Page 83 of Broken Princess
“Long story short, you fucked up,” I said. “You trusted me too much because I’m your son. But don’t beat yourself up too much. I made the same mistake for years. I trusted you because you’re my mother.”
She took a few deep breaths before rising to her feet again. “You won’t get away with this. Either of you,” she said, staring icily at me and Willow in turn. “You can keep me trapped in here as long as you want. It’s only a matter of time before my shadow council notices I’m not responding to any calls, and when that happens, they’ll come looking.”
“That’s not going to happen, because we’ll get the jump on them before they have any clue what’s going on here.”
“No, you won’t. You obviously don’t know who they are, aside from Jamie, or else you would’ve already dealt with them before confronting me,” Mom replied, eyes gleaming with a spark of triumph.
I smiled patiently. “I see you think you’ve regained the upper hand by figuring that out, but you haven’t,” I said. “By the time your little cronies realize something is up, you’ll already be dead.”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“I’m talking about the fact that I’ve known the truth about you for quite some time now,” I said, cocking my head to one side. “Remember how I suggested we start coming in here every night for a drink?”
Her forehead puckered into a confused frown. “What does that have to do with anything?”
“I’m sure you’ll recall that I started bringing your nightly medication with your tea every night.”
She stiffened. “What the hell have you done, Logan?”
“I gave you the wrong pills. Instead of the ones that help with clotting, I’ve been giving you Warfarin. You know what that is, right?”
“It’s a blood thinner,” she muttered, hand flying to her chin.
I sneered. “Yes, it is, so you haven’t had anything to help with your condition for a while now. Not only that, you’ve been taking something else that will greatly exacerbate the effects of it.”
“You… you…” Mom tried and failed to form a coherent sentence, her mouth opening and closing like a goldfish.
“I shoved you pretty hard earlier,” Willow cut in with a pleasant smile. “You hit the corner of that table pretty hard, too. Usually you’d be fine, apart from the bruises you’d be left with, but considering the recent lack of medication… I’d say you’re screwed. You’ve been bleeding internally for at least ten minutes now. Severely. Give it another few hours and you’ll probably be dead.”
My mother covered her mouth with one hand, chest rising and falling as she drew in several deep breaths through her nose. Then she got up, headed over to a small mirror at the back of the room, ripped off her coat and lifted her sweater. “Oh, shit,” she murmured as she stared at her lower back. A mottled red and purple bruise had appeared already. It looked bad, but it would be ten times worse on the inside.
I reached into my pocket and held up a white capsule. “I have something here that will help,” I said. “It’ll keep you alive long enough for you to get to a hospital and get proper treatment. But you aren’t getting it unless you give us what we want.”
Mom returned to her seat, hands trembling. “What do you want?” she asked softly.
“We want a list of your associates. Anyone who’s been helping with your family’s plan to destroy democracy, and anyone who’s aware of what goes on up at Lilith Hall,” I said. “Don’t bother trying to implicate Dad just to take him down with you. We already know you’ve kept him in the dark all these years.”
“What will you do with the list if I give it to you?”
“We’ll take out your associates like they deserve,” I said. “Your reign as the leader of the Order will be over then, obviously, but at least you’ll be alive. So what do you say?”
She went silent for several minutes, eyes focused on the roaring hearth again. Finally, her shoulders slumped. “Get me a pen and paper,” she muttered.
She spent the next twenty minutes hunched over the coffee table, scribbling away. When she was done, she held up her paper, eyes locked on me in a baleful stare. “Here.”
Willow jostled my side with her elbow. “What if she’s given us the wrong names?” she asked in a low voice.
I scanned the list. “She hasn’t.”
“How do you know?”
“Because most of these names match with the ones Rowan came up with when he started surveilling her and the people she contacts the most frequently. I just wanted to confirm it before we turn them in. Don’t want to accidentally fuck up an innocent person’s life.”
“See? I gave you the right ones. Now give me that pill,” Mom interjected, unsteadily rising to her feet. Her face was bone white now.
“What, this pill?” I said, holding up the capsule I showed her earlier.
She nodded and snatched it from me.
