by Amo Jones
The Broken Puppet
The Elite Kings Club: #2
By Amo Jones
Copyright 2017 Amo Jones
This book is a work of fiction. Names and characters are the product of the author’s imagination and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
This e-book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This e-book may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this e-book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this e-book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
Note: This story is not suitable for persons under the age of 18.
Cover: Jay Aheer from Simply Defined Art
Interior graphics and formatting: Champagne Formats
Editing: Kayla Robichaux from Hot Tree Editing
&
Becky Johnson from Hot Tree Editing
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright
Playlist
Dedication
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Acknowledgements
Other Books
Jason Derulo “Stupid Love”
The Weeknd “Or Nah”
Dead Prez “Hip Hop”
Avenged Sevenfold “Hail to the King”
Machine Gun Kelly “Bad Things”
The Game “It’s Okay”
David Guetta “Where the Girls At”
Cheat Codes “No Promises”
Redman “Cisco Kid”
Cypress Hill “Tequila Sunrise”
Kendrick Lamar “Humble”
Tash Sultana “Jungle”
Tsar B “Escalate”
Tsar B “Myth”
To the girls who have been through hell but come out with its fire burning through their soul, its crimson bleeding from their heart, and the devil as their side bitch.
This one’s for you.
For us.
Straighten that crown.
Deuces.
MOMMY? I DUCKED BEHIND MY closed bedroom door.
As I peeked around the corner, my mom started raising her voice, stabbing her finger into the man standing in front of her. “No, this wasn’t part of the plan!”
The man smiled in a way that made me clutch my teddy, Puppie, tighter. “You don’t call the shots. She’s a Venari. You will have to run, and run fast if you don’t want this catching up with you.”
My mom clutched the locket on her chest. “She…,” my mother whispered, tears slipping down her cheeks. “She’s just a kid, Lucan. She… she—”
“Is the Silver Swan, Elizabeth. You must run. Now, before Hector finds out.”
My mom sucked in a breath just as I stepped backward, quietly running to my bed. Slipping under the covers, I wiggled into the warmth and clutched Puppie closer. It was my birth present from a close family friend, and I’d slept with her since. She had ballerina slippers, a loose dress, and her hands stuck up in the air when the puppet strings were attached. When my door finally cracked open, my eyes slammed shut as I began to scratch one of the button eyes on my teddy. The material was worn, and the puppet strings were now broken. I was seven though, so I should’ve been too old for Puppie to be sleeping in bed with me. But I know why the man was here.
He comes here every Friday.
I know what he does next.
Bleeding echoes reverberate around Madison’s bedroom as sobs wrack through her body. Clutching her knees up to her chest, she scrunches her eyes closed, attempting to block out the familiar memories that assault her every night. Like a murky walk down a cold, damp road, alone, unable to break free from the confinement of which she’s constricted to.
“This is part of who you are, Silver.”
Goose bumps break out over her flesh at the slithering invasion of that voice. And then everything changes, as if she’s watching herself from the outside as a different person.
“No!” Madison tossed and turned in his arms, attempting to break her wrists free from the tight grip strapped around her.
“Shhh, Silver, you’re not your own.”
“What?” Madison gasped, tears streaming down her cheeks. “What do you mean I’m not my own?” The hand that was around her wrists went to her loose ponytail, and he tugged it down slightly. “Please don’t. Not tonight,” Madison pleaded, her throat constricting through the pain, and the betrayal.
“You best get used to this, Silver. This is only the beginning of your life.”
“But I’m little.”
“This is better than being dead.” Then he gripped onto Madison’s pajama bottoms and tore them off, flicking them across the room. She closed her eyes and dreamed of a day, a better day, where her family secrets and ties weren’t coming into her bedroom every Friday night. Black Friday was what Madison called it. She feared it, despised it, and one day, she hoped to put a bullet between its eyes. The first time, he stole her virginity. And Madison knew the blood that trickled down her innocent thighs wouldn’t bleed without retribution.
“MADISON? ARE YOU SURE YOU want to leave?” Tatum asks, looking at me from over her arm, her hands resting on the steering wheel.
“Yes,” I answer, gazing out the window. “I can’t be around them right now, Tatum.”
She looks at me, pulling onto the highway. “Do you want to talk about what happened back there?”
I hit the radio, hoping to drown out her questions. Jason Derulo’s “Stupid Love” starts playing.
“So yup, that’s a no then,” Tatum mutters, taking her attention back to the road. I close my eyes and lose myself in the lyrics of the song. Fuck love. Fuck any feelings that resemble love, or show it. The one person who was supposed to love me unconditionally betrayed me too. What does that say? What, am I that unlovable? Or do so many people think I don’t deserve their truth? Both of which are shit, if I’m being honest. Which I am.
The song finishes and I turn the radio down, realizing it’s not Tatum’s fault.
“You don’t have to do this with me, Tate, but I can’t be here, with them, around all the lies.”
