by Stella Hart
“What?” I shook my head vehemently. “No, that’s impossible. I told you, I know my mother’s blood type and I know my own as well, so—”
He held up a hand and cut me off. “You must’ve remembered wrong. Now please be quiet and let me try to fix this before any more damage is done!” He turned his attention back to the paramedics. “He needs oxygen, more fluids, and a diuretic,” he snapped. “Let’s just hope his kidneys don’t fail before we get there.”
I sat back and watched them work, completely stupefied. How the hell was this possible? I didn’t misremember. My father’s blood couldn’t be an O-type.
I knew my own type from when we had to participate in some sort of blood drive back in high school, and all my mother’s old paperwork was burned into my mind like a brand. So I wasn’t fucking wrong. She was an A-negative and I was a B-positive. That made my father either a B-positive like me or an AB-positive like Dr. Paulson said earlier. Both of which should be compatible with me.
Unless I’d been lied to my entire life.
I went rigid as the possibilities swirled before me. My eyes narrowed as I stared over at my dad’s pale face. I could think of three things that might explain this, none of which were good.
Firstly, I could be adopted, and no one ever thought to fucking tell me. That would explain why my mother and father both had different blood types to me. It would also throw up a lot of questions about my mother’s death, seeing as she couldn’t have died giving birth to me if I wasn’t even biologically hers.
The second possibility was that my mother had cheated on my father and given birth to another man’s son. That threw up a lot of questions too, if it was accurate. Did my father know I wasn’t really his? And who was my biological father?
The third possibility was that Tobias King was my father, but Sylvie King wasn’t my biological mother. Even more questions were attached to that. Who was my real mother? Did she really die giving birth to me? Why did my father lie about my true parentage?
I sat back, breathing deeply as I mulled over the ideas, trying to make sense of what I’d just discovered. Whatever the case was, it all came down to one thing. Somewhere along the line, my father had lied to me about something pretty fucking major.
So what the fuck else had he lied to me about?
Could he have lied about Tatum?
We landed at the nearest hospital’s helipad fifteen minutes later, and I strode after the doctor and paramedics in stony silence. I sat in the waiting room with bated breath, refusing to eat or sleep, even when a nurse came to tell me it could be over ten hours until my father was awake or stable enough to see me.
I was more than happy to wait. There were enough questions swimming around my brain to keep me entertained for several days.
Finally, somewhere around three in the morning, a doctor came to get me. “He’s awake and wants to see you,” she said, one hand beckoning me to follow her.
I trudged behind her, heading down a long corridor with pale blue walls. When we reached my father’s room, he was sitting up, and despite all the tubes in him, he looked a lot better than before.
“Elias,” he said, his voice slightly croaky. “I’m so glad you’re here.”
I stepped closer to him. “Me too. I’m glad you pulled through,” I said with a tight smile. “Because we need to have a fucking conversation….”
19
Tatum
All I could do now was wait.
Tick tock. Tick tock.
I tried to count the minutes in my mind, but it wasn’t easy. I figured it had to be at least five hours since the guards finished cleaning the blood off the floor and locked me in again, but it might be even more. No one had told me what was going on or what would happen to me, but now that the adrenaline had worn off and the stark fear had set in, I had a pretty decent idea of what might happen.
The thought filled me with sheer dread.
When Elias got back here, he would probably murder me with his bare hands for what I did. Or maybe he’d get one of the guards to do it while he stood there laughing at me. He already thought I killed his second cousin, after all. Now I’d literally tried to kill his father. So it made perfect sense that the next person being killed might very well be me.
My fault. I did this to myself.
I was still curled up in a ball on one side of my cell, staring at the opposite wall. Streaks of blood marred the white paint, and I kept playing the events of this morning over and over in my mind in a macabre loop.
The sheer rage that possessed me earlier was like wildfire in my veins. A feeling like that had never come over me before, not once in my life, and shame tore through me as I pictured myself jamming that uncoiled bedspring into Tobias’s neck. The shock in his eyes, the way thick torrents of blood sprayed out of him like a geyser, the way he twitched and convulsed after falling to the ground… in those moments, I thought I wouldn’t feel bad, but I did.
It didn’t make sense that I would feel so terrible, given what an evil bastard Tobias King was, but just knowing that I was capable of committing such a heinous act against another human being made me realize there was a whole part of me in existence that I never knew about. Some dark passenger in my mind that could wake up at any moment and do awful, sickening things completely beyond my control.
