Page 31 of Fortress of the King

I swallow hard. “Please. I’m begging you,” a sob leaves my throat as I try to contain it. Every inch of hate and fury boils up and threatens to spill over the sides. “She’s all I’ve got.”

“What a pity. Better make sure you hang onto those memories then, Miss Michaelson. It may be all you have left of her other than ashes and dust.”

The line goes dead before I can say anything else.

I stare at the phone in disbelief.

Fucking bastard!

Anger boils up in me so fast and furious that I drop to my knees and scream. I don’t care if the fucking neighbors hear me. They can all go to hell, because that’s exactly where I’m going.

But the one thing I vow to myself is that I’ll take as many of these bastards down with me—every last one of them.

If I’m going down, they’re all going down too. That’s my promise to Mia.

* * *

I can’t sleep.

I wake several times during the night, not knowing where I am, and it takes a few moments to calm myself and slow my ragged breathing. I’m not used to this apartment yet or anywhere near feeling settled. After Mia was taken, everything else went on hold, including unpacking some of my boxes. Inanimate objects just feel obscure now. Including the earrings Angelo gave me. I placed the box on my nightstand and I haven’t been able to look at them since.

Everything about them represents everything Ineverwanted to be. It’s as if they’re poison and I don’t want to touch them, even though I know I have to for our dinner date.

Seduce him?I honestly don’t know if I can when all is said and done, but I know for sure that Angelo will have no problem or qualm seducing me. Maybe it’s for the best that I let him lead. He’s going to anyway. It’s who he is.

The nightmares won’t go away, then I wake, and the real-life nightmare begins all over again, except this time it’s in color.

Mia is the most important thing to me in the world. We lost our parents when I was a teenager in a horrific car accident. An oncoming car crossed the road, a drunk driver.

Mia was in the backseat but survived. I’d chosen to go to a friend’s house that night rather than watch my little sister sing in a choir. She walked away with minor scratches and bruises. Our parents died on impact.

It’s been Mia and me ever since. We went to our aunts to live, but that was neither a loving nor very warm household. We both learned to confide in one another and be each other’s support. We left when I was old enough to be Mia’s guardian and we fled. I worked two jobs to make ends meet and got my degree through a scholarship. I never wanted Mia to go without, she’d already lost so much and she was such a sweet, endearing child; she never asked for anything.

I can’t even imagine what she’s going through right now…

I flip the duvet off and pad to the kitchen for a glass of water, it’s not like I can forget it, but I don’t want to be reliving any of that right now.

My heart feels like it may beat out of my chest cavity, it’s always the nights that are hardest. Sometimes I take a sleeping tablet, but I always wake up groggy, and it’s worse than a hangover.

I only wanted to speak to her, just to hear her voice, and that rat bastard had to just dig the knife in a little further.

She could be dead for all I know, and I could be doing all of this for nothing.

I close my eyes and clutch the kitchen bench with both hands, I don’t know what the fuck I’m going to do. I know thinking like this won’t get me anywhere.

Nothing will make me lose power or momentum faster than thinking I’ve already failed.

But here, in this apartment that I get to call home, here I get to be me.

Here I don’t have to pretend. I don’t have to wish everybody dead and that they all go to hell.

Here I get to lower my mask for a while.

I open my eyes and down two Tylenol, then saunter back to bed. I wander over to the enormous, ornate windows, looking out onto the sparkling street below, the city stretched beyond as far as the eye can see.

It’s pretty this time of night. There’s not much traffic and barely anyone in sight on the pavement below.

I wonder what Angelo’s doing at this very moment.

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