I watch as he leans into Tillie, brushing her pink hair off her shoulder and making a show to touch his lips to her ear, his eyes staying on mine. I know what he’s doing. I wouldn’t expect anything less. This is Bishop warming up. He thinks I cheated. This is nothing compared to what I know he would want to do. He’s playing with Tillie because she’s the only one that’s there and knows I’m insecure about my place in the pack now. His arrow is non-existent because whatever bullshit game he is playing with me right now doesn’t mean anything to me.
I grab my phone out of my pocket and send a text to Tillie.
Me: It’s ok. I know what he’s doing, and I’d rather him do it to you than anyone else.
I shove my phone back away and swipe up my flute, swallowing all of the contents of my champagne in one go before grabbing a passing waiter to fill up again. Reaching forward to take Nate’s glass, I gesture for her to fill his too before swallowing them both in record time. The lights dim and music quiets. Suddenly, the room is too small and my throat too tight.
I push back off my chair, scooping up my Louis clutch and make my way to the bathroom to snort the entire bag of cocaine I have in my clutch when movement catches my eye.
He’s dressed in a white linen shirt and a simple black mask covering his face. But I know. I know who it is.
He flicks his phone into his pocket, slipping between the two doors that lead up through the fire exit, and I quickly turn back to the table to make sure no one is following me. Perfect. Shoving through the sea of people, I slide the chain of my purse up my shoulder and pass through the gaps.
“Excuse me, sorry, excuse me—” The words that mean nothing to me. I want to scream get the fuck out of my way!
I’m about to round the same corner he did when a hand is on my arm, pulling me backward and into the wall.
Bishop stares down at me, his eyes desolate and wild. “Where the fuck do you think you’re going?”
“Does it fucking matter?” I snap at his hand, shoving him away from me.
He falls backward, blinking through his shock.
I pause, swallowing past the pain of having his skin beneath mine. Warmth, home, pain.
He feels like home.
Like pain.
Like my favorite fucking drug with no comedown.
I turn away from him and push through the doors, jogging up the stairs until I reach the next level. I find the next elevator quickly just as my phone vibrates in my clutch and the doors close.
I open the message. Room 401
I push level four and watch as the numbers climb from each level.
1.
2.
3.
Ding! The doors separate and I’m met with a long hallway with blood red carpet. The sound of the elevator closing behind me shutter as I stare at the gold numbers curved into the door right opposite. 401.
I push through and hold my breath.
Silence. I’ve come to not like silence, especially if it’s from walking into a dark room where I know my abuser is, but I rest my hand over the bump in my waist where the holster of my gun sits.
A light turns on in the corner of the room, a lamp, and the face that I’ve played over and over again sits right there in the flesh, smirking at me.
I grind my teeth. “What the fuck are you doing here?”
“Well…” He unbuttons his shirt and rests his ankle over his knee. “I have to admit, I thought you’d fold.” He reaches for the glass of whiskey on the bedside table, swirling the amber liquid around in circles. “I’ve heard a lot about you, Madison Montgomery, and I hate to break it to you, but you’re a bit of a fucking brat.”
I test him by taking a small step forward. Not enough to alarm him, but just enough for me to see if he flinches. He doesn’t. Too comfortable in his brazen disregard for any harm that could be done to him, the stupid fuck actually thinks I came here to listen to him talk.
I turn my hip slightly back toward the door, so he doesn’t notice me unclipping the holster. “Well, I may be a brat, but you’re rather stupid.” I intended every word, and as soon as this gun is in my hands, he’s dead.
He laughs so loud that bile rises up my throat. “Ah, Madison, Madison.”
This fuckwit has to be no older than twenty-five. He’s not threatening. I know threatening men—I’m with one. The Kings are people everyone should fear. You see it in the way they walk, talk, and the way they hold themselves. It can’t be faked. Mortals cannot replicate evil. It doesn’t make you bad. It makes you a liar.
Before he can stand from his chair, I have the gun in my hand and I swing it to him, aiming it right in the center of his chest. “I guess they forgot to tell you this brat also carries guns. Get in the fucking bathtub.” When he doesn’t move, his smug smile still boldly on his face, I point the gun to his stomach and do what I do best.
I pull the trigger.
He starts screaming way too loud, so I shoot him again in the leg. Bang. He falls to the floor and I press the gun to his forehead.
“Get up and walk to the bathtub.”
He finally begins stumbling to the bathroom door with a trail of blood in his wake, mumbling apologies, and saying Tillie’s sister’s name in between. I reach for my phone and hit dial on the one girl I know will ride this shit out with me.
I call Tillie.
There are best friends, and then there are my best friends. The kind that eighty-six men with their eyes closed and use their oozing blood as a signature lipstick.
It took five minutes for Tillie to get to the room. Less than that for her to kill him.
I shove Bishop’s hoodie around my body tighter, watching as the trees fly past the windows of the limo. Tillie and Nate are opposite me. I can’t look up. I won’t. Tillie is already disappointed in me for not telling Bishop the real reason, not because she wears my abuser’s blood on her hands. It’s not the blood that disturbs Tillie, it’s the fact that Bishop is still mad at me for something I didn’t do. For the past month, I’ve endured his empty stare, my cold bed, and barren home. There have been occasional parties that they’ve thrown and I’ve attended, but those parties have always ended the way we expected—with Bishop and me scrapping like stray cats, so I’ve found myself staying away more and more. Distancing myself from them all. Even Nate. He has a lot to deal with with Tillie, that I doubt he’s noticed, and even more so, he doesn’t need me anymore.
“Madison…” Bishop demands, and it’s not until I look up at him from behind blurred eyes that I realize the limo has stopped moving.
I flex my fingers, sticky with dried blood. “Yes?”
“If I get out of this car right now, we are done, you hear me? I’m not fucking doing this with you forever. I can’t. I thought I could. And now we have a body to clean up because you both”—he glares at both Tillie and me—“decided to whack your side-piece.”
I don’t blink. My eyes dry and my mouth waters. “I—okay.”
I know this is it. This will be the time that I come clean to Bishop and tell him that yes, despite the fact we’re messy love driven by obsession and fire, that I love him. I’d never willingly cheat on him. Then I’d punch him in the dick for even thinking I would do that—but I don’t. I find the words stuck in my throat, unwilling to come out.