Twisted Empire: Dark Dynasty Book 3

by Hart, Stella

I hurried through the last round of clay targets impatiently, and then I stretched and faked a yawn. “You’re right, it’s getting late,” I said. “We should head back inside.”

  “Yes. How about we have dinner at our usual spot on the terrace?” Dad replied. “I would invite you to the party that’s happening right now, but I don’t think the other members are ready to see you yet.”

  “I’m probably not ready to see them either,” I replied, feigning an edgy expression. “Let’s just go and have a glass of scotch in your study. We can have a maid bring some food up there. That way we don’t have to see any of the other guys.”

  “Should you really be drinking right now, given your problems?” he replied, eyes narrowing.

  “Just one glass shouldn’t hurt,” I said smoothly. “It was never alcohol I had an issue with, anyway. Just drugs. Besides, we need to have a celebratory drink, don’t we?”

  “What exactly are we celebrating?” he asked. “I’m pleased that you’re back, but don’t think for a second that I’m happy about all the shit you’re putting me through as a result. I’m at risk of losing the presidency.”

  “I know. I meant we need to celebrate getting rid of Tatum.”

  His rigid posture finally relaxed. “I suppose I can’t say no to that,” he said, another smile turning up the corners of his lips.

  We headed back to the mansion and trudged up to his study. I immediately glanced around to see if Tatum had accidentally left anything out of place, but everything looked normal.

  My father headed over to a cabinet and gestured toward several crystal decanters of scotch. “Any preference?”

  I smiled. “No. You pick.”

  He selected the bottle in the middle and poured us two glasses. We sat down by his desk.

  I noticed he didn’t start drinking his scotch until I had a sip of mine, but that didn’t surprise me in the least. He still didn’t entirely trust me, so he needed to see me swallowing the exact same liquid that he had in his glass before he’d know it was safe.

  “Are you sure you don’t want to eat downstairs?” he asked, staring at me intently.

  I shook my head. “There’s a few more things I want to talk about with you, so it’ll be better if we have privacy.”

  He furrowed his brows. “I see. What did you want to discuss?”

  “Let’s decide on what we want for dinner first,” I said, casually waving a hand. I needed to drag this conversation out as long as possible.

  He nodded and picked up the phone on his desk. After a brief discussion with the head of the kitchen staff, he held a hand over the receiver and asked me to pick between three different options.

  I pretended to hem and haw over it for a couple of minutes before deciding on the most elaborate dish. It almost certainly wouldn’t be delivered for at least forty minutes. That was a plus for me, because the last thing I needed was someone knocking on the door and bothering us within the next half-hour. The dinner discussion was merely a way to kill time for a few extra minutes.

  When my father finally ended the call, I leaned forward and clasped my hands on the desk. “So anyway, I wanted to know about your first kill.”

  “What about it?”

  “Who was it? How did it feel?” I asked. I figured it was the perfect topic to keep him distracted a while longer.

  As predicted, a wide smile spread across his face. He guzzled down another mouthful of scotch before responding. “I don’t actually remember her name. Some brunette girl here on the estate. But I remember how it felt. It’s never changed, no matter how many I go through.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  He licked his lips and leaned back in his seat, a gratified expression crossing his face. “There’s nothing like holding another person’s life in your hands. It’s incredible. You’re in control. You decide what happens to them. How it happens. You’re God.”

  What a shock. A billionaire with a god complex.

  I smiled thinly. “That’s exactly how I felt when I did it.”

  “Then there’s hope for you after all,” he said, studying my face again. “Why did you ask me that?”

  “Just wondering if we were on the same page about it.” I leaned closer. “I am curious about something else, though. How did you kill Camille and Sylvie?”

  He tapped a foot against the polished parquet floor. “I shot them. I know they deserved to suffer, but at the time, I was frantic. So I got rid of them as fast as possible and had their bodies thrown in the underground lake. They’ll never be found.”

  “Do you ever miss them?” I asked. I noticed he was eyeing my glass, so I took another sip.

