Page 2 of Vicious Prince (Violent Kingdom)

“Listen,” I say, trying to be convincing, which is hard when I’m tied to a chair, my wrists and ankles secured with what feels like duct tape, a blindfold tied tight around my face. “Just tell me—”

What feels like a large, rough palm smacks me so hard, I feel my lip split, tasting fresh blood in my mouth. My mind struggles to catch up, to do something— but before I can think, before I can construct the perfect argument tolet me go, my blindfold is ripped off, and in the same breath, shoved into my mouth. A makeshift gag that makes me retch. I swallow down the urge to vomit, the material in my mouth an invasion, an assault on my senses. I try to push it out with my tongue, but it doesn’t budge.

Fuck.Oh fuck oh fuck oh fuck.

I forget about the gag as my eyes focus on the figure in front of me. He’s tall, over six feet, dressed entirely in black, a black ski mask covering his face and neck. He’s wearing plastic surgical gloves — to keep his DNA from getting on me, or in preparation to chop me into little pieces?

I wince as my captor places something cold on my bare thigh.

A knife.

My eyes go big and round as I watch him take that knife and press it into the flesh of my inner thigh. There is a major artery that runs through the thigh. If he hits it, I could bleed out in minutes.

Just hours ago, I was joking about how being married off was a fate worse than death. But I didn’t really mean those words, because I’d do anything to stop the slow, methodical slice of the knife’s teeth against my skin. I scream as my skin splits open, the knife impossibly sharp, my skin impossibly fragile.

There is so much blood.

I’ve seen plenty of blood spilled in my short life — a by-product of my family name — but I’ve never been so intimately acquainted with my own blood as it pulses from my body.

My captor dips a finger into my blood and brings it up to my chest. I’m folding forward, straining to see what he’s doing to my thigh, and so he takes a fistful of my hair and yanks, making me sit straighter in the chair. I shiver as the air in the room turns colder, my exposed nipples tightening painfully, or perhaps it’s me that is growing colder, as I swiftly lose blood.

Fingers paint letters between my breasts, a macabre action that reminds me of the crude paintings a small child would create with their hands and brightly colored paint. My faceless captor takes blood from my thigh wound several more times before he steps back, apparently satisfied, and it’s only then that I can see what he’s written on me.

Two letters.XO.

Iblink in confusion as I stare at the two letters, my chin against my chest as I try to make them say something — anything — else. Everybody knows the XO killer doesn’t have any surviving victims. He’s been terrorizing San Francisco for a decade, at least, the body count of his victims over a dozen.And that’s not including the ones who are never found. He only leaves death in his wake, naked and scrubbed clean and with a neat calling card painted on his victims chests.

XO.

It’s so obvious now. This faceless man doesn’t want a ransom. He wants my terror. My blood.

He wants mylife.

This silent psycho circles behind me, hands in my hair again, and then lower, exploring my face, my neck, pinching a nipple hard enough to make me yelp. He pulls my hair, forcing my head back and to the side, at the perfect height to grind himself into my cheek. Under his black pants, he’s as hard as the steel the knife is forged from. I start to cry. He’s going to hurt me.He’s going to kill me.

Iraise my eyes to look at him again, in time to see him place the knife on the ground at his feet. My captor comes at me, crouching in front of me, placing his gloved hands on my knees and pushing them wider.

This is how I die.

Through my gag, I scream.

Chapter One

AVERY

Present Day

Joshua Grayson is sitting in my father’s office, discussing a business deal as if today is any other day.

But it’s not any other day. It’s THE day. And everyone is acting like it’s not.

Just moments ago, I watched him glide out of the Capulet Corporation's private elevator reserved only for family members. Perhaps that should have been my first warning that things were not going to go well. He winked at me as he passed me in the corridor, like he owned the place, casually unbuttoning his jacket as he scanned my father’s office. Maybe he was wondering how he would decorate the place once his name was on the door.

Fuck that. When Daddy retires, this will bemyoffice. I would have been content to study something arts-related, use my creativity, but you can't run a billion-dollar company with a degree in art history. I graduated summa cum laude from Stanford University with a degree in political science, not because I was interested in politics, but because it was the best subject for the Capulet heiress to study. I worked twice as hard as everyone else, graduated top of my class, and spent my free time working weekends and summers for my father, while my peers drank and fooled around and generally had fun.

And in the years since I graduated, I've been the first person here every morning, and the last to leave, apart from my father.

Not to mention, getting this corner office is kind of my birthright. I’m not giving up the best view in the building for any man, especially not Joshua Grayson.

---