Queen of Quarantine

by Caroline Peckham

  I walked across the white marble floor towards the drinks cabinet, but fell still before I reached it as the large armchair placed by the window came into view and I found a woman sitting there. She held a glass of my favourite and most expensive scotch in her hand, the bottle on the floor beside her as she looked away from me out at the view.

  She was wearing a white dress and was sitting sideways in the chair, her long bronze legs hanging over the arm of it with black stiletto Louboutins on her feet. She must have heard my approach, but she didn’t turn as she continued to look out of the window, a cascade of blonde curls hiding her face from me.

  I fell still, the hairs along the back of neck prickling as I looked at her. This compound was utterly secure. There was no way she'd just wandered in here past the ten foot walls and guarded gates. No way any of my men would have just let her in either. So how in the hell had she-

  "Hello, Troy," the woman purred, turning her head towards me and my composure almost slipped as my gaze fell on the face of the Rivers girl.

  The one who had corrupted my boy, the one who had taken everything I'd built and twisted it against me. She should have been dead a long time ago, but there she sat, drinking scotch worth more than she could possibly guess and looking me dead in the eye like she thought we were equals. Or worse than that, like she thought she was better than me.

  "Saint?" I asked, knowing he must be here too, my voice cold and flat, nothing at all to show that I had been taken off guard by this arrival in my home.

  My son stepped out from the doorway in the corner, his face harder than I recalled, features stronger now that he was older. There wasn't a trace of the weak child I'd once known in him and as I watched him approach me at a casual pace, I saw the man I'd always hoped he would become looking back at me and a smile touched my lips as I looked him over.

  "I see you took my advice," I said as I adjusted my watch, pressing down on the emergency alarm which would activate silently and bring my men rushing to my location.

  It was a shame, but I had come to the conclusion a few years ago that my son would have to die if I ever wanted to reclaim my empire. Once I’d achieved that I supposed I’d have to work on creating another heir, though the tedium of taking a new wife had slowed my progress on that idea.

  "What advice was that?" Saint asked curiously, coming to stand behind the black widow who had lured him to her side.

  But perhaps I had been wrong to balk against the idea of him aligning himself with this girl. The look in her eyes said she was just as determined and dangerous as him, so despite the weakness I knew this love he claimed to feel for her caused him, it was possible she provided some strength too.

  "To always go after what you want and never give up until you have it in your grasp,” I supplied.

  "Well, he has a point there," Tatum said as Saint took her hand and lifted it to kiss the back of her knuckles. "You are very tenacious."

  My son smiled as he pulled her to her feet and my skin prickled as I watched them together. Whatever they'd done to get in here, they certainly didn't seem in any hurry to achieve their goal. Which only gave my men more time to get here. In fact, I was surprised they weren’t rushing into the room already.

  "I always get what I want," Saint agreed with her, grasping her throat in his hand as he drew her close and kissed her hard.

  The heel of her designer shoes bumped against the bottle of scotch, knocking it over and my gut dropped as the priceless liquid spilled out across the tiles.

  "I assume you didn't just come here to paw at the girl who destroyed my club?" I asked in a bored tone, my fingers twitching with the desire to pick that damn bottle up while they just left it there to empty out.

  "Of course not," Saint said, slipping his arm around her waist and ignoring the ever-growing puddle of scotch between us even as the thought of it made my jaw tick. "But I thought you might appreciate the time to realise your men aren't coming."

  "What men?" I asked, my gut dropping as I resisted the urge to press the button on my watch again.

  "It's actually rather simple to jam the signal from a panic device such as yours," Saint said, lazily reaching out to arrange a lock of blonde hair over Tatum's shoulder while she smiled at him with a dark hunger that made me wary.

  "I don't know what you-"

  "And hired thugs are all well and good," he went on, talking over me like I hadn't spoken at all. "But in the years since you ran away like a frightened rat down a storm drain, it has only become more and more clear to me that you had a fatal flaw in your grand design."

