“What an awful word to use! Someone should really teach you a lesson, Serafina. Bad enough I had to take care of Olivia, right?”
“What did you do to her?” I shake my head. “She was good to me. She was a good person. What did you do?”
“She was snooping, Serafina. She didn’t like my plans for you. What choice did I have? I had to have her removed from the house. And the country. It is a shame though. I mean, if you took a second from letting Tyrant fuck you in the ass, you would maybe see the news. International news. Tragic how that woman fell off a cliff. Fell to her death.”
I scream. I scream as loud and as hard as I can. I catch my stepmother off guard and she stumbles back, covering her ears.
“Shut her the fuck up!” Danielle yells but her voice is muffled compared to my scream.
My stepmother slaps me across the face but that doesn’t stop me. I can’t tell if this is me fighting back or just completely losing my mind.
“I’m going to shoot her!” Danielle yells.
My stepmother looks back at Danielle.
The door to the safe room explodes open like in some kind of action movie. In comes four men, dressed in black robes, wearing masks. Danielle starts to scream. My stepmother starts to scream.
One of the masked men swings at Danielle, shutting her up, sending her down to the floor. Two others grab for my stepmother and hold her. The fourth masked man rushes up to me. I reach for him, not knowing who it is.
It can’t be Tyrant… he was… d… dead…
The fourth masked man slaps my hands out of the way and produces a needle. Before I can do a thing, there’s a pinch in my neck and the room melts away. Reality melts away.
I just hope I’m dead too so I can meet up with Tyrant.
Chapter Forty-Three
TYRANT
My wife.
My fucking wife.
It wasn’t all that long ago that I stood before the throne and thelegionand was told of my fate. That Danielle would be my bride. That she and I would endure a life together of fake happiness. We would be given a location to settle into it. I would be given my permanent job. Danielle’s job would be to obey every command of mine and then have as many children as I wanted.
She was then taken from me and handed over to someone to be broken.
Claimed by Destroy.
I had no choice but to accept that. It was how things went around here. Chosen by thelegion. Claimedby Des. Then offered up to me as a broken woman at which point we’d be married and I would have the image needed to participate in society’s feeble rules and appearances.
It just got messy from there. Danielle constantly coming to me, telling me that Des was being too violent. There was nothing I could fucking do to help her. She begged me. She pleaded with me.
It was the only time I ever fucking slipped up. I took Danielle as my own. I fucked her. I took her from herace.
She hid in my bed for a long weekend, which ended with us leaving the compound and getting a fancy hotel for one more night. She wanted to run away. I knew it was a bad idea. I saw the evidence on her body of what Des had been doing to her.
On that last night, we ended up drinking and Danielle wanted to try something more. To this day I have no fucking clue why I let it happen. It looked like small cuts of a piece of paper. She placed one on her tongue, one on mine. What started as us getting fucked up, then flirting, touching and grabbing ended with her piercing my nipple and by morning, we were legally married.
(At least in terms of the society we did not actually believe in.)
Danielle was nothing but a fucking mess. Complicated. A manipulative whore. A truly awful person.
Des and I were pulled in for a meeting in front of thelegion, where we were told of Danielle’s fate. She had run off with some drug dealer and was found dead. Just like that, she was gone. Des no longer had hisclaimed. I no longer had my wife. Or wife-to-be, depending on how you looked at it.
So imagine my fucking surprise to hear Des confess that Danielle wasn’t dead. That Danielle was part of a plan to attack and kill Serafina. Imagine my fucking surprise when Des confessed about a secret, safe room in Serafina’s father’s mansion, which was where I kicked down the fucking door, my body writhing in pain, and I saw Danielle standing there…
I cradle Serafina’s head carefully as the last of my thoughts fade out. There’s no more time for that. I’ve given Serafina a healthy dose of a sedative that will keep her out while I conduct my business.