She sighs. “Madi, I’m not leaving you. I know our friendship moved fast, but… I’ve never had any friends before, and I’m a little…” Her face turns red before she looks back to me. “Lonely. So I’m not leaving you out here—alone.”
“But you do realize that you’ll have to ditch your credit cards?” I point out, watching her reaction.
Realization slips over briefly before a smile snaps back onto her face. “Yes, Madi. Consider them gone.”
“Really?” I ask, my eyebrow quirked.
“Yes.” She nods, and I almost buy it. Then she casually adds, “Right after I withdraw a few thousand.”
Laughing, I shake my head, turning the music back up. What the fuck are we going to do?
“Okay,” Tatum inserts, running her hand through her hair as she continues to drive us wherever the fuck we are going. “So we need to go back to your house quickly and gather whatever we might need.”
“Like wha
t?” I ask, horrified that we need to go back home. “No, Tate, I don’t want to go there.”
She looks to me. “Well, what then, Madi? We don’t have many options, and we need passports and all that!”
“Okay,” I whisper, resting into my seat and trying to think of a solution. “Okay, this is just a real blind shot, but I promise if this fails, we can break into my house and take whatever I need.”
Tatum relaxes. “So where are we going?”
I swallow. “To Riverside. To the library.”
Pulling up to the school, Tatum parks the car out front and turns in her seat to face me. “Are you sure about this?”
“Um.” I search for the word I’m looking for, but fail. “No.” I push open the door and get out just as Tatum’s door closes.
“Well, lucky I have my running shoes on.” She rounds the car and comes to stand next to me.
I look down at her feet. “Those aren’t running shoes, Tatum.”
Heading toward the school with Tatum in tow, we sneak down the side of the girls’ classrooms, ducking under any windows where people might see us, and make our way past the pool, straight toward the library that’s tucked behind the gym. As we reach the student-only entrance, I slide my student card over the little box until the green light flashes and beeps. Pulling open the door, we step inside. It’s fairly quiet, a few students hanging about here and there, but no one who would take notice of Tatum and me. The door slips shut, breaking the kind of silence that can only come from a library.
Miss Winters’s head snaps up to the entrance, pulling her out of the book she was engrossed in. Her eyes widen when she sees me, so I give her a pleading look. She gets to her feet, shoving her glasses up her nose. Walking toward Tatum and me, she watches her surroundings closely, her paranoia obvious.
“Girls, how can I help you?” She plasters on a fake smile.
“I know” is all I manage to say. All the times I’ve wanted to ask, What the fuck is going on? is replaced now with those two simple words.
Miss Winters pauses, her head tilting to the side as her eyes drift over my shoulder briefly before coming back to me. “You know?”
I maintain eye contact, my shoulders squaring. “I. Know.” In a blink of an eye, she forcefully grabs onto Tatum’s and my arms and directs us back toward the entrance we just walked through. Pushing the doors open, she shoves us back into the late afternoon sun, closing the doors behind herself.
She exhales, her hand coming up to her forehead where she rubs across it softly, in an almost meditating gesture. “Shit.” She cranes her neck, closes her eyes, and then breathes out, “You know you’re the Silver Swan?”
“The Silver what now?” Tatum asks sassily, looking toward me with a crinkled eyebrow.
“Yes,” I hiss. “But I don’t know what the fuck that means or how you know about it or why everyone has been lying to me.”
“I can’t….” Miss Winters shakes her head. “I’m sorry, Madison, but I can’t get involved with all of it. It’s too dangerous.”
“Well then, can you help me disappear?”
Miss Winters snaps her head toward me. “You can’t run from the Kings, Madison. They’ll kill you.” She ends her sentence in a whisper.
“They’ll kill me anyway. Assuming I read the book correctly.”
“Where is that book?” Miss Winters asks, looking around nervously.
“It’s in my bag. Are you going to help me or not?”
She pauses, searches my eyes, and then pulls out her phone. “Look, I know a guy. Tell him Tinker sent you.”
“Tinker?” I ask as she scrolls through her cell.
She looks up at me. “Yes, Tinker.” She pauses, dropping her arms to her side.
“What?”
“It’s just…. Listen, you need to do this right if you’re going to do it. Get all the documents he needs from you, but withdrawal all the cash you need for now. He’s not cheap. You can’t carry over ten grand in cash if you fly internationally, so withdrawal ten thousand, and then another eight to get everything you need from Benny.” She pauses, giving me his number, and I quickly add it to my phone. “He will charge you four thousand each.” She pauses and looks at me. “Run, Madi. Run and don’t ever come back, because regardless of what Bishop feels about you?” She searches my eyes. “It means nothing. It meant nothing when it came to Khales, either.”
“What do you mean? What do you know about Khales?”
Her face turns hard. “I know he put a bullet right between her eyes.”
