Page 14 of Violent Reign (Violent Kingdom)

“I’ll get closer if I fucking want to.” But Tyler scrapes his chair along the floor until the two of them are about five feet away from me. It’s too close, in the event of an emergency. If something catches on fire or blows up while I’m in the middle of it they’re in the blast zone. Then again, so am I.

The beaker is nothing, by the way. It’s not an integral part of the recipe. It’s only meant to kill time. When Avery and I were in the hole we murdered time like it was our profession.

She’s watching.

I feel Rosaline’s eyes on me as I’m going to transfer the beaker to another burner. Tyler could stand over my shoulder all fucking day and he still wouldn’t know how to do this.

“Hey, Buddy,” I call. “You wouldn’t happen to know why your girlfriend is eye-fucking me, would you?”

Tyler’s face darkens. So he wasn’t scowling before. “You want me to fuck you up. Is that it?”

Rosaline swings her body over his and wiggles her hips, right down onto where Tyler’s cock must be. “Baby, no,” she murmurs. “Don’t worry about him.”

I let out a loud guffaw, and Rosaline snaps her head around to look at me. She keeps looking at me. Every single day, she spends half her time watching me. Every reaction is clocked by those big, doe-like, addicted eyes of hers.

Tyler is so tense that he’s practically off the chair, but Rosaline isn’t giving up. She reaches down and undoes his pants, then wriggles out of hers.

“Stop it,” says Tyler in a strangled voice.

“No,” she giggles. She moans as she sinks down on him, and I’ve got to admit, it’s a great way to calm down the raging bull that is Tyler. His fingers loosen around her shoulders and he leans back, fighting the glazed look that films across his eyes.

A sigh, from Rosaline. I catch another flash of her eyes.

God damn it. She’s my ticket out of here, isn’t she?

All those looks. She’s obsessed. And I want to use that obsession to get the fuck out of this place.

The best way out is to get her on my side. She is actively fucking Tyler Capulet, bouncing up and down on his dick, but she’s still looking at me. I shove away the urge to rip her fucking eyes out, and I give Rosaline what she wants.

What she wants is my attention. And I’m going to exploit it until that bitch sets me free.

Chapter Eight

AVERY

This isn’t exactlyhow I pictured my wedding day: throwing up into a sink in the Verona Cathedral’s bridal suite while wearing a couture wedding gown. The waves of nausea keep coming and coming and coming, like a violent seasickness. Finally, there’s nothing left to retch. My stomach heaves anyway. It wants out.So do I.My elbows press hard into the marble countertop. A major oversight, if you ask me. Where’s some soft, buttery leather to support me while I puke? At the very least, a couple of rolled up towels?Don’t most brides do this before they walk down the aisle?

Not that this is my first walk down the aisle. Panic stabs me in the stomach, low and brutal, as I remember my real wedding. The day I married Rome Montague. The last day of my life before everything turned to shit. It was only two weeks ago that I was holding a bouquet of bright wildflowers hurriedly picked by Rome’s younger half-siblings, walking down an aisle in a church with no roof, open to the elements. With my eyes closed, I could be there in an instant.

How I long for that moment right now.How I mourn for it.

“It’s time.” Jennifer’s soft whisper makes it through the heavy wooden door, followed by a hesitant knock. I pull the door open, my heart breaking just a little bit more than it already is as I take in my best friend in the whole world, or what’s left of her.

She does not ask me if I’m okay. I don’t ask her, either. It’s obvious that she’s not. It hasn’t been long since the rescue team lifted her out of the bathtub. There were multiple surgeries involved. I’m not even sure how she’s standing up right now, but I suspect it has a lot to do with the heavy painkillers she’s on. Today is the first time I’ve seen her since she was stretchered out of Nathan’s apartment covered in blood, and I was able to spend a few hours in the same room as her this morning while Nathan ordered us around like a couple of obedient little slaves. I still haven’t been able to talk to her, but we held hands while our makeup was being applied. For that small moment, I’m grateful.

I dab a paper towel to the corners of my lips, wash my mouth out with a splash of tepid tap water, and lift the hem of my dress delicately from the floor. Jennifer waits on the other side of the doorway, her hands loosely clasped around a bouquet of pink roses.

She looks like a zombie.

Her skin is pale, and the glossy fall of her hair does nothing to disguise the fact that she’s not well. She has clearly been injured. But Nathan thought of everything. He thought of a bridesmaids dress with a high collar that skims down her back, hiding everything. A rush of compassion moves through me like a summer thunderstorm. If only, if only. Jennifer and I could take the car and go if it weren’t for the tracker inside me. I saw Nathan zip her into her dress, right after he helped her change her blood-soaked adult diaper for a fresh one. It’s barely been two weeks since she left that godforsaken bathtub where she was bleeding out, but whatever he gave her to force her miscarriage… well, she’sstillbleeding. A lot. It’s so completely fucked up that it took every ounce of self-control I possessed not to rip his fucking throat open with my freshly applied acrylic nails when I saw. She’s got a matching scar to mine, too, but hers is along her shoulder blade. She’s got a tracker implant just like I do.Maybe we could cut them out of each other.But there’s nothing sharp, no weapons of use around here. Even the french tips Nathan had the nail artist apply yesterday are rounded off, the edges dulled.

Jennifer scoops my bouquet up from its specialized holder on the dressing table and holds it out to me. “I didn’t picture this when I promised to be your bridesmaid,” she croaks. It looks like it’s excruciatingly painful to talk. I can imagine.

“I think you’re technically the maid of honor.” Fuck the hair and makeup. I pull Jennifer into a hug. We’re not going to be hidden away in the bridal suite for long, and then people will be watching. There’s no escaping their eyes.

“Avery? Jennifer?” Margot, the loyal lackey that Nathan has so thoughtfully assigned as unofficial wedding planner, sweeps into the room. “The processional’s about to start.”

I want to slap the peach pink lipstick smile right off Margot’s face. “Can’t start without us, though, can it?”

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