Page 11 of Wicked Vengeance

He can eat a dick.

In fact, I think that’s the first thing I’ll make him do when he’s strung up in The Playroom. I’ll feed him the same cocks I was forced to choke on as I cut them from his Kingsmen.

Yes. I just have to stay strong. I don’t even know if my men found Emera– or if they were able to rescue her. But I’m believing with every fiber of my being that she is safe in their arms tonight– where I wish I could be, too.

I’m not used to this feeling. I haven’t felt hope in a very long time. Since the last time King beat the hope right out of my body. But the Shadows have given that back to me tenfold. Hope blossoms in my chest, reinforcing my will to survive whatever the sadistic bastard wants to throw at me.

He can’t break me this time. I won’t allow it. I’ll play his game…for now. I’ll play it so well– he won’t realize until it’s too late. This is my game now. I am the Queen, and he is nothing more than a pawn in a war he can’t win.

I’m pulled from my scheming thoughts when the brute comes to an abrupt halt, speaking for the first time.

“Where do you want her?”

A sense of familiarity seeps into my mind, but I can’t place his voice. My mind is still foggy from the drugs, but I know this voice.

“Through here,” a woman responds, and I have no problem putting a face– and a name– to the selfish bitch speaking.

My mother.

I keep my mouth shut and my ears on alert, listening for anything that can give me a leg up in this fucked up situation as we start moving again. I’ve long since come to terms with the fact that my mother is a conniving drug addict who will never step up to the role she created for herself.

Calling her my mother feels like a betrayal to Grams. She’s never been a ‘mother’...only Ava. It’s clear by her involvement here that nothing has changed. She’s just earned her place on a list she wasn’t previously on. I won’t allow her to breathe the same air as my daughter. And if I find out she was in any way involved in what happened to me and Emera, there won’t be enough restraint in the world that will keep me from making her death nothing short of hell on earth.

Without my vision, I hyper-fixate on the sounds around me, using my other senses to pick up anything useful. The rhythmic clicks of Ava’s heels, as they echo through a large space, tell me this is likely an abandoned warehouse of some sort, not a house. We haven’t ascended or descended at any point, so it’s ground level, not like the concrete cell I was kept in last time. However, I can’t feel the sun on my skin, so even if it isn’t underground, there are probably no windows to light up the darkness. Or escape through.

The clicking stops a moment before the sound of metal grating across concrete replaces it briefly, but we never stop moving. The brute man carries me through a narrow opening– a doorway, I presume. Without warning, he flings me from his shoulder like a ragdoll, my ass hitting something hard. It takes me a second to gather my bearings and realize he put me in a chair– and it’s not even a comfortable one.

His rough hands press into my back, leaning me forward as he undoes the bindings around my wrists. I think I’m going to have a moment to work out the kinks in my muscles, but I get no such reprieve. He pulls them into my lap, binding them together once more. I’m just relieved the pressure is off my shoulders, even if it’s short-lived. When my hands are secured together, he lifts them above my head, securing the rope to something above me. He continues to work in silence as he binds rope around my midsection, securing me to the chair. To my surprise, he leaves my legs free– not that I can go anywhere.

“That will be all. Thank you,” Ava says when the man steps away from me. He grunts but doesn’t speak again. And the door scraping against the concrete is the only sound of his departure.

I guess it’s just me and Mommy Dearest now. How fun.

Straightening my posture as best as I can with my hands bound above my head, I let a bored expression fall over my features, refusing to give any reaction to this cunt. I can feel her eyes on me, her gaze burning into my skin like acid as it slithers over me.

“While we wait…” she says as she slowly walks around me, yanking me up by my hair. “Tell me, Raena. Why is he so obsessed with you?”

I don’t respond. I don’t have the answer, but even if I did, I wouldn’t tell her. She can go eat a dick, too, right along with King. Maybe they can share one. That thought has a smile trying to pull at my lips, but I smother it with a cough. She doesn’t miss it, though.

“Something funny? I bet you won’t be smiling when King’s passing you around to his men like an offering plate.” She twists her fingers in my hair, snatching my head backward. “Again.”

I can’t keep the gasp from escaping my lips.

She knew.

She fucking knew he took me.

Rage burns hot as coal through me. She knew and didn’t help me? She knew and let him? She…

“Oh, don’t be so surprised. I needed a way out– and he wanted you. It was a good trade. Well, until you fucked it up for me. I’ve been under lock and key since you ran away. But not anymore. No… Not anymore. I’m free again. And you’re back where you belong,” she chuckles. “You really should thank me, you know. A man like King, willing to go to such lengths for someone like you.”

It takes a monumental effort to keep my goddamn mouth shut. The more she talks, the more I learn– and the more she digs her own fucking grave. My jaw aches from how tightly it’s clenched, my hands gripping and twisting in the restraints. I need them right now so I don’t rip her fucking head clean off her shoulders.

She doesn’t stop talking. Letting go of my curls, she circles around me and keeps digging– deeper and deeper.

“Your father never held a candle to King. Gabriel was meant to take over the Kingsmen as heir to the throne. Yet he couldn’t even fight off his foster brother when he came for his head. He let King steal his kingdom, his birthright, and me. I didn’t even know I was pregnant until after your father was dead. I tried to pass you off as King's child, but the man wouldn’t touch me those first few months, no matter what I did.

“I knew if he found out you were Gabriel’s, I’d be as good as dead. So, I made an excuse to go to my mom’s. King was busy establishing his rule, so he didn’t suspect anything. I wanted an abortion. But no doctor would give me one. It was too late. So your Grams took you. And I went back to King. But he’d moved on already. Because of you, I lost my position at his side. But that didn’t stop him from keeping me around. From letting his Kingsmen pass me around. Using my body for his sick, twisted pleasure.

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