Twisted Empire: Dark Dynasty Book 3

by Hart, Stella

  He tilted his head to the side and pressed his lips together. “It’s not Tatum I’m particularly worried about. It’s you. Even with this…” He held up a bag of large dark gray capsules and went on. “What you’re doing could still kill you. Slowly and painfully. You’re really willing to take that risk just to get rid of Tobias?”

  “Yeah, I fucking am.”

  He sighed and retrieved eight capsules from the bag. “All right. Swallow all of these now.” He handed me the capsules, then emptied the rest into his other hand. “Put the rest in your pocket. Take one every fifteen minutes or so, whenever no one is looking.”

  I swallowed the capsules and stashed the rest in my pockets. Paulson gave me a grim look. “I’ll be right here with the rest of the gear. The second it’s done, you come to me, okay? I’ll start treating you immediately and get you to the nearest hospital.” He shook his head and muttered the rest under his breath. “Even then it’s still a gamble.”

  “I heard that. Like I said, it’s a risk I’m willing to take if it means Tatum and the others get to live.”

  He nodded. “All right. Good luck, Elias. If I don’t see you again… well, it was a noble attempt. Both of you.” He looked down at Tatum, then held out his right hand.

  I shook it firmly. “We couldn’t have done any of this without you,” I said. “We won’t forget that.”

  Paulson gave me a half-smile and wiped the perspiration from his forehead. “You’re welcome. And for what it’s worth, I’m sorry I was right about your father.”

  He trudged back over to his car. I got in the van and drove closer to the gates of the Lodge. I parked less than a quarter mile away, took a deep breath, and dialed my father’s private cell number.

  He answered on the fourth ring. “Tobias King,” he said curtly. From the slightly tinny sound of his voice, I could tell I was on loudspeaker. He must be driving.

  “Dad, it’s me. I need your help,” I began.

  His silence was vast, arctic.

  “You there?” I asked after twenty seconds passed with no response.

  “Elias? What the fuck?” he finally said. He launched into a tirade of expletives after that. I could barely make any of the words out for a moment. Then I heard him exhale deeply. “Where the hell are you?” he barked.

  “I’m near the Lodge. Just up the road.”

  His tone was thunderous. “I’m driving up from the office in New Marwick. I’m less than ten minutes away. Stay right where you are. You hear me?”

  “Yes. I’m not going anywhere.” I made my voice sound as tweaked-out and pathetic as possible. “I really need you to help me. I messed up. I’ve been using again.”

  “Using what?”

  “What the hell do you think? The same shit that got me in trouble last time. When I crashed my car.”

  “For the love of fucking Christ,” he muttered. “You’re doing coke again?”

  “Yes. Other stuff too.”

  “I guess that explains this recent behavior of yours. But it doesn’t excuse it.” His voice was calm yet icily malevolent.

  “You’re going to kill me, aren’t you?” I said in a reedy, pitiful manner. I was actually pretty fucking good at this whole acting thing, if I said so myself.

  “You’d deserve it if I did, wouldn’t you?” he snarled. “You knew the deal when you got to third, and you blew it almost right away, you ungrateful fucking bastard. Do you have any idea of the trouble you’ve caused? Not to mention the shame you’ve brought upon our name!”

  “I know I fucked up when I left, but I need you to listen. It’s different this time; I really messed things up. I did something… bad.”

  He snorted. “Oh, you mean how you ran away with that little whore Tatum, ruined our hunt and stabbed Towne? Believe me, I’m well aware.”

  I took a deep breath and dropped my trump card. “No. I killed her, Dad. I fucking killed her.”

  There was a long pause. I knew I had him on the hook. My father could never resist the idea of having things to hold over other people’s heads, including mine. A murder was perfect. He would view it as the ultimate material to blackmail me with, forcing me to do his bidding as his puppet till the end of time.

  “You killed Tatum,” he said slowly.

  “Yeah. She was the reason I started using again. She was just… just so fucked up. I had to take it just to deal with her crazy shit all these months.”