Maybe Elias was right about me. Maybe I was an evil, murderous little liar….
“Don’t,” I forced myself to say out loud. “Don’t let them drag you down again. You’re not like them. They made you into this.”
I had to keep reminding myself of that. Otherwise, the guilt would set too far in, blurring the lines of reality, and I might start to feel as if I deserved to be here again.
My stomach growled. I hadn’t finished my breakfast earlier and it wound up soaked in blood anyway, so I could hardly eat it now, and I doubted anyone would bring me more food anytime soon. I probably wouldn’t be allowed out of my cell to shower, either.
One of the guards had been kind enough to give me a wet towel when he was mopping the floor earlier, just so I could wipe the caked blood from my face, neck, chest and arms, but I was still in the same clothes and my hair was streaked with red. The coppery smell made me feel sick, like I was in the middle of an abattoir.
My cell door suddenly swung open. I skittered back and squeezed my eyes shut, terrified it was Elias. Please don’t kill me, please don’t kill me….
“It’s just me,” said a vaguely familiar voice. “They told me to bring you this.”
I looked up to see one of the guards who’d come in to clean my floor earlier. It was the one who gave me the towel.
There was a fresh set of clothing in his arms, and he tossed it over to me. Sweatshirt, jeans, panties, bra.
“Thank you,” I muttered. I hurriedly changed out of my old bloodstained clothes.
“They’ve airlifted Mr. King to the nearest hospital. He’s probably gonna be okay,” the guard said, staring at me with coolly assessing eyes as I got dressed.
“Right. I guess that’s… good,” I said softly. I would probably be much worse off if Tobias actually died.
The guard’s eyes traveled to my blood-soaked hair. “They probably won’t let you shower just yet, but you might be allowed out tomorrow morn—” Something bleeped in his back pocket, and he stopped midsentence and pulled out a black walkie-talkie. I could hear a frantic, static-filled voice coming over it.
“Anyone who’s available, get the hell up to the second floor! One of the members is here and he’s high on coke or something. Complained about the girl he’s training, then started throwing shit around and trying to destroy the room. He just tore down a painting in the hall, and then he threw a sculpture at us and managed to get away. We need to catch this fucker before he destroys the whole floor.”
The guard in my cell muttered. “Fucking rich cokeheads.” He sighed. “Gotta go. Someone else will bring you dinner in a few hours.”
He strode over to the door and slid a keycar
d into it, then stepped out and slammed it behind him. I heard his hurried footsteps pounding up the hall a second later.
My eyes fell to the floor where he’d just been standing. In his haste to pull the walkie-talkie out of his back pocket, a few other things had spilled out of it, and he hadn’t noticed.
I stepped closer and crouched to look at the stuff. A few blue and white gum wrappers, a loyalty card for some sort of burger place, and something that looked like a bank card.
My heart skipped a beat as I looked closer. It wasn’t a bank card at all. It was black with a gold Crown and Dagger logo at the top and the word ‘Reserve’ printed on it in the middle.
It was a keycard. Obviously not the guard’s main one, as he’d used that to get out of my cell a moment ago, but it could be some sort of spare.
Only one way to find out, I guess.
I stepped over to the door and slid the card in. There was a short beep and then a light on the electronic lock went green. My eyes widened. Holy shit… it actually worked.
My pulse doubled with excitement, and I reached for the handle before deciding against it. Even with all the commotion on the second floor, there would still be a lot of mansion guards around the place. I couldn’t just step out into the hall, get on the elevator and walk out of here without being seen.
Luckily, I knew another way out. One which would be far less obvious.
I crossed over to the stone wall on the far side of the cell and hurriedly found the trick stone I’d discovered a few weeks ago. After opening it and pulling on the lever, I stood back and nervously stepped from side to side as I waited for the secret doorway to swing open.
Even though the Crown and Dagger architects had installed an electronic lock on the tunnel door in case anyone like me discovered the underground tunnel system, I was willing to bet there wasn’t anyone manning the exterior of the door. I hadn’t seen anyone standing outside it last time, anyway.
I dashed through the dark passage, exhilaration and anticipation surging through my veins. Finally, escape was within my grasp, all because of a distracted guard. It was the exact opportunity I’d been waiting for, and it might be the only one I ever got.
