The waitress showed up with our drinks and quickly fled the scene. She must’ve sensed the malevolence buzzing around in the cool night air.
King lifted his frosty-looking martini, sipped appreciatively, and set the delicate glass on the white tablecloth. “I would make him wait to kill you after the baby was born. Do you think me a barbarian?”
“Wow. You are…” I lacked the words, so I went with a very sarcastic, “awesome.”
“I am a man who gets what he wants.”
“And what do you want? Oh, wait.” I stuck out my palm. “I want you, Ms. Turner,” I said in a deep mocking voice.
He snickered arrogantly. “Very good, Mia.”
Not really. King was very predictable when it came to me. “So I agree to be yours and you’ll give me back Justin.”
“I think the more accurate way to summarize the situation is that you agree to be mine, and I won’t bring back Vaughn. Oh, yes. And you get to live and be a mother to your children.”
He had to have thought this through. Meaning, he knew he might be able to back me into a corner with his threats, but sooner or later, I’d try to find a way to change the game. That meant he would use whatever leverage he could to keep me in check in perpetuity, and there was only one thing—make that two—he could ever really use against me.
No. No. I am not allowing this shit to happen. I would not say yes to a lifetime of being his doormat while he did what he wanted to me and used my children as leverage.
I rose from the table, holding back the urge to spit in his gorgeous face. “No fucking deal. I won’t become your little toy and let you use our babies to keep me in check. I won’t live my life with someone whose word is worthless and whose heart is a bottomless dark pit. And as for Vaughn,” I planted my hands on the table, snarling, “bring it the fuck on. I killed him once. I am not afraid to kill him again. And if you come near me, King, if you threaten me, it will be your downfall. Ironically, you made sure of that.” He had to know that Arno and Mack held the key to ending him by his own design. I laughed. “You fucked yourself.”
In an instant, King had me dangling in his powerful hand by the neck. “Watch yourself, Ms. Turner. That baby won’t be inside you forever.” He set me down, and I clutched my neck.
“You can’t break me, King, because I’m done being afraid.” I straightened my back, stood up on my tiptoes, and pulled his mouth down to mine. I kissed him hard and then let him go. “No one loved you as much as I did, King. No one. And that’s the funny thing about love; it can turn so easily into hate.”
He nodded with a laugh. “Dear god, Ms. Turner, you are so delightful. I am going to enjoy breaking you immensely.”
Just like that, King was gone. I drew an exasperated breath and looked up at the starry night, praying for strength and patience. My lack of submission had just made him more determined than ever to break me. He would never stop. He would never let go.
A bitter chill swept through my body. I knew now what had to be done. I had to get my hands on lot ninety-four and pull the proverbial trigger.
I slid into the awaiting limo. “Drive, Arno.”
“Everything alright, ma’am?”
“No. But it will be.”
Thirty minutes later, we pulled up to the house and found a red Ferrari parked in the driveway. Mack! Only he would rent a freaking Ferrari from the airport. He loved cars. And planes and guns and all that tough-guy shit.
I walked in the front door and found Mack standing there waiting for me.
“So when do we kill King?” I asked.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Mack and I sat in the living room with its panoramic view of the ocean that was now just a sea of darkness. So fitting. That’s how I feel inside.
I quickly placed my hand on my stomach, correcting myself. The little Seer inside me could not be allowed to grow with so much hate and anger. I had to focus on the light at the end of the tunnel, which for me was knowing my babies would be safe.
“I’m sorry for not telling you about Talia.” Mack rose from the couch across from me and began pacing the length of the open room with bright white furniture—King’s favorite. “Teddi is sorry, too. But we didn’t see the point. King was dead, and we already knew how hard it was for you to accept that he traded his life for mine.”
I nodded, grinding my jaw, arms crossed, staring out into the abyss.
He continued, “I’m sorry, Mia. But we only wanted to protect you and let you focus on Arch and putting your life back together…and…” He blew out a breath. “This hasn’t been easy for any of us. You have to know that.”
He and Teddi didn’t understand that they were a part of my life, too. And then to find out they’d been hiding things from me? That I couldn’t fully trust them? It was goddamned painful. They’d saved me from nothing.
“Fine. What’s done is done,” I said, knowing we had bigger fish to fry. “Where’s Teddi now?”
“Theodora is here on the island with me. She’s at the hotel, resting right now.”
Teddi was Theodora’s nickname and it didn’t fit her one bit. She was a Seer who would become extremely powerful once she learned how to control her gifts. At least, that was my assumption. But the name Teddi sounded warm and fuzzy and harmless.
“I guess that’s why you guys weren’t answering your phones,” I said, thinking out loud. They’d both been on a plane. “But I’m surprised you brought her with you.”
“I feel better when she’s with me. She’s pregnant, Mia.” Mack’s voice was filled with heaviness.
I turned to look at him. “That’s great news.” They weren’t married yet, but they both wanted kids. Didn’t really matter the order.
“No, it’s fucking scary as hell news. This is a bad time.” Mack ran his hands through his dark hair, and it pained me to look at him. He and King truly were identical.