  "What's that?" I asked, the accusation rankling me. There were no flaws in anything I did or created other than him.

  "Would you like to tell?" Saint asked, and it took me a moment to realise he was addressing the girl and not me.

  My upper lip twitched with the urge to peel back at that insult, but her sapphire eyes had moved to capture my gaze and the smile on her red painted lips made me hold my tongue on insulting her. I may have despised his feelings for this girl, but I couldn’t deny the strength of them and I would have been a fool to bait him over her now.

  "A bear may surround himself with coyotes," she said slowly, taking another sip of my scotch as she held my gaze without so much as the sign of a flinch. "But their loyalty will only ever be bought by the scraps they can steal from him."

  "A bear is still the most powerful creature in the forest," I replied calmly, realising what she was saying. My men weren’t coming, they’d been bribed into betraying me and letting these rats into my home.

  "And yet, it can be taken out by a wolf pack," Tatum said, smiling predatorily.

  "That's where you went wrong," Saint added, pausing to take a drink of the scotch as Tatum lifted the glass to his lips and I couldn’t help but stare at the way they moved together, like two parts of the same being, utterly in sync. "You believed that ultimate power was something to be held by you and no one else. But look at you now, all alone in the world with not a person to care. Your name splashed all over the headlines labelling you as the man responsible for releasing the Hades Virus into the population. You're hated by more people than I could possibly count, responsible for so many deaths that the world could drown in all of that blood if it was spilled at once. Not to mention the rest of the atrocities you committed at Royaume D’élite. Everyone on this planet aches for your death. The only feelings anyone has towards you are those of hatred."

  "In fact," Tatum added conversationally, running her hand down Saint's arm and looking at him like he was the reason the sun rose in the mornings, while he stared back at her like she was the reason it existed at all. "A lot of people would probably kill themselves in your position, unable to bear the burden of having done so much evil and of being hated by so many."

  "Well, a lot of people are sheep," I sneered, unable to help it in the face of this emotional bullshit. "And the only cure for such idiocy is death."

  "Funny you should say that," a rough voice came from behind me, but before I could whirl around, a noose was thrown over my head and cinched tight around my neck. I was yanked backwards against a hard body as a tattooed hand clamped around my jaw and gripped me tightly, immobilising me as the rope was held taut. "Because we feel the same way about you."

  "Father, you remember Kyan, don't you? Turns out, O'Briens really aren't all that easy to kill after all," Saint smirked at me like some gloating buffoon and I bared my teeth as I lunged for the flick knife I always kept in my pocket.

  A gun pressed to my temple and I wheeled my eyes to the left as the hammer was drawn back loudly, my gaze falling on the third of my son's little group of lackeys. The footballer. I’d been able to track some of his movements due to his professional career, but I still hadn’t been able to trace my son via him. In that moment, his gaze was so dark and expression so cold that I was certain I was seeing exactly what appeal my son had found in him. That was the way of powerful men; we were always drawn together, but no true bond could form betw
een us the way Saint tried to claim, because our struggle for supremacy would never end.

  "I wouldn't try that if I were you," Blake said simply and my heart raced as I hunted for the route out of this. It was just another puzzle for me to solve, a game for me to win. There was a way. There was always a way.

  The noose around my neck yanked tighter suddenly and I choked as Kyan forced my chin up and made me look to the balcony on the second floor where a man stood looking down at me, his dirty blonde hair falling in his eyes as he heaved on the rope again, forcing me up onto my tiptoes and cutting off my oxygen.

  "Wait," I hissed, stalling for time as I scrambled to keep my weight from hanging from the rope entirely.

  "I think Nash has waited long enough," Tatum hissed, stepping closer to me with her high heels clicking on the marble. “It looks like the wolf pack just caught up to you.” There was a pure and venomous hatred in her gaze which sent a shiver down my spine. But I wouldn't give up, I wasn't built that way. There was a way out of this, I just had to grasp it and then-

  "My brother had his entire life ahead of him," Nash snarled from above me, his face the only one I could see which showed all of his emotions plainly. He was enraged, bloodthirsty, aching for vengeance and hungry to claim it.

