Page 12 of Cruel Crown

“We live by a code,” he spat. “Kids and wives are not to be touched.”

I smiled sadly at him. I pointed to the chair across from him so he would know I was going to sit down.

“No offense, but no one holds anything sacred anymore. Everyone is too drunk on power to obey the law of thieves.” I sat on the chair and crossed my legs just in case I had to move fast and deliver a kick.

“I will tell you everything you want to know about your daughter. All I ask is that you give me twenty minutes of your time.” I took a deep breath, aware that for him to help me, he had to know everything. All the things no one knew, all the things that could bring me and my empire down. I was gambling it all on the line with the hopes that his revenge would outweigh rationality.

“Everyone calls me Daphne, but my real name is…” And so I told him everything, and he listened without interruptions.

Gideon

Location:Unknown

Hell was a bitch.

At least I thought I was in hell because for the last fucking days or years, I had been burning up. It was an endless cycle of shivers to feel like my skin was about to crawl out of my body, to feel like I was going to disintegrate. So, if I died and there was an afterlife, I was now in the fiery pits living it.

Sometimes I heard noises: animals, cursing, and then people.

“No se esta mejorando,”I heard a somewhat familiar voice say.

No shit, I wasn’t getting better. It was fucking hot and dark. My body ached, and my throat was sore, my eye burned, everything fucking hurt. At least my mother wasn’t haunting me anymore, and in my delirium, I could pinpoint the exact moment my life went to shit.

***

She dislocated her fucking thumbs.

I heard the noise before I saw it. Heard the cracking of the joints and the clunking of the metal cuffs hitting the table. My head snapped her way, and Daphne was standing up tall, unflinching with her thumbs bent at weird angles.

Looking at her, I didn’t feel an ounce of guilt for fucking her, then betraying her. I wasn’t a good man, but I was a wise one. When I got the intel about her being connected to Ivan’s alias, the Russian Dragon, I knew I couldn’t just bring her with me. If I had this information, I was pretty sure whoever had been with us in the room at Sinestre was piecing it together too. They would alert Homeland Security, and there would be no way out of this damn country. So, I weighed my options and called her in myself, trying to negotiate on her behalf.

Nothing went as expected, and I was infuriated, yet fucking turned on at her defiance.

When she said Adrian was a double agent, I figured that much, but in all honesty, I thought he had switched on us, but something was still missing, and I wanted to get to the bottom of it.

She was so much more, a slave, but at the same time, not at all. Her father was one fucked-up piece of shit that if he weren’t dead like she claimed, I would be doing the job myself.

At least Yorovich was alive.

Now I looked at her and the way she glared at the camera with her arm raised in the air, the same arm that had theStattoo, and she pointed it at the lens.

Parker Hayes stalked in seething, his anger directed toward the woman in front of me. She pulled down her sleeves and fixed her thumbs.

“I want to speak to Smith or Walsh. You have twelve hours before they come for me,” Daphne told us as she sat down with her hands outstretched, waiting to be cuffed again.

If I was angry before, I was now livid at her dropping the name of the head of MI6 as if it was nothing. Judging by Hayes’s murderous look, we were on the same page. We both stormed out of the room, both of us making calls.

“I told you to turn the girl in,” Walsh barked.

He had said that once I got the intel of her with Ivan, but I was going to try and spin it all in my favor even though right now, I was failing miserably. Since I stayed quiet, he kept on talking. “Do what Hayes tells you, and if you’re not on the first flight back to London, consider yourself terminated.”

The word hung in the air as I ended the call. Would they end my life over this? My thoughts were interrupted by Parker yelling angrily over the phone.

“Does she have some sort of fucking diplomatic immunity?”

It was evident he didn’t get an answer because he threw his phone across the room. Someone sure had anger issues.

“Let me guess, we’re letting her go?” I added dryly as I looked at Daphne through the mirror. She’d been in the same position since I came here. She was staring at the wall blankly, waiting for us to succumb to her fucking demands.

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