  He sighed. “I don’t regret killing them, if that’s what you’re asking. They tried to take you from me. But I suppose I do miss them sometimes. Sylvie was usually so sweet and mild. Hardly ever questioned anything. The perfect wife. And Camille…” He paused, a faraway look entering his eyes. His foot was still restlessly tapping the floor. “She was fiery. Spirited. Never gave up fighting. There was a lot of fun to be had there.”

  “I see.” I gritted my teeth.

  “I hope this isn’t some prelude to you saying you miss Tatum already,” he said, eyes narrowing slightly.

  “Of course not. I don’t miss her at all.” I don’t need to, because she’s not fucking dead, I added silently.

  He snorted derisively. “Good.”

  “One more thing,” I said, holding a hand up. “You were willing to murder two women—one of them your wife—to get me back because you were so desperate to have a son. But earlier today you said you wouldn’t hesitate to kill me if I fucked up again. How is it possible to think about murdering me like that when you claim to want me in your life so much? Doesn’t that seem like an insane level of cognitive dissonance to you?”

  He poured himself another drink and took a sip as he considered my question. “You’ll see one day, if you ever have your own children,” he finally said. “You think you’d do anything for them, and in most cases you would. But everyone has a limit. There’s a point where you realize you might need to turn your back on your own child.”

  “Not for me. I’d never do that,” I replied.

  “You say that now, but just wait until you’re actually a father. Trust me, you’ll see.”

  I narrowed my eyes. “So you’d really kill me?”

  He nodded. “Like I said earlier, I wouldn’t want to, but if it came down to it and I felt I had to, then yes, I would.”

  “Thought so.” Lifting one brow, I smiled again. “I guess it’s too bad I beat you to it, huh?”

  His forehead wrinkled with confusion. “What?”

  I glanced at the clock and stood up. “Does it ever worry you that the whole world might find out what goes on here?” I asked, ignoring his question for now.

  He snorted. “Of course. Why do you think we go to such great lengths to protect ourselves? Why do you think I said I’d kill you if you threatened us again?”

  “So you wouldn’t be too happy if someone got that hard drive from your safe and sent it to someone else. And you wouldn’t be too happy if an article about the society with all that material started making the rounds on the internet. Would you?”

  My father stood up, his face thunderous. “What the fuck are you saying, Elias? Are you threatening me after all I’ve done to protect you?”

  I shrugged. “It’s not a threat.”

  “Then what the hell are you getting at? Are you still high?”

  “It’s not a threat because it’s already been done.” I looked at the clock again. “That article I mentioned is real, and it’s been out for at least half an hour now.”

  “What?”

  “You know what the internet is like,” I went on. “Once something is out, it’s out forever. Even you can’t control it. Give it a few more minutes and your phone and email will start to blow up.” My smile grew wider. “You’ll see,” I added in a mocking tone, mimicking his earlier condescending words.

&n
bsp; “This better be a sick joke.”

  “It’s not. Your whole fucking empire is going down.” I smiled grimly. “And like I said before, I beat you to it. You can’t kill me for screwing you over if I kill you first.”

  “Oh, you think you’re going to kill me, do you?” he snarled, picking up a sharp silver letter opener.

  I stepped closer, unafraid. “Here’s the kicker, Dad. I already did it twenty minutes ago.”

  “What the fuck are you talking about?”

  I drew back and nodded to the scotch glasses. “Are you starting to feel strange? Stiff and short of breath? Or maybe your legs are feeling restless? You have been tapping that foot an awful lot.”

  He glared. “You’re full of shit. You drank from the same bottle as me. There’s nothing in it,” he growled. But as he spoke, his arms and legs began to stiffen and then flail in jerky movements. He sat back in his chair and dropped the letter opener back on the desk, clutching at his throat with one hand as he tried his best to stop his limbs from moving with the other.

