should stabilize him for now. Let me know if you feel any weakness or dizziness.”
“I’m fine.” I gritted my teeth. “Take as much as you can.”
As I waited, I thought about my mother’s death again; the way she bled to death to give me life. Now I was giving my blood to save my father. Kinda fucked up family tradition, really.
“That’s all we can do,” Dr. Paulson said a moment later. He removed everything from my arm and quickly patched up the puncture mark with a cotton ball and medical tape. Then he busied himself checking my father’s vitals again.
“How is he? Did it work?” I asked sharply.
He nodded. “His pulse is steadier. Breathing slightly steadier too. He’s going to make it.”
I breathed a sigh of relief. Thank fucking god.
A guard knocked and entered the small medical wing a moment later. “Chopper’s landing in five minutes. We should get ready to transport him out to the helipad.”
The doctor nodded and barked some orders at the nurse. I excused myself and ducked out, telling them I’d meet them on the helipad in a few minutes. Then I hurried down to the underground section of the mansion and found Brett, a Finishing School security guard I’d befriended when I first found out Tatum would be given to me.
“How’s your father?” he asked, eyes wide with concern.
“He’s gonna be fine. Where’s Tatum now?” I asked.
“Locked in her cell. We cleaned it up a bit before we left her alone.”
“Okay. I need you to do something for me,” I said. “We’re going back to the initial plan.”
&n
bsp; He raised one thick brow. “I thought you said you wanted to go in another direction to break her down.”
“Not anymore. As soon as possible, I want you to make it happen. She needs to learn her fucking place here.”
He smiled. “Got it. We’ll do it later today.”
“Good. She needs it.”
I turned and briskly headed upstairs and out to the helipad. A large helicopter had just landed, and Dr. Paulson and some mansion guards were helping two paramedics load my father into it. I joined them, hoisting myself up inside the chopper.
The paramedics and Dr. Paulson set about hooking my father up to several tubes and machines. Then one of them gave the pilot the all-clear to take off.
“Nearest hospital is twenty minutes northwest,” one of the paramedics called to me over the loud whir of the rotor blades. “He looks bad, but he’s gonna pull through. Your transfusion helped his heart start pumping properly again. Lucky you were here.”
I nodded and stared down at my father’s pale form, my jaw set in a grim line. His lips and fingernails had a slightly blue tinge, and his chest was rising and falling far too slowly.
I still couldn’t fucking believe Tatum did this to him. She was going to regret it, though. I’d make sure of it. In fact, when I was done with her, she’d regret ever being alive.
One of the machines my father was hooked up to started beeping violently in my ear a few minutes later, and my gaze shot up to Dr. Paulson. “What’s happening?”
His brows furrowed, and he moved closer to my father. I noticed the skin on his face looked red now, and he seemed to be having an even harder time breathing. “Shit,” the doctor said, looking at his chest. “Look.”
The medics both swore under their breath. I glanced down at my father to see an angry rash spreading all over his chest.
“What the hell is going on?” I asked.
“Looks like an incompatibility reaction,” Dr. Paulson muttered. “He isn’t a B or AB type, Elias. He must be an O-type.”