“I’m pregnant, too,” I said. “So I fully comprehend where you’re coming from.”
Mack’s blue, blue eyes widened with shock. “Wow. Congratulations?”
I nodded solemnly. We all knew that these were dangerous times. “Thanks.”
“Well, that just makes this all the more important for us to finish.”
“Did you get lot ninety-four?” I asked.
“Yes. Arno called yesterday and told me how to get it.”
I shot up from the couch. “He did?”
“He said that King had threatened your life, and it was time since the criteria King gave him had been met.”
Why hadn’t Arno said anything? Of course, he was a man of few words.
“What was the criteria?” I asked.
“King apparently left us both notes. They said that if things went wrong and he came back again, that we were to use lot ninety-four to protect you and Arch if he wasn’t…in control.”
We all knew what that looked like. Before I’d brought King back, he’d had different points in his life where the curse inside him made him do horrible things. He’d killed, tortured, and even punished himself. Eventually, he’d learned tricks and acquired strange tattoos that helped him keep the demons at bay.
“Okay. So this is good,” I said, not actually meaning it. Nothing about this was good.
Mack took a glass vial from his pocket and placed it on the glass coffee table next to the couch where I sat.
“What’s that?”
“Lot ninety-four. It’s a vial of ink.”
Ink? I cocked a brow.
He reached into his other pocket and pulled out a folded piece of paper.
“What are you planning to do?” I asked. “Write King a note that says please die?”
“This is the blood of Kalamos, the Greek god of the reed, or pen, if you will. You write the names of your enemies on paper and they will die.”
I laughed. How stupid. “Great. We’re totally fucked.”
“Do you think King would leave behind a joke to protect your life?”
“No. But the blood of a god?�
�
“That’s what it’s called. That doesn’t mean it’s really the blood of a god. Our people in ancient times were big fans of giving things dramatic names.”
“Then what is it?” I asked.
“Ink. Very powerful and deadly ink.”
I wrapped my head around it reluctantly. “So it’s a death curse of sorts.”
“Yes.”
“And where does its power come from?” Objects with power didn’t pop up in gardens. They had to be made and given power by people who had it.
“My guess? It came from Seer blood.”
I rubbed my face. King had killed a lot of Seers. His hate for them had been deeply seeded in his hate for Hagne and her family, who were the reason his people died. He’d wanted to rid the world of their kind in retaliation. Of course, I was a Seer, too, but he never saw me as the enemy. Well, that’s all changing.
“Okay. So what do we do?” I expected we’d have to do some elaborate spell.
“We write his name on the paper.”
“That’s it?” Seemed too easy.
“That’s it.”
“And King won’t be able to come back this time?”
“This curse doesn’t merely kill the body, it kills the soul. They cannot come back because there is nothing left.”
My blood curdled in my veins. This was it. The moment we ended King. And with him, any hope of ever getting back what I’d lost, even if that hope was the size of a speck of dust, would die. I would have to mourn him all over again.
I drew a breath. “I will do it.” I felt I owed King and our memory that much.
“We can’t.”
I blinked away my forming tears. “Why not?”
“We need the names of the 10 Club members first.”
My brain connected the dots. “King is the only one who knows who all of the members are.” And I didn’t just mean the names on their birth certificates or passports. Some of these people were not who they appeared to be on the outside.
“Yes. So if we only kill King, 10 Club will—”
“Keep going,” I surmised. “Another person will step up and take over. They’ve all got to die.” I shook my head. Fuck. Why does this just keep getting harder? “King is not going to give us those names.”
“He will if he has to choose between them or himself.”
“So you want to threaten him, get the names, and then stab him in the back and put his name on the list anyway.”
“Yes.”
“What’s your plan to keep King from just lopping your head off before you have a chance to do anything?”
“You and Theodora are staying here in the compound, where it’s safe. I’ll be on the phone with you so you can write down names as we go. King can’t get in here.” Mack unfolded the piece of paper, pulled out an old nib pen, and uncorked the bottle. He dipped the tip into the dark red liquid and began writing. I watched as he spelled out the letters K, I, and N. He then handed it to me. “If anything happens, anything at all, you put down a G, Mia. Are we clear?”
“And then what?”
“I go to plan B.”
“You’re going to take over 10 Club.”
“Yes. I’ll step in as King and gather names from the inside. It will simply take longer and present more of a risk.”
I walked over to the window and looked out across the dark ocean, feeling the weight of the world on my shoulders. “I hate your plan. I hate everything about it and this situation.”
“You think I want to kill King? He’s been half of my soul for three thousand years and there isn’t anything I wouldn’t do for him. But I know that this wasn’t what he wanted for us. I know he would want me to kill him if it came to this, and I didn’t need a note from him to tell me that. But make no mistake, when he dies, a piece of me will die with him, and I won’t ever get it back or feel whole again without him.”
I looked down at my trembling hands. “When are you going to see him?”
“Tonight. Theodora’s just waiting for me to tell her to come here.” He shrugged. “I wanted to talk things out with you first.”
He slid out his phone and dialed. “Hey, it’s me. I’m—” I watched Mack’s beautiful face fade from neutral to infuriated, laced with a bit of terror.