  “I had Tatum put a fuck-ton of rat poison in every single bottle,” I explained. “Why do you think I let you pick which one we drank? It didn’t matter because they were all tainted, and it probably would’ve looked suspicious if I insisted on a particular one. It would’ve looked even more suspicious if I didn’t drink with you as well. Hence my glass.”

  His face had turned bright red, and frothy saliva was pooling at the corners of his mouth. “You… you…”

  “There’s no real cure for strychnine poisoning,” I went on. “But it can be treated effectively if you take the right steps. I took a ton of activated charcoal tablets before I drank anything, so that’ll absorb some of the poison. Also, I only had a few sips, and I have a doctor waiting just up the road. He’s got everything ready to start treating me as soon as I get the fuck out of here. But you... you had two whole glasses, and there’s hardly anything in your stomach to absorb it. You’re going to die slowly and painfully, and I’m going to watch very fucking happily, because you deserve every ounce of pain for all the pain and damage you’ve caused.” I cocked my head to the side. “It’s starting to hurt now, isn’t it? I can tell by the look on your face.”

  His eyes bulged, and he managed to rasp out two complete sentences. “You’ve just cut off your nose to spite your face. You’ll be charged with murder and I won’t be there to bail you out and fix everything for you again.” He gasped and clutched at his stomach as soon as the words were out.

  “I’m not worried. It’ll look like you committed suicide to escape justice, seeing as the whole world is currently finding out what you and your cronies have done over the years.” I smiled and took another step back. “As for me… well, it’ll look like you tried to poison me once you realized what was going on. After all, who else had access to your safe? Only me, as far as you knew. So you tried to murder me in retaliation for sending the contents of the hard drive to a friend to post online. Luckily, I survived to tell the tale.”

  “You… you fucking bastard.” He winced and let out a hacking cough as he tried to stand up again. Blood came up from his throat and spattered around his mouth with the foamy saliva. “After everything I’ve done for you…”

  “Yeah, sorry about that,” I said sarcastically. “But you made this monster. You made me think I was a killer my whole life so you could try and mold me into one, just like you.” I spread my arms wide. “So congratulations, you finally had your wish granted. I’m a killer. But we’re not the same. I don’t do it for fun. I do it when I have to. To protect the ones I love.”

  “I should’ve known you were a fucking snake,” he muttered weakly before letting out another hacking cough.

  I raised a scornful brow. “I can’t blame you for not knowing. I was always your major weakness, wasn’t I? You wanted so badly to have a son to carry on your legacy that you would do anything and everything to keep me around. You were even willing to give me one more chance after what I did the other week.” I shook my head and leaned in close to him again. “You should’ve listened to Davenport and Van der Veer. You shouldn’t have trusted me. Shouldn’t have given me that chance. But obviously you were never as smart as you liked to think. The only thing you ever really had over everyone else in the world was money.”

  As I spoke, my father collapsed onto his knees and fell to the floor, gasping as he struggled to breathe. Every muscle began to spasm. He grunted in agony as more blood bubbled up around his mouth.

  I watched without an ounce of remorse. “Don’t try to get up. You’ll only make it worse for yourself,” I said icily as he struggled to get to his feet again, one shaky hand reaching for the desk to balance himself.

  My phone vibrated in my pocket. I pulled it out and glanced at it. Tatum again. The article has already been shared by two hundred thousand people and it’s only been out for half an hour! I can’t believe we actually did it!

  I began to tap out a response. A fiery pain in my side made me drop my phone midway through my first sentence.

  I looked down to see a black flower of blood spreading over my lower abdomen. My father was hunched over near my feet, the silver letter opener dangling from one hand.

  “If I die here, so do you,” he choked out. He reached up in an attempt to stab me again, but the letter opener fell out of his hand and he collapsed back onto the floor, gasping and wheezing.

  I stumbled back, pressing my hands against my shirt as firmly as possible, trying to stem the flow of blood. It seeped through my fingers, hot and sticky. The rest of me felt cold. I swayed and sank to my knees.