  He sniffed derisively. “So my son is weak as well as a traitor.”

  “You don’t understand what a fucking monster she is. I mean… was. She was poisoning my mind.”

  “How?”

  “She kept making up all this shit, and she was so convincing. She’d tell me all these things that you supposedly said about me and other people when you went to see her. At first I thought she was full of shit, but then I actually started to believe her after a while. It was fucked up stuff. Really fucked up. It’s like she knows exactly how to worm her way right into a person’s fucking soul. She was trying to turn me against you and the society, and she almost succeeded.”

  “It seems that she did succeed, given your recent actions,” he said stiffly.

  “No. I woke up this morning and I finally realized what she was doing.” I paused and let out a deep, shaky breath. “All you ever wanted was a son to carry on your legacy. She convinced me you were wrong for wanting that and convinced me you’d somehow brainwashed me, but the more I thought about it, the more I realized what a conniving little bitch she was. What’s wrong with wanting to carry on old family traditions?”

  I knew I was hitting him right in his weakest spot. His relentless need to have the perfect heir to carry on his legacy was the only part of him that could be exploited. I was his only hope. The only child he’d ever have. No matter what I did, no matter how terribly I betrayed him, part of him would always cling to that.

  “Please, Dad,” I said, forcing my voice to the whiniest pitch I could reach. “She got me all kinds of fucked up. But I stopped her. I did it for you.”

  “She’s really dead?”

  “Yes. I’m sure of it. When I confronted her this morning, she started screaming at me. I shoved her against a wall and she fell and started bleeding. She was screaming about the baby. Something about losing it. I was so sick of hearing all her shit, so I shoved her again and she hit her head. Then while she was down I started choking her. I was just so fucking angry. So sick of her lies. And then she stopped moving. I dunno if it was because she hit her head so hard or because I choked her, but she hasn’t moved in hours and there’s blood everywhere. I can’t feel a pulse, either.”

  “I’ll be there in a few minutes,” he replied, not even acknowledging the fact that his son had just described the murder of a supposedly pregnant woman to him. “I’m sending the gate guards down the road to make sure you don’t move. Got it?”

  “Yes.”

  He abruptly hung up. I waited a few minutes, my pulse quickening as my father’s sleek black car pulled up along with two guards from the gate.

  “Elias,” he said, approaching me with a grim look on his face. There were bags under his eyes and lines in his forehead that hadn’t been there before. “You might be weak in some ways, but I have to say, you’ve still got some fucking balls on you for showing up here after what you did.”

  I forced my hands and arms to twitch and tremble as if I were truly coming down from a six-month-long drug binge. “I wasn’t going to come back. I figured you’d all want me dead. But then I killed her.” I shook my head and scrubbed a hand across my face. “I know I betrayed you and the rest of the society, but I can’t go to fucking prison. I just can’t. Please help me one more time. Please.”

  He ignored my pathetic begging. “Where is she?”

  I nodded to the van, and he barked orders at the guards to check her.

  One of them slid the door open. The other climbed inside and crouched over Tatum. His nose wrinkled in disgust at the stench of old blood. “Christ,” he m
uttered, putting one hand over his nose and mouth.

  The thick jacket Tatum was wearing was enough to stop him from seeing her chest rising and falling in slow, shallow breaths. At least I hoped it was. The whole time he was near her, I felt like I was about to have a fucking heart attack.

  He pressed two fingers to her neck. From the corner of my eye, I could see my father’s gaze darting from me to the supposed corpse and back again. I stared stonily ahead, not allowing my nervousness to show.

  The guard jumped out of the van and shook his head. “She’s cold, and I can’t feel a pulse. Might just be weak, though.”

  “Why do you say that?” my father asked sharply.

  He shrugged. “I thought I felt something for a split-second, but then it went away. I probably imagined it, but I dunno.”

  “Do a sternum rub,” the other guard said, making a fist and moving it up and down in the air to demonstrate. “My brother’s a paramedic. He said they do that sometimes to make sure people aren’t faking shit.”