His Adam’s apple bobbed. “Yes, I’ll be right there.” He ended the call. “King is with Theodora. He says he wants to talk.”
“Fuck.” Bad to worse to hell.
“I have to go.” Mack stormed toward the front door.
“I’m coming with you.”
“No. You’re staying right here. You and that ink are the only things that can keep Theodora and me alive.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
Mack called me from his car on the way to the hotel and told me I was to listen closely. If he gave the word, I was to write the final letter on the paper. If the line cut or I stopped hearing anything, I was to write that final letter. Basically, take no chances. Kill King unless we got his compliance.
Ten minutes passed as I sat there on my couch, listening to the rumble of Mack’s Ferrari and the noise of traffic. In my shaking hand, I held the pen inked and ready to go. Sweat trickled down my spine, and my eyes kept blurring from the tears I willed away. I held King’s life in my hands and, even though I knew this man wasn’t really him, part of me still wanted to cling to the hope that there was a way. A miracle waiting to happen. But my mind argued back.
You have to do this, Mia. You have to.
I suddenly heard heavy footsteps and then the creak of a door opening.
“King, so nice to see you,” said Mack. “Now let Theodora leave. You and I can resolve this on our own.”
I heard King’s sadistic laugh. “Oh, we sure as hell will, my brother.” The cell phone went dead.
“What? No, no, no. Fuck.” I picked up the phone and looked at the screen that read Call Ended.
I threw back my head. Shit. Shit. What do I do?
If I called back, it would only waste time. King could be killing them right now!
My hand shook with fear. My body went cold and numb, but my heart felt like it was being pushed through a sieve. Painful. It didn’t want to go to the place it needed to.
But Mack had been clear, and I couldn’t argue. If anything happened, anything at all, I had to do it.
“I love you, King.” I started to cry and carefully scripted a G onto the paper. I then set down the pen. I felt like I’d lost him all over again. Why did it all have to end like this? What was the purpose of everything we’d all gone through?
This just wasn’t fair. It wasn’t.
My phone rang like a siren of doom. I slowly reached out my hand and pushed the speaker. “Hello?”
“Mia, it’s Teddi,” she said, her voice high pitched and quivering.
“What happened?”
“I don’t know. King grabbed me. Mack lunged for him and then collapsed. Mack’s on the floor and King disappeared.”
I pushed my lids closed and tilted my head toward the ceiling. Shit. Shit. Shit. King took Mack out before I could get him.
“He’s still breathing, but he’s unconscious,” Teddi added, her voice hysterical.
“What?” I whooshed out a breath. “I’ll be right there. Don’t move.”
I jerked up from the sofa and eyed the tiny bottle of ink. It would be safer here, but what if I needed it? What if King wasn’t gone?
No. That didn’t make any sense. If King was still alive, if that was what I could call him, the ink hadn’t worked.
I grabbed the paper, ink, and pen and scrambled upstairs, depositing them carefully into the safe in my closet. It was late and Arch and Ypirétria were sound asleep, so I left a note. Arno could translate it for her since I couldn’t write in Greek and she couldn’t read or speak English.
I ran to the six-car garage and grabbed the first vehicle. King’s sleek black Mercedes—one of many he owned—and I hit the road.
Ten minutes later, I pulled up to the hotel’
s palm-tree-lined circular driveway and realized I had no idea what room Teddi was in. I handed the car over to the valet and sprinted into the lobby. Teddi didn’t answer her phone, which sent my heart into another tailspin.
“Hi, I’m looking for…for…Theodora and Mack Minos,” I said to the receptionist.
“I’m sorry, ma’am, but we cannot give out guests’ room numbers. You can call them on the house phone, if you like.”
“It’s an emergency.”
The woman picked up the phone, and I reached across the counter to push down the receiver.
“What room?” I growled.
The woman was about to say something that I assumed would come from a can of on-the-job-training bullcrap.
I leaned in. “Listen to me, honey. If you do not give me that room number, I will hop over that counter and beat it out of you. And trust me, the police won’t do shit because even the Spiros know not to fuck with me. Got it?”
It was the one advantage of having the Spiros loyal to me. Half of them were police. The other half owned a hundred different businesses or held positions in the local government on this island.
She pointed to her right. “They are in the presidential suite.”
I rolled my eyes. Of course they were.
She continued, “Take the elevator to the top floor and go left to the end of the hall.”
“Thank you.” I ran as fast as I could, skipping the elevator and taking the stairs up to the fifth floor. This hotel was really a beachside resort, with cabanas, villas and suites.
I got to the suite and tapped on the door.
Teddi answered right away. “It all happened so fast.” She sniffled, her face raw with tears.
I stormed inside and immediately spotted Mack lying on the ground. Other than that, nothing was broken or out of place. “Has he moved?”
“No.” She shook her head. “And his pulse is rapid.”
I leaned over him, feeling his warm breath on my cheek. King might not have had time to kill Mack, but he’d done something to him.
“I told Mack this was a mistake coming here,” she whimpered. “I told him to just end King while we had a chance.”
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