by Smoke , Lucy
Stone Cold Queen
Sick Boys Book 2
Lucy Smoke
Copyright © 2021 by Lucy Smoke LLC
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Editing by Heather Long and Your Editing Lounge
Cover Design: Dee Garcia at Black Widows Designs
Proofreading by Kelly Allenby
Created with Vellum
Contents
Prologue
1. Dean
2. Avalon
3. Dean
4. Avalon
5. Avalon
6. Dean
7. Avalon
8. Avalon
9. Avalon
10. Dean
11. Avalon
12. Dean
13. Avalon
14. Avalon
15. Avalon
16. Avalon
17. Dean
18. Avalon
19. Dean
20. Avalon
21. Dean
22. Avalon
23. Avalon
24. Dean
25. Avalon
26. Avalon
27. Avalon
28. Dean
29. Avalon
30. Dean
31. Avalon
32. Avalon
33. Avalon
34. Dean
35. Avalon
36. Avalon
37. Dean
38. Avalon
39. Avalon
40. Avalon
41. Dean
42. Avalon
43. Dean
44. Avalon
45. Dean
46. Avalon
47. Avalon
48. Dean
Epilogue
THANK YOU FOR READING!
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Also by Lucy Smoke / Lucinda Dark
You think I look
like a queen from the outside?
Well, I can assure you
that on
the inside
I am the whole
fucking kingdom.
Lauren Eden, Kingdom
Prologue
Avalon
My heart beats with a repetitive thump that’s slowly but surely driving me to absolute fucking insanity. Sweat coats my skin. I track his movements as the man strides across the room and dumps his mask onto a metal side table. Then he sets down the satchel that had been previously wrapped around his chest. The bag slams onto the table loudly—telling me he's got some hefty tools in there. I try to think of what to say or do, but nothing comes immediately to mind. The only thing my brain can seem to supply is one question:
Where the fuck is Dean?
"Do you think you’re a strong person, Ms. Manning?" the man asks.
My body jerks as he turns away from the table and marches towards me, getting down on his haunches and pulling out a knife from his boot. "Strong?" I repeat, thankful that my tone remains steady even though, inside, I'm floundering to figure out a way out of this. "I don't know. Depends on how you define that word."
He slices through the bindings on my legs and arms, returning the knife to his boot. His hands latch onto my wrists as he pulls me to my feet. Despite his hold on me, I nearly go down anyway—my legs having been restrained for so long, the second feeling begins to return to the nerves in them, I grit my teeth in pain. He takes it as his opportunity to move me to one of the chairs, yanking my arms behind the back and retying them in swift movements.
"Interesting," he comments as he backs up and looks down on me. "Most people give me a yes or a no answer.”
“I’m not most people,” I reply.
His eyes trace over me, searching—for what, I can only guess. “All right then,” he continues. “Do you think you're a fearful person?"
That's a much easier answer. "No."
Fear is nothing but the presence of powerlessness. That much I knew to be true. The man doesn't respond to my quick answer, though. Not even with another odd question. Instead, he backs up towards his metal table and leans against it before crossing his massive arms over his chest.
He looks like a goddamn poster boy for Nazi psychos. Blond hair. Blue eyes. A handsomely cut jaw with only a smattering of little scars here and there. I don't shy away when he stares at me. I stare back. Watching him and daring him with my own glare.
"Do you know who I am?" he asks.
I snort. "If I did, do you think I'd be here?"
"Answer the question."
"No, dipshit. I don't know who you are, and I don't know what the fuck you want." The first is true—I don't know who he is. The second, however, is a bald-faced lie. I know what he wants. I know why I'm here. I know why he took off his fucking mask because he’s not planning on letting me out of here alive. "Are we done playing twenty questions now?"
He chuckles, and the sound does not make me feel at ease. Quite the opposite, actually. The sound of his amusement sends a shiver down my spine. "One more question, Avalon." I hate the way he says my name. I hate the sound of his voice, and I hate that I feel so fucking powerless, bound to this chair and waiting for whatever it is he has planned.
If I were to close my eyes and truly listen to that quiet, vibrated chuckle, it might sound completely normal at first. If I wasn't looking straight at him and knowing the torture tools that he's likely keeping in his little tool belt sitting on the table at his back, I might even think he was normal. But even without the torture tools and the barren room and the situation, I think I’d be able to tell what he is. There's something deeper in his tone, in his eyes. Something that would make even the most easy-going, oblivious person in the world pause and take notice.
Maybe it's intuition. A gut feeling. Animal instincts at their finest that tell me this man is anything but normal. Whatever he has seen. Whatever he has done. No matter how bloody or damning, he enjoyed it. And whatever he's planning to do to me—he'll feel the same.