  The guard got back in and leaned over Tatum. He clenched his right hand and rubbed his knuckles over her chest in several hard and fast motions. She didn’t move. The powerful sedative coursing through her veins ensured it.

  “Yeah, I think she’s dead,” he said, putting his hand back over his mouth again. “Jesus, that fucking blood…”

  The other guard looked at my father. “Sir? What do you want us to do with her?”

  He held up a hand. “Give me a minute,” he said coldly. He turned to me. “Do you have any idea how badly you fucked up when you took her and left?” he said, lowering his voice so that only I could hear.

  “Yes.”

  His eyes narrowed. “If you were any other member, you’d have a bullet in your head right now.”

  “So you aren’t going to kill me?”

  He rubbed his chin and fell silent for a moment. “No,” he finally said. “We can spin this. It was just a sick joke. A large-scale prank against the rest of the society. We’ll say you wanted your own hunt, all to yourself. So we set the whole thing up. Towne’s stabbing was part of it. A trick, like the fake stabbing we do at the final trial. I’ll pay him to go along with it and admit his part in the scheme.”

  My brows rose. “Wait, he survived?”

  My father’s upper lip curled. “Yes, luckily for you. We wouldn’t be able to pay him off to pretend it was all part of the plan if he was actually dead, would we?”

  “Guess not. Thanks for helping me, Dad,” I said, dipping my head in faux appreciation. “I know I don’t deserve it.”

  “No, you don’t. And if you think things are going to go back to normal after this, you’re sorely mistaken. I don’t even know what the hell will make me trust you again at this point.” He shook his head and sighed, like I was simply a naughty child who’d been caught with one hand in the cookie jar.

  “I understand.”

  He looked back at me, and his eyes narrowed again. “Then obviously you’ll also understand that you can never be on any Crown and Dagger properties alone again, including this one. I’ll always be around to monitor you.”

  “I know. I get it. You can’t trust me around the girls anymore.”

  “That’s right.” He leaned in closer. “I never thought I’d have to say this to you, but here it is: one more fuck-up and I’ll put the bullet in your head myself. I really, really don’t want to do it, given that you’re my only son, so don’t fucking push me. Don’t squander this last chance I’ve given you.”

  Cold seeped into my blood at his words. His true colors were showing again. “I won’t.”

  He smiled, as if threatening his beloved son with death was perfectly normal. “I’m going to send you to a rehabilitation facility as soon as possible. I’ve heard good things about one in Boston.”

  “I don’t need rehab,” I said. “I’ll just stop taking all the shit. Now that she’s gone, I don’t even crave it.” I jerked my thumb toward Tatum as I spoke.

  He pressed his lips together. “I’ll be the judge of whether you need rehab or not. You know this little stunt you pulled got Henry Davenport killed, don’t you?” he said, tilting his head to the side.

  I nodded as my stomach lurched with guilt. “Tatum said we should call him and ask if we could stay with him. If it wasn’t for that little bitch, he’d still be alive.”

  He scoffed. “Not that it matters too much. He was a thorn in our side for far too long. So I suppose in that sense, you almost did us a favor. We finally had an excuse to get rid of the little prick, as unhappy as Davenport was about the whole thing.”

  “Right,” I muttered.

  “At any rate, I’m glad you finally saw Tatum’s true colors, even if it had to happen like this,” he said, waving a hand at her. He was quiet for a second, then smiled coldly. “You know, technically, you won the hunt. You killed her. So I’ll have her cremated and turned into a doll for the cabinet. A nice little trophy for you.”

  “No.” I shook my head firmly. “I don’t want any fucking reminders of her. She tried to ruin my life and she turned me into someone I didn’t even recognize when I woke up. I never want to see her face or think about her again.”

  “Very well.” He turned to the guards. “Bury her on the grounds when we get back up to the estate. No need for the police to get involved, of course.”

  “Wait.” I held up a hand. “I have an idea.”