  The pain quickly faded to an icy numbness. Black filled the edges of my vision. My father’s guttural groans and hoarse dying breaths resounded throughout the room, and my own breaths came in shallow gasps as I fought the darkness and tried to get up again.

  “Tatum…” I tried to grab my phone, patting the floor around me. It was slick with blood and I couldn’t find anything.

  Minutes passed, or maybe it was only seconds. I couldn’t tell. I was tired. So tired. But I couldn’t lie down and go to sleep. Not until I saw Tatum again. Not until I told her I loved her one last time.

  As I choked out breath after harsh breath, my eyes were drawn to the window on the other side of the room. The sky outside was black with multitudes of stars shining like shards of crushed ice. I kept my gaze on those stars, willing the glinting white lights to keep me awake for just a few seconds longer.

  It didn’t work. My eyelids turned heavy and began to droop, and then all I saw was darkness.

  20

  Tatum

  Eighteen months later

  Hulking cemetery gates loomed before me in the afternoon light. A towering black iron arch over them had the words ‘King Estate’ picked out in gold above the family crest.

  To enter the private cemetery, I had to skirt around a pile of dead leaves a gardener must’ve swept up earlier. Only weeks ago, the air was warm and the streets of New Marwick were lined with summer-green trees. Now the leaves were red and gold, deserting their branches in the chilly gusts which blew through every few hours.

  I walked along the leafy path heading west, stopping when I reached a slab of black granite with gold lettering. This was it.

  I knelt down beside the gravestone. “Hi,” I said softly, not wanting to disturb two birds perched on a nearby stone. “I know I should’ve come to visit you sooner, but I…”

  I shook my head and trailed off. The birds chirped and flew away.

  I cleared my throat and started again, my voice louder now. “I know in the grand scheme of things, we didn’t know each other all that long. Just a few months. But that doesn’t invalidate everything that happened, and it doesn’t affect how I still feel about you. How I’ll always feel about you.”

  I paused and touched a hand to the cool granite, stroking my fingertips over it. “There’s so much I want to tell you,” I went on. “But first I think I need to say what I should’ve told y
ou far more often when you were still alive. Those three little words you still deserve to hear every day.”

  I leaned forward and lowered my voice. “Rot in hell.”

  I drew my head back, fingertips tracing the inlaid gold lettering beneath my hand. Tobias King, 1963 - 2018.

  “You know, the only thing that makes me sad about your death is that you missed all the drama that night. All the arrests. All the screaming protestors on the streets over the next few weeks.” I smirked and shook my head. “I would’ve loved to see your face when you realized how screwed you were. Lucky for me, though, Elias can describe it whenever I ask.”

  I smiled and leaned forward again. “Yeah, that’s right, you slimy prick. Despite your best attempts, Elias is still alive.”

  I remembered the events of that night as clearly as if it all happened yesterday, even the things I hadn’t directly witnessed and only heard about secondhand.

  When Tobias realized the gravity of his situation with Elias and the rat poison, he’d apparently hit a panic button under his desk and stabbed his son with a letter opener. By the time the guards managed to break down the locked door, he was already stone cold dead. Elias was unconscious and bleeding heavily, but they got him to the closest medical wing in time to help him. At some point he’d awoken and told the doctors there was strychnine in his system, and they’d been able to treat him for that too.

  At the time, I’d been hiding out in the Catacombs with Pri, waiting for Crown and Dagger to blow up. And blow up it did. Within three hours of Greer’s article going viral, a SWAT team descended upon the Lodge and chaos had reigned for the rest of the night.

  In the past, the society could’ve paid off some police captains or politicians to make their problems go away, but not this time. Their ‘problem’ was now millions upon millions of people who weren’t going to forget or let this go now that they’d seen and read what the society had done over the decades. Arrests had to be made. Heads had to roll.

  Not all the third-level members were at the Lodge that evening, but the article had a full list of names and within a day of its release, every single one of them was in custody. Mellie, too.