My head tips back as he unfolds his arms and straightens away from the table, walking to where I sit until he’s standing right in front of me. One hand comes down on the back of the chair against my spine, and he leans in close until I can see the individual flecks of various blue shades in his eyes.
That's when I see it—the oddity that sets his looks off from others. There's no emotion in them. Even with Brax or Abel or Dean—when they're at their breaking points—there's something there. A wildness. A wickedness. A feeling. In this man's eyes, I see none of that. What I see is just … nothing. No emotion. No happiness. No glee. No remorse.
"Last question," he says. I meet his eyes and force my heartbeat to calm, shoving down my own questions and thoughts as I wait with bated breath.
"Are you afraid of me?" he asks.
Perhaps I should be. It would be a lie to say that my heart isn't pounding in my ears, and I don't have a million and one thoughts racing through my head. It would be a lie to say that he doesn't unnerve me, that I like being tied up and constrained and unable to fight back. But am I afraid of him?
I laugh. “That’s cute,” I say. “You think you’re scary.” I lean even farther back until my skull is as flush with my back as it’ll ever be. “I’ve got bad news for you—I’ve seen scary, and you don’t look anything like me.”
His smile widens. “Best answer I’ve ever heard,” he says. “And I think it also answers my first question about you.”
“Oh yeah?” I inquire.
He nods. “I hope you’
re strong, Ms. Manning, because with what I’m planning to do to you, you’ll need to be.”
1
Dean
12 years old…
“Do you know what death looks like?” The question, itself, might seem random, but I’ve learned that nothing is truly random when it comes from my father. Nicholas Carter is a man that carefully plots and considers his every word and action and executes them with purpose. To him, everything is a competition.
"No, sir," I say, watching him with caution.
"You will soon," he says with finality, with the confidence of a man who has killed, will kill again, and knows that he will pass on the skill to his only son. To me.
I shift uncomfortably in the seat facing his giant desk. I’m almost thirteen but the thing still looks massive to me. Like a giant, foreboding presence that remains behind even if the king that sits at it is absent.
"Death is a gruesome occurrence," my father continues. "It's not like it is in your movies and video games." He always prefaces things like that—movies and video games—with "your" as if he's too busy or perhaps too inhuman to enjoy things that normal people like. Because he's not normal and as if that reminder must be repeated until it’s pounded into my brain that what he really means is that I'm not normal either. I'm just like him.
"Death is an act that must never be doled out in anger, do you understand?"
"Yes, sir," I say, but I don't. I'm going to kill, but I shouldn't be mad about it? Not when all I am is mad. I'm mad that I'm missing my time with Brax and Abel for this. I'm mad that he's never home, and when he is, I'm pulled into his office for stupid lectures about stupid things. I'm mad that Mom's always drunk, and when she isn't, she's worse. All I am is mad, and even that, too, only compounds and makes me feel even angrier than before.
Nicholas Carter looks at me, and for a moment, I think he's going to call me out on my bullshit automatic response, but he surprises me. He doesn't. Instead, he gets up from his desk chair and strides to the other side of the room. The knobs to his special liquor cabinet—the only one in the house that even my mother dares not touch—turn and he pulls out a glass decanter full of orange-brown liquid. He pours himself a glass and carefully places it back into the cabinet, shutting it before he turns, holding the small amount he poured for himself—only an inch or so in the otherwise giant glass—swishing the liquid around in circles as he stares into the top of it.
"Taking a life is very personal, Dean," he says quietly. “I want you to understand that.” I want to ask why. Why do I have to understand something like that? If he wants me to kill, he should just say so. The media says it’s wrong, but … people die all the time, don’t they? What does it matter who does the killing? And why does it have to be me?
“A man finds it easier to kill when he relies on his emotions—anger, spite, sorrow. They're crutches." I frown, not quite sure what he means. "Emotions keep you human. They ground you." He tips the glass until the liquid is precariously close to spilling over the rim. My eyes widen, and they flick between where his hand is to his face. "But if you let them spill over..."
A single droplet falls and hits the carpet, a spot of brown against white. I resist the urge to jump up and stop him from spilling the rest. I don't know why. It's just automatic—everything is so white in his office, perfectly pristine. Nothing out of place. Except for that one spot. I hate seeing it ruined, stained. It makes the back of my neck itch.
My father lifts his head and watches me as he turns the glass and lets the rest pour out onto the floor until it's soaking the ground at his feet. "If you let your emotions—the ties that bind you to your desires and whims—control you," he continues as he finishes pouring. "Then you become attached. When you become attached, you become vulnerable. Emotions help, but they can hinder as well. Remember, you control your emotions and attachments. Never let them control you."
