Home > VICIOUS PRINCE (Violent Kingdom #1)

VICIOUS PRINCE (Violent Kingdom #1)
Author: Lili St. Germain

 


Prologue

 

 

AVERY

 

 

Eight hours from now

 

 

In my family, we follow two religions.

Catholicism.

And an unbroken devotion to the Capulet family bloodline.

The Catholic side may seem more understandable to the uninitiated.

Be a good Catholic. Say your prayers. Go to Mass. Confess your sins.

But when you’re raised a daughter of the most powerful man in California, ensconced in the heart blood of the Capulet lineage — loyalty to our family name is equal priority to God.

Capulets don’t have a bible, but we do have written rules. And unlike the bible, ours are written in blood.

Be a good Capulet. Obey your vows to the family. Go to family meetings. Ensure there are no sins against your own blood to confess. That last one being the most important.

Never sin against your family, because in our religion, there is no forgiveness. There is only loyalty, or death.

Sometimes, even when you are loyal, there is still death. All the protection of our father’s money, our bodyguards and spies placed strategically around the city of San Francisco and beyond, can’t save us.

Because hatred is stronger than any religion.

I wonder how much my captor hates me, as I strain in the dark to place his approaching footsteps.

I wonder how much of my blood he will spill before this is over.

I wonder which Capulet sins he intends to punish me for.

Because I wasn’t afraid at first, see? No, when I woke up here, bound and gagged, I was bored. Annoyed. Like a customer in line at the bank, waiting for her turn, so I waited for my father to pay whatever ransom my captor demanded. Even as a young woman living in a city gripped by the terror of an active serial killer in its midst, picking off girls at the edges of society, I was not afraid. Arrogant? Absolutely. But worried that I might somehow become swept up in the bloodbath myself?

Hell no.

I’m a Capulet. People don’t fuck with Capulets.

A ransom. A ransom. A ransom.

I imagine them making the call. Maybe they’ll take my picture. Perhaps we’ll Skype my father, because this is 2018, after all. I imagine him gathering crisp banknotes from one of our many vaults scattered across the city, stacks and stacks of green paper that will secure my release.

Even as I slowly came to in — wherever it is that I am — I was thinking about how this hiccup would affect my schedule, how brazen my kidnappers were, how my father would stick a goddamn blowtorch onto whoever did this and slowly, agonizingly, melt away their flesh as punishment.

Then it came rushing in, like ice water into my consciousness. They shot my father. A single gunshot that cracked everything apart. My father, in his tuxedo, dropping his whiskey on hard tiles, the glass exploding at his feet as blood blossomed across his white dress shirt.

His trajectory into the pool, the heavy splash of his dead weight as five hundred people in ballgowns and designer suits screamed and scattered, nobody wanting to be gunshot victim number two.

My desire to jump into the water after my uncle, to help him save my dad. The hands that clamped around my arms hard enough to cause bruises, as my own personal security team whisked me away, to supposed safety, and straight into a trap.

Somebody shot my father just to take me. And they didn’t fuck around. I saw where they shot him — right in the middle of his chest.

Is he even alive to know that I’ve been stolen away?

“My family will pay whatever ransom you want,” I say to total darkness, over and over again. “Just tell them what you want. They’ll give it to you.” I don’t even know if there is anyone with me. Whether somebody is watching me. I could be buried alive, or in somebody’s attic, or in my own fucking house. I can’t see. I don’t know.

I’ve been in this fucking room for hours, and fear has begun to drip into my veins like a steady dose of poison leeching into my blood.

“Listen,” I say, trying to be convincing, which is hard when I’m tied to a chair, my wrists and ankles secured with what feels like duct tape, a blindfold tied tight around my face. “Just tell me—”

What feels like a large, rough palm smacks me so hard, I feel my lip split, tasting fresh blood in my mouth. My mind struggles to catch up, to do something— but before I can think, before I can construct the perfect argument to let me go, my blindfold is ripped off, and in the same breath, shoved into my mouth. A makeshift gag that makes me retch. I swallow down the urge to vomit, the material in my mouth an invasion, an assault on my senses. I try to push it out with my tongue, but it doesn’t budge.

Fuck. Oh fuck oh fuck oh fuck.

I forget about the gag as my eyes focus on the figure in front of me. He’s tall, over six feet, dressed entirely in black, a black ski mask covering his face and neck. He’s wearing plastic surgical gloves — to keep his DNA from getting on me, or in preparation to chop me into little pieces?

I wince as my captor places something cold on my bare thigh.

A knife.

My eyes go big and round as I watch him take that knife and press it into the flesh of my inner thigh. There is a major artery that runs through the thigh. If he hits it, I could bleed out in minutes.

Just hours ago, I was joking about how being married off was a fate worse than death. But I didn’t really mean those words, because I’d do anything to stop the slow, methodical slice of the knife’s teeth against my skin. I scream as my skin splits open, the knife impossibly sharp, my skin impossibly fragile.

There is so much blood.

I’ve seen plenty of blood spilled in my short life — a by-product of my family name — but I’ve never been so intimately acquainted with my own blood as it pulses from my body.

My captor dips a finger into my blood and brings it up to my chest. I’m folding forward, straining to see what he’s doing to my thigh, and so he takes a fistful of my hair and yanks, making me sit straighter in the chair. I shiver as the air in the room turns colder, my exposed nipples tightening painfully, or perhaps it’s me that is growing colder, as I swiftly lose blood.

Fingers paint letters between my breasts, a macabre action that reminds me of the crude paintings a small child would create with their hands and brightly colored paint. My faceless captor takes blood from my thigh wound several more times before he steps back, apparently satisfied, and it’s only then that I can see what he’s written on me.

 

* * *

 

Two letters. XO.

 

* * *

 

I blink in confusion as I stare at the two letters, my chin against my chest as I try to make them say something — anything — else. Everybody knows the XO killer doesn’t have any surviving victims. He’s been terrorizing San Francisco for a decade, at least, the body count of his victims over a dozen. And that’s not including the ones who are never found. He only leaves death in his wake, naked and scrubbed clean and with a neat calling card painted on his victims chests.

 

* * *

 

XO.

 

* * *

 

It’s so obvious now. This faceless man doesn’t want a ransom. He wants my terror. My blood.

He wants my life.

This silent psycho circles behind me, hands in my hair again, and then lower, exploring my face, my neck, pinching a nipple hard enough to make me yelp. He pulls my hair, forcing my head back and to the side, at the perfect height to grind himself into my cheek. Under his black pants, he’s as hard as the steel the knife is forged from. I start to cry. He’s going to hurt me. He’s going to kill me.

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