AFTER RUNNING BACK TO TATUM’S car, we both slip inside before she skids out and takes us toward the bank. “What the fuck does she mean? Bishop killed someone?” Tatum’s eyes are wide as she looks between me and the road ahead.
“I don’t think that was the first person he ever killed either,” I murmur, looking outside my window.
“You never did tell me what you saw in that basement, Madi.”
I want to tell her, but a strange part of me doesn’t want her to know something that could be used against Bishop. Stupid girl, I scold myself. Also, it’s safer for Tatum to not know anything.
“I don’t really want to talk about it, Tate.”
She smiles and pats my hand. “We’re getting the fuck out of here.” Pulling up to the curb, we both jump out.
I close my door. “You go to your bank and I’ll go to mine. We can carry ten each. That should get us through.”
Tatum nods, but something flashes through her eyes and I pause. “Are you okay?”
“We’re really doing this?” she quickly asks.
“You can back out now. I don’t want to drag you into my mess anyway.”
“No.” She shakes her head. “I’m coming with you. I have nothing here.”
I smile sadly. “Okay, then it’s settled. Meet back here in ten minutes.” Tatum nods and then quickly dashes into her bank as I cross the busy road to mine. Pushing open the doors with my head ducked, I collide into someone. “Sorry,” I mutter, stepping around them.
“Madison?”
I look up to see Ridge staring back at me. “Oh, hi,” I murmur, eyeing over his shoulder. I don’t want to take long here; I need to get in and out as fast as possible, no stopping.
“Hey, I was going to come look for you. Have you heard from Tillie?” he asks, tilting his head. I look at him, properly this time, and notice the tired bags under his red-rimmed eyes and his disheveled hair.
“No, not since we came back from the cabin. Why? Is everything okay?” Now that he said that, it is odd I haven’t noticed Tillie not contacting me. I’ve been so caught up in my shit that I haven’t stopped to think.
He shakes his head. “No, no one has heard from her.”
“I’ll call her. I’m sure she’s fine.” She could be anywhere, but then again, she could really be okay. From what she told me about her dad, I’m not entirely surprised she hasn’t gone home.
“Okay.” He pulls out his phone. “Can I give you my number so you can call me if you hear from her? Please, I just want to make sure she’s okay.”
I nod, surveying inside toward the bank teller. I really need to leave. “Sure.” He tells me his number, and I push it into my phone…. My phone! Shit! “Actually,” I start, going for relaxed tone, “could you write it down?” He looks at me, pauses, but then nods, drawing out a pen and taking my hand, scribbling it down.
“Thanks, I’ll call you.” I sidestep away from him and walk the rest of the way into the bank. There’s a fucking line. Of course there’s a fucking line.
Fifteen minutes later, I’m walking out of the bank, tossing my ATM card into a trash can nearby, and heading back to the car.
Pulling open the passenger door, Tatum is smiling at me from the driver seat. “I actually feel really fucking excited about this.”
“Makes one of us,” I mutter, taking out my phone. “Drive.” I pop open the glove compartment and pull out a pen and paper, transferring Ridge’s number then scrubbing it off
my hand. “I’ll call Benny now.”
Tatum nods as she continues to drive.
The phone rings until a deep voice picks up. “Who sent you?”
“Uh… uh….” I look around, confused. What a weird way to answer the phone. “Tinker?” God, I feel ridiculous saying that name out loud.
A pause.
Silence.
“The corner, on the last stretch of Highway 4.”
“Uh, okay?”
He hangs up. I look down at my phone and then at Tatum.
“What’d he say?” she asks, looking between me and the road.
“We have to go to the corner on the last stretch of Highway 4.”
Tate nods. “I know where that is.”
“Give me your phone.” I put my hand out to her. “Do you need any numbers from it?”
She pauses, eyes glassing over slightly before she squares her shoulders. “No. No one will even know I’m gone.”
I smile sadly at her before winding my window down, tossing the cell out. Searching through my contacts, I take down a couple of numbers that might come in handy. Through my scrolling, my finger pauses over Bishop’s name, and my heart sinks slightly.
Fuck him.
Not only did he kill Ally, but apparently he killed Khales too. I pass his name and keep searching until I get to my dad. My heart sinks further, but I keep scrolling up.
Nate.
I close my eyes, squeezing my phone in… frustration? Sadness? A combination of both? Winding down my window with my eyes still closed, I toss it out. “I don’t need anyone either.”
Pulling up to the almost abandoned crossroad off the highway, I notice it’s empty—and it’s getting late, the afternoon sun casting shadows through the large branches of trees that reside on the edge of the cul-de-sac.
“No one’s here. It’s quiet.”
“Too quiet,” I add. We pull to a stop and I get out of the car, slamming my door.
Tatum winds my window down. “Madi! Fuck’s sake, can you not be a badass today, please? I don’t want to die right now. Or ever.”
I roll my eyes. “Miss Winters gave us this dude’s number. She wouldn’t fuck us over.”