  He heaved the rope higher and panic washed through me as I was wrenched off of my feet, my hands clawing at the rope desperately as I tried to prise it off of me.

  He hauled me up further, my heart racing as I choked and a pain like the most terrifying kind of burning cut into my neck.

  I began to kick and thrash, grasping for my pocket in hopes of hooking the flick knife free as the very real prospect of my death flashed before my eyes.

  But before I could succumb to it, my toes bumped against something and in the next moment I got my footing on it, taking my weight again and relieving some of the pressure in my neck so that I could suck in a gasping breath. My pulse thundered with fear, but I forced it aside, refusing to allow them to terrorise me in my own home.

  I managed to strain my eyes enough to look down and spot one of the kitchen stools beneath my feet before I lifted my gaze to the group who were standing before me again.

  Kyan slung a heavily tattooed arm around Tatum’s shoulders, his black wifebeater offending my eyes with its terribly casual appearance in my home, and as he placed a kiss to the top of her head, a thought occurred to me which tore into the fabric of the legacy I had hoped to leave upon this planet.

  To further confirm my fears, Blake moved to her other side and ran a finger along her jaw in a clear caress. It wasn’t just my son. They were all beguiled by the beautiful girl before me. All fallen prey to her whims.

  "Who said taking on Troy Memphis would be difficult?" Blake asked and Kyan laughed loudly while my son just kept on smirking, drinking in the sight of me brought to his mercy like this.

  This was what he wanted, to prove that he could beat me, to bring me beneath him and make me fall to his command.

  Footsteps thumped down the wooden stairs behind me from the mezzanine level and the group of savages before me all looked beyond me to the imposter in their midst. The poor man who’d come seeking vengeance, no doubt being used by my son purely to bait me. But I refused to rise to that.

  Jase Harrington strode around me and came to stand close enough for me to smell the scent of pine and testosterone oozing from his skin. There was a roughness about him that spoke of his poor breeding, his white t-shirt clinging to his muscular frame and a fine lining of stubble coating his jaw. He didn't belong in this world of power and prestige. He was a bug that should have been squashed alongside his worthless family all those years ago instead of left to grow into this attack dog with a grudge to bear. That wasn't the kind of mistake I'd make again.

  "Tell me," he said, his voice a growl as he looked at me like I was somehow beneath him despite the clear evidence to the contrary. "Do you think about them? The child you killed and the mother you murdered?" he asked and I scoffed.

  "I barely even recall them," I spat, my voice a harsh whisper as the noose around my neck refused to allow me any more volume. He had tied it off on the bannister above me and only the stool beneath my feet stopped me from hanging myself. I would take great pleasure in paying him back for this offence. Then he’d learn to stay in his damn place at the bottom of the food chain where he belonged. "If it wasn't for your resurrection in my life, they would have been forgotten entirely."

  A low growl rippled through him, echoed by the men at his back which to my horror included my own flesh and blood. Was my son seriously upset over something so trivial?

  "Are you even sorry for it?" Blake demanded and I narrowed my eyes.

  "I've never been sorry for anything a day in my life," I hissed. "You don't get to where I am by wasting time on regrets."

  "He isn't capable of feeling anything, let alone remorse," Saint supplied, stepping to Nash's side and looking up at me with interest. “Although I think I see some fear in there now.”

  "What are talking about?" I asked him, forgetting about the others as I focused on the power in the room.

  Whatever my son had to say was the real reason for this. He would make his point then we'd figure out where to go from there. Though I doubted anything he could say to me now would make me reconsider my decision to kill him, no matter how much he might be impressing me now.