I reached the door at the end of the tunnel and slid the keycard in. The lock beeped and the light went green again. I carefully opened the door.
I was immediately blasted in the face by a frigid gust of wind, but there was no one standing outside. I almost squealed with joy as I gulped down the fresh air. As long as I was careful, I could actually be free of this place in just a few hours.
All I had to do was run down to the forest on the left of the estate and make my way through it to the other side. It might take a while, but it had to end somewhere, and eventually I would hit the edge of the property and then hopefully a road. I couldn’t actually walk up the road, just in case anyone at the mansion realized I was missing and sent a car after me, but I could creep along the edge of it and hide behind trees whenever I heard a car approaching.
Sooner or later, I would make it to a town, and then I would go straight to the police and tell them what happened to me.
It was freezing out here—winter was approaching fast—and sharp sticks and stones dug into my feet as I ran down the path that led into the woods and toward the amphitheater. I barely felt it, though. I was too excited at the thought of getting the hell out of this place, and that excitement seemed to numb the pain. I could almost taste the looming freedom, could almost feel the warmth of my friends’ arms when I finally made it back home and explained the whole ordeal to them.
I made it to the amphitheater clearing and crept through it to the other side before continuing on my way through the dark forest. The thick canopy of tree branches blocked out most of the sky, but a few fragments of light gray remained, like scattered pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. The air was rich with the fragrance of damp soil and leaves, and I gulped down one deep breath after another, desperate to fill my lungs with anything other than the scent of my cell and dried blood.
I knew I still wasn’t that far from the Finishing School, but it was already beginning to feel like a distant memory. Something that happened to someone else. My struggles wouldn’t be entirely over when I finally made it to a town, because the police would have a lot of questions for me, the process of getting everyone to believe me and investigate Crown and Dagger would take a while, and it would be a long time before I felt safe again, but the thought of being in a proper house with a proper bed and home-cooked meals made me ache desperately with hope and fervor.
Just keep going.
I picked up my pace, darting through the trees and bushes as quickly as I could. Finally, a brilliant white shaft of cascading light pierced the dim forest ahead of me. I was about to reach the edge of the woods. Spurred on, I ran even faster, and I gasped with happiness as I dashed out of the forest and into the open air.
Then I slowly sank to my knees as disbelief and terror clawed at my mind again, scrabbling around in my brain like the dark skittering feet of a million cockroaches.
I was near the edge of a steep cliff, jagged gray stones zigzagging in a long, hostile stretch of coastline. Ahead of me, there was nothing but ocean. The unwelcoming expanse of cold blue-black water stretched before me as far as the eye could see.
Just like it did on the other side of the mansion.
“No! No!” I screamed, my hands curling into anguished fists.
I was on an island.
A fucking island.
Even if I found a safe way down the rocky cliffs and made it to the water, I’d never get away from this place. Not alive, anyway. The ocean would be freezing, and I didn’t know which way I would need to swim to make it to land. Even if I did, I’d drown or die of hypothermia before I made it.
I heard footsteps crunching over stones from somewhere on my left, and I turned to see the guard from earlier grinning sadistically as he slowly stepped toward me. Three other guards stood behind him, watching with undisguised amusement.
“You get it yet, little whore?” the first guard said, eyes glittering with malice as he stared down at me. “There’s no escape for you. Not from here. Not from him.”
Tears rolled down my cheeks as I gasped for breath, trying my best not to hyperventilate. The whole thing was a cruel setup. They gave me something to cling to, just so they could tear it away. Gave me hope, just so they could watch it fade from my eyes as I discovered the dire truth of my situation. They knew all along that I would try and go through the tunnel if I ever had the opportunity, and I played right into their hands, allowing them to demonstrate the futility of any escape attempts at my expense.
Elias had probably been keeping the dastardly little scheme tucked up his sleeve the whole time I’d been here, ready to use against me when he felt I deserved it the most. He’d very likely planned it with the guards months ago, poised to drop it on my head when he wanted me to truly suffer.
Really, I should’ve known better. Crown and Dagger would never hire someone stupid enough to drop a damn keycard in my cell. They were always one step ahead, always plotting ways in which to break me.
Now, they’d finally succeeded.
I crumpled to the cold ground in wretched defeat, bawling my eyes out. The guard was right.
I was never getting away from the heartless men of Crown and Dagger…
To be continued…
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