  My father looked back at me and raised his brows. “What is it?”

  “Remember that coffin down in the lake room of the Catacombs? She fucking hated it in there.”

  “Yes, I do recall that,” he said, a hint of amusement glimmering in his eyes.

  “We’ll put her in that exact same coffin in the exact same place. She can fucking waste away in there, just like she made me waste away all these months. That’s what she deserves.”

  My father was silent for a moment. Then he laughed and clapped me on the back. “Welcome back, son. Welcome back…”

  18

  Tatum

  I woke up with a groan.

  My head hurt, one of those aches that slowly creep up the nape of the neck. My eyes stung and my muscles ached, my limbs restless. My insides hurt too, like my stomach was a fist squeezing itself as hard as it could. I tried to curl into a ball to ease the pain, but I felt sluggish, and when I tried to move my arms and legs, they felt pinned to the floor by some powerful force.

  I was trapped again. Held captive in some sort of box.

  The terror jolted my mind fully awake, thoughts ringing louder and louder like an alarm bell in my ears until it all came flooding back. This was good. A victory. I was in the coffin in the Catacombs, just like Elias and I wanted. That meant he’d succeeded with the first part of the plan. He’d returned to the Lodge without incurring the deadly wrath of his asshole of a father, and he’d convinced him to ‘bury’ me down here, hidden away in this underground cavern to rot forever and ever.

  Now it was my turn to contribute.

  Taking a few deep breaths, I tried to slide my hands into the sides of my jeans, searching for the phone and the mini-tools. It was a laborious process. The muscles in my forearms corded and strained, and I let out a grunt and squeezed my eyes shut. This was harder than I thought. The drugs had worn off in my brain, but my body hadn’t entirely caught up yet.

  I took another deep breath and tried again. My fingertips finally brushed against something hard and sharp. I tilted my hips, coaxing the item out. It was one of the screwdrivers. I reached up and held it between my teeth while I freed the other tools—a larger screwdriver, a pocketknife, and a small pair of pliers. Then I balanced them on my chest as I rooted around on my other side for the phone.

  Letting out a sigh of relief as I finally grabbed hold of it, I unlocked it and switched on the flashlight app. Let there be light.

  The first thing I did after that was reach up and press my hands against the top of the coffin. The tools might not even be necessary if I could ju
st push the lid up and off the casket. No such luck, though. As Elias had predicted, the whole thing had been hermetically sealed. That meant my coffin was airtight. If I didn’t make it out of here, I’d suffocate.

  I didn’t let the grim thought bother me, though. I still had time to get out. We’d made sure of it when we came up with the plan. Even if the sedative didn’t wear off for two hours after the coffin was sealed, I’d still have three and a half hours to escape before the air ran out. Apparently that was exactly how much air the average coffin held: five and a half hours’ worth of oxygen.

  Clutching the pocketknife, I felt around the edge for the hermetic rubber seal. All I had to do was slice along it all the way around me. Then the seal would be broken and I could push the lid up.

  I began the process of slicing the rubber. It wasn’t an easy task, given how little space there was for me to move in, but around fifteen minutes later, I’d cut through the center of as much of it as possible.

  Bracing the soles of my feet against the bottom of the casket, I placed both hands above my head and pushed. For a moment nothing happened, but then the lid above me yielded with a low creak. With another hard push, the top half swung right off me.

  Breathing another deep sigh of relief, I put the tools in my jeans pocket. I’d assumed the knife would be all I needed, but both Elias and Dr. Paulson had insisted I take the other stuff just in case there were any interior bolts or screws that needed to be loosened. Luckily for me there weren’t, because that would’ve made things a hell of a lot harder.

  I sat up and looked around me. There were no burning torches lit around the chamber like there were last time Tobias forced me down here. Aside from my phone flashlight, it was pitch dark. The inky lake water sloshed around the tiny island my coffin had been placed on, just like last time, and it shimmered like thousands of shards of broken glass as I moved the phone around, casting the light into the blackness.