  "I was just thinking," Saint replied slowly, his gaze sliding over me critically. "How very human you are in reality. In the mind of a child, you were an unconquerable monster. But look at you now, strung up and at our mercy and still incapable of any true and meaningful kind of feeling. I pity you."

  "Pity?" I scoffed. "I was the most powerful man in our state. Possibly the most powerful-"

  "Was, being the operative word," Kyan cut over me with a snigger. "But you don't look so badass now."

  My foot slipped and my heart leapt as I almost fell from the stool, the noose cinching tighter once again.

  I pushed my hand into my pocket, reaching for the flick knife just in case one of them lost their temper and kicked the stool away before me and my son had finished this conversation and gotten to the point of it.

  "Looking for this?" Kyan asked, smirking as he lifted my knife up before him, waving it at me tauntingly while my fingers closed on nothing and a spike of fear washed through me. I hadn't even noticed him taking it from me.

  "This is a waste of time," Tatum said with a sigh as she pushed her way into the gap between Saint and Nash, her hands brushing against both of them lightly and as they turned to give her their full attention, I realised something far more terrifying than the rope which was knotted around my neck.

  All four of the men standing before me were watching her with a heated kind of devotion which shone brighter than the midday sun. They were enraptured, enamoured, totally beguiled and under her spell. My son included.

  Saint wasn't the king of this tribe of heathens. They were ruled by a queen. And the look in her eyes said my death was already dealt. Panic came for me then as I considered that fully for the first time, wondering if I really might be staring my death in the face right now. But that couldn’t be. I refused to be remembered as some coward who killed himself over the deaths of a bunch of nobodies and a virus that should have made me a fortune.

  "There's no point in dragging it out. He won't ever understand the depths of his evil." Her gaze moved from them to me, her head tilting to the side and those blonde curls spilling over her shoulder. She looked almost angelic standing there, made up to perfection in that white dress with the sunlight from beyond the window casting a haze of light at her back. But the look in her eyes held nothing of heaven in it. They were filled with the fury of hell. "Unless you have any last words?"

  "Saint," I snarled, looking at my son and urging him to take his place in command of this farce. "You can't seriously mean to end my life for the likes of-"

  Nash kicked the stool out from beneath me with a furious snarl and my gut
lurched as I fell for an eternal beat before the rope snapped tight and cut off my oxygen instantly.

  I bucked and kicked, my gazing moving wildly between them as the five of them stood there watching me, perfectly still with fire and sin in their eyes and not the slightest indication that they were going to stop this.

  "This is for the people you thought were worthless when they were really worth a million of you," Nash growled.

  "Goodbye, Father. And just so you know, I found the secret will you made where you tried to cut me out of my inheritance and had it destroyed. A new, entirely authentic looking will leaving everything you own to me has now been produced in its place. I just didn’t want you to go into death believing you’d gotten one up on me," Saint added coldly and from those words, I realised that this was no game. There was no end to it beyond my death. No one was coming for me. And nothing I did could stop this fate now.

  I kicked and flailed, darkness pressing in on me from all around and Tatum stepped forward, smiling cruelly as she watched me dying right before her eyes.

  "I am the dark in the dead of the night!" she cried as her pack of heathens closed in beside her, all of their eyes on me, hungering for my end.

  "Hear me roar!" they bellowed, the noise of their cheers echoing on into death with me as I fell away from them. Into the void of the dark and beyond. Into a place without position or power or wealth. Into the depths where no light could find me. And I was cast adrift forever into nothing. Where no one would remember my name. And I would eternally be alone.

  TWO DAYS AFTER TROY MET HIS DOOOOOOM

  I sipped freshly squeezed orange juice as I sat on the veranda of the most beautiful resort I’d ever visited in my life, reading a reverse harem book on my Kindle. Turned out my situation with my boys wasn’t totally unheard of. At least not in fiction anyway. And I was more than happy to blaze a trail in real life. Why be worshipped by one guy when you could be worshipped by four?