Page 68 of The Queen's Denial

There are two entrances to my wing. I hope they don’t realize this, but I’m sure they must have looked at blueprints before they came here. If they got through security, they have a lot of manpower behind them. But all I can do is hope they won’t think to follow me out the other exit to my suite, or that I injured one bad enough that it slows them down, at least. If I run over to the other exit, I’ll be near my father’s suite. He won’t have left without me. Maybe he’s hiding, although as soon as I think it, that doesn’t ring true for me. All I can think to do is go to his room to see if he’s there though.

I tiptoe to the other door, praying that they don’t hear it. The door to my suite is deadbolted and made of the best wood, but they are almost through it as I pass by the TV in my sitting room. I have to try to throw them off my scent - make them think I’m hiding. I take the remote controland fling it into my bedroom as hard as I can before making it to the alternative exit and opening the door. They break the door down just as I shut the alternative exit door as quietly as possible, and I pray they took the bait and didn’t hear me leaving.

I sprint as silently as I can down the hall, rounding the dark corner not a second later and disappearing down the hallway toward my father’s quarters.

As I approach, a feeling of dread covers me and weighs my limbs down. The feeling gets heavier and heavier the closer I get, and opening the door to his wing is like moving a two-ton boulder. But I do it and enter his humble little sanctuary.

It’s no longer a sanctuary, however. It never will be again. Because my father lies on the floor next to the table in his sitting room, bleeding out onto the rug, clutching his side, still as death.

And that’s what I feel as I walk closer. Death.

I try to find my voice as I freeze in place, dread weighing my entire body down. When I think I’m able to, a moment later, I test it out quietly into the darkness. “Oto-san?”

There’s no answer.

Something breaks my muscles out of their temporary torpor, and I spring into action. “Oto-san! Please be okay. Father, please.”

I reach him and turn him gently, but I see that he’s been shot a number of times; his old wounds reopened so soon. This time, I doubt closing them will bring him back to life.

“Papa?” I ask, in complete shock, as I feel his blood cooling in a puddle around the both of us. I go deaf and dumb while staring down at him for what I know will be the last time.

Amazingly, he stirs and wheezes a rattling breath.

“Father!” I whisper-yell, clutching his shirt, hoping to keep him here with me until I can figure out what to do. “Father, give me your orders. What should I do?”

His eyes focus. “Chichi. Don’t let them take you. My… my girl.”

“Akio!” Daiki’s voice rings out from the doorway to the bedroom, and I look up with wide eyes, feeling some hope flicker in my cold chest.

“Daiki! Help him! Help…” My brain finally processes Daiki, crumpled in the doorway from my father’s personal study, dragging himself toward us with a trail of blood behind him. This is a massacre, only made worse by the fact that both my father and Daiki seem to have escaped being shot in the head. These wounds, I know, will still kill them both.

Daiki grunts in pain as he makes his way to us, and although I’m too frozen to cry, I know I’ll never forget what I’m seeing right now. I know this waking nightmare will come back to me every day of my life. The only people I love — the men who raised me — dying together in the same room while I watch. Truly my worst nightmare come true.

I stutter badly when I speak next, but I somehow get the words past my chattering teeth. “D—Daiki, help me. I don’t know what to do. What do I do?”

He has made it to us both. My father is clearly gone now, and Daiki will follow soon, I can tell. His head drops down onto my father’s stomach as he takes the hand I have resting there. “Chi-chi… leave us. Get out of here and don’t let them take your title from you, Sakura. You are ready.”

“No — I can’t do this; I can’t do it alone!”

He takes my hand and puts it on my father’s chest near his mouth, pressing a blood-stained kiss to my knuckles. “You can. I… I believe in you and so did he. You will be a beautiful queen.” Daiki pushes the last sound out before his chest starts to work overtime, and his eyes lose focus.

“No, no, no!” I whisper frantically, completely unsure of what to do or where to go now — anything in my entire life, really.

He tries to keep a grip on consciousness. “The tunnels, Sakura. Andy knows the tunnels.” Daiki’s hand on mine trembles and loses its grip, loosening and flopping to the floor.

I hear the men who have just killed the only family I’ve ever known coming down the hall. I want to kill them. I want their hearts in my fist, their blood dripping down my hands and forearms to the floor. But I know I can’t fight them, and I know my father doesn’t want me to end up the way he is right now. I need to follow his last command and get myself out of here.

“I will make you proud, Father. And you, Daiki. I… I love you.”

They are dead, I know. But at least I said it. At least I said it to them one time.

I grit my teeth and stand up, my entire body shaking, goosebumps lining every inch of skin. I hold in my rising nausea, focusing on the escape route I went over with Andy from every wing of the house. As I hear the men approach the room, I run to the emergency doors in the study, push them open, and disappear through them, wondering if Andy will find me, too numb to care whether he does or not.

Chapter 36

Andy

Something is happening at Akio’s mansion.

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