"What about Brax and Abel?" I can't help it. Especially during moments like these when he thinks he's imparting some life lesson—always after he's been away for a long while and comes home smelling like cigars and exhaustion—he hates it when I interrupt him. I can't shake the feeling that he's lost something, and he's warning me to not get too close, so I don't lose it as well. What it is, however, I know he'll never say.
Attachments, though, things I care about … I don't have many. I can live without the video games or even my mom—it's not like she's all there anyway. But Braxton and Abel? They're what I can't live without. They're my brothers.
My father sets the now empty glass down on the edge of the counter beneath the liquor cabinet and steps over the wet stain beneath his impeccable business shoes. He watches me, and I press my back into the chair the closer he comes without saying anything. He crouches in front of me and stares at me hard, as if he's trying to see into my head, maybe even into my future.
"Anchors," he answers quietly.
"Anchors?" I repeat, confused.
He nods. "It's good to have anchors," he tells me, his hands hanging over his thighs. "Like posts in a fence to keep the structure up." He reaches up, and for a brief moment, I think he's going to touch me. I bite down on my tongue and hold completely still. I don't want him to, I think. I don't know why, but something tells me if he touches me, I'll become just like the carpet—stained and soiled.
It doesn't happen. Instead, he lets his hand drop as he stands back up to his full height. "Regardless of having those anchors," he says, looking away as someone knocks on the door to his office, "you must always make sure to have your own strength. You must be able to stand on your own. Without them. And you must always, always, ensure that they never rot."
"Rot?"
Nicholas Carter looks back at me as he heads for the door to his office, and just before he pulls it open, he says in a voice so low that I almost don't catch it. "Yes," he says. "If you let your anchors start to rot, they become weak, and only one thing happens to the weak in this world." His head lifts, and eyes the same color as mine meet my gaze. "The weak are destroyed."
2
Avalon
Present Day…
Blood coats the front row of my teeth, coppery and tangy in taste. I bare my teeth as I lean over and spit out a wad of saliva mixed with it. There’s enough that it comes out red. The bones in my hands hurt. Hell, the bones in my legs are starting to get sore too. The muscles in my face ache from too many hits. Unfortunately for my opponent, though, I can't say I'm satisfied yet.
We circle each other, like two starving hyenas. Yet, there's no prize for me except what the fight brings. She's doing this for the money, and I'm doing this so I can go to sleep tonight without seeing that bastard's face. Only one of us will win—another unfortunate aspect for her—because I know that it'll be me.
As if sensing my internal thoughts, the redhead in front of me dives forward and throws her whole body towards my middle. Her arms encircle my waist as we crash into the cage surrounding the fighting ring. Shouts echo all around us, sounding much farther away than they should. That's what happens when the high hits, though. The rest of the world disappears, and it's just me and danger in the ring. Me and the demons.
I bring my elbow down on the girl's back and hear her responding grunt, but she doesn't let go. I do it again, and again she grunts, but still no dice. So, instead, I cup the back of her head and hold her still as I bring my knee up to her face. The crunch of her nose against my kneecap is a sweet symphony in my ears. She curses, and finally, I'm released. I don't give her a chance to recover, though, because it looks like my break-up party has arrived.
Out of irritation, I slam my fist into the chick's face once, twice, and three times. Hard enough that she goes down. People bang against the cage, rattling the pliable metal as they try to dictate what I should do. Punch her again. No, kick her. Snap her neck like a twig. Are they really so bloodthirsty that they want to see me kill someone right here and now?
No, as much as I want to give it, this chick doesn't deserve death. Because I
learned something two weeks ago; I learned that death is easy to deal out, and once it’s dealt, it can't be taken back. That's what I dream about. I dream about killing Roger Murphy—over and over again. In any way I can. A bullet to the brain had done the trick, but since then, my sick mind has come up with all other manner of ways I could've done the deed. What's worse is I regret it—not the kill, but the fact that I didn't make it last. I didn’t get to hear him scream and cry as I sliced him to pieces, waiting until he was begging until I finally gave him the sentence he deserved.
The desire to try again on someone else is hard to push down, but as I approach my opponent and her struggle up from the ground—her fingers locking into the slots of the fence separating us from the crowd—I realize just how much I wish I could. Instead, I grab her by the throat, throwing her back against the fence as I punch her in the gut. When her body seizes forward, spittle flying from between her lips as she coughs, I slam my knuckles into her temple, and she's out like a light. If only sleep came as easily for me.