Page 8 of Violent Reign (Violent Kingdom)

Nathan ignores my backhanded compliment. “I know what you’re thinking. Get Jennifer out of here, pretend to cooperate with me, but you’ll be trying to hit me over the head with my own frypan the minute you get a chance.”

I roll my eyes. “Would you blame me?”

“Probably not,” he replies. “Which is why I’ve got more than one chess piece on the board.”Oh, no. “You know, Aves, I have something even more precious to you than Jennifer. Someone. Want to see?”

I don’t want to see, but I don’t have any choice. Nathan goes out into the living room and I follow him, screaming internally. As we pass the fireplace I spy a fire poker out of the corner of my eye. “Don’t even think about it,” he says. “You try anything, and I’ll gut Jennifer like a fish while you watch.”

I swallow thickly, forcing my hands to stay at my sides.

“Check this out,” he says, and he lifts a tablet from one of the tables at the side of the couch. His fingers fly over the screen. “Right here.”

Nathan tips the tablet into my hands, a video on the screen already playing. It’s a live stream. I can tell from the date stamp, the seconds ticking by in the top right corner. It’s slightly grainy security footage, but otherwise smooth.

That’s how I get my first view of Rome since I woke up.

My heart shatters inside my chest, turns to dust.Rome. Oh, no. He’s tied to a wall by what appears to be a steel cable, and he can’t get away. He’s caged. Imprisoned. But he’s not alone. There’s another person off-screen, and that person is using a cattle prod on Rome, digging it into his ribs. Rome doubles over, his mouth open in a scream rendered silent by the video feed. He crumples to the ground but manages to get his feet underneath him. He staggers upright just in time to get hit with another shock, this one low in his belly.

I really am going to be sick this time.

Nathan leans his head down onto my shoulder from behind, the way he’s done so many times. I can feel his jaw work as he speaks, feel his breath on my cheek, the weight of him balanced carefully against my body.

“You’d better not try to escape. You’d better do everything I say. Because if you step out of line, Aves, I will kill him. And it’ll be your fault.”

Chapter Four

ROME

This is notthe situation that I anticipated, but I should have. Obviously. Tyler Capulet, like all Capulets, is in it for himself and for the money. And for drugs. Jesus Christ, is he in it for the drugs. He also has a soft spot for humiliating theatrics, that motherfucker. I can only imagine he’s been looking forward to ruining me ever since that night when I ripped him away from Avery’s drugged form and almost killed him. Sending me to prison for beating him half to death wasn’t enough. He wants my blood.

I try not to be humiliated by the fact that he has me chained up like an animal. Instead, I live my hours attached to the end of the wire. Which, it turns out, can extend, if Tyler lets it. If he wants me to work.And of course he wants me to work.That’s why I’m in this clandestine fucking drug lab. He wants me to make the drugs,mydrugs, the heart-shaped pills that I used to sell way back when. The drugs Rosaline tried to steal from me. Before the basement. Before Avery.He wants to sell them, to pass them off as his own concoction, but most of all, he wants to keep me busy. When I asked him why, he rambled some shit aboutidle hands being the devil’s work. I’m pretty sure manufacturing illegal drugs could be categorised as the work of the devil.

The very first night, after being repeatedly shocked by a cattle prod, I spend hours at the bench in the middle, my face too close to beakers on the verge of exploding. My eyes burn from the fumes. It’s been too long since I worked on this with my own hands. These damn pills. They were a convenient ticket to fast money, and now they’ll end up killing me. I will die a withered, tattooed corpse who was only good for making drugs and not good enough to get himself to a life that mattered.

A flicker of flame bursts out of one of the beakers that first night and smacks me across the face. It’s a tiny spark, not enough to leave a mark, but I feel it. And it awakens something within me. Shame. Rage. Sorrow. Loss. I should have died in that basement with Avery.

“I should not have fucking died with Avery.” I let the words fall into this batch of pills.I hope they taste terrible, you fuckers.

“What?” Tyler calls from his seat at the edge of the room. He’s been lounging there all night, scrolling through his phone. Does he know where Avery is? Does he know what happened to her? Probably he does. A muscle in my jaw tics with the need to knock that phone out of his hand and crush his windpipe in my fist.Tell me, I’d scream into his shocked face. Tell me right the fuck now where she is. But I don’t. I can’t. With the way I’m all tied up, I can’t even reach him.

“Nothing.”

The door behind Tyler opens and a woman walks in; the room is dark where she’s entered, but even from the corner of my eye I recognize that silhouette. The Harley Quinn lookalike who enjoys raping men for sport. I grit my teeth harder, one threatening to crack against the other one. Okay.Oh-fucking-kay. She bends down toward Tyler. I keep my eyes off her shadow and on the work in front of me. I’ll never get out of here if this shit blows up in my face.

But I can’t help myself. I want to know for sure what I’m dealing with.WhoI’m dealing with. I need to see her properly. I look again.

She has her glasses raised from her face, and with a shock—a one-two-three go that has my heart racing to get out of my own body—a grim knowledge sinks in. It stings like bitter poison.

Of course it’s Rosaline.

Well, fuck. I should have known. I should have known, because she admitted it to Merc a thousand years ago when he was doing god knows what to her. How convenient that she didn’t end up having to steal the pills. These assholes just stolemeinstead.

Rage, far more pure than the pills I’m trying to make, blossoms inside my chest cavity, out from my heart all the way to my fingertips and skitters along the chain. Jesus. I grip the beaker in my hand tightly. This fucking Capulet family. It’s full of snakes, on every branch of the poisoned fucking tree. They have everything, and yet all they want is what other people have. The beaker snaps in half, the thin glass cutting into my finger. I don’t make a sound as a sharp pain radiates from my index finger and I feel warm blood ooze out of the deep wound, dripping onto the bench. Guess this bunch of pills is contaminated.

Tyler jumps up, surveying the damage. “You’re bleeding in the fucking mixture!”

No shit, asshole. I look down at the bench, at my blood dripping down, making a puddle the diameter of a shot glass, and then wider. Who knew a finger could bleed so much, so fast?

“I’ll help,” calls Rosaline.

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