Using all the strength I can muster, I swing the wooden post at Charlotte. The air whistles around it as it slices through the darkness, aimed directly at her head. As the wood is about tomake contact, Charlotte’s eyes widen with realization, and she ducks just in time to avoid the blow.
“Dammit!” I curse under my breath, my chest heaving as adrenaline courses through my veins.
Charlotte looks up at me, her face a mixture of shock and anger. “You really thought you could take me down that easily?” she sneers, her voice dripping with contempt.
“Actually, yeah.” I take a step back, putting some distance between us, my eyes never straying from hers. “Regardless, Sebastian will find me. Your phone is being tracked, same as mine was.”
She shakes her head and cackles out a laugh like I’m a pathetic little thing. “I turned off my phone tracking the moment I left the palace. Besides, your precious king told me you left him and that he’s done. He told me just this morning you’d been growing apart and he wasn’t even going to bother searching for you if you left him.”
I swallow the sting her words have, hoping they’re a lie designed to hurt me.
“Look at you,” she taunts. “Did you really think you could walk out on the king of Messalina and he’d chase after you? You’re so young and naive. A man like him can have anyone. And now he has me. Something he’s already more than hinted at, and you haven’t even been gone twenty-four hours.”
I grit my teeth, holding the wooden post as if it were an extension of my own body. “You’re a liar.”
“Actually, I’m not. Which is why I’m here to take care of you once and for all. I hate to kill a pregnant woman, but this opportunity is too good to pass up. As I’m sure you know. In any event, I can’t risk you escaping or him somehow finding out I’m the one who took you. He’ll simply think you left him and moved back to America or something.”
My heart hammers in my chest as I swing the wooden post at Charlotte. In that split second, she shows a flash of annoyancebefore skillfully dodging the strike. My pulse quickens as I realize it’s not going to be easy to overpower her. She was trained by the head of the royal guard, after all.
“Is that all you’ve got?” She laughs, her eyes narrowing dangerously. She lunges forward, aiming a punch at my face.
I duck it and counter with an elbow to her ribs. Pain flares through my arm as it connects, but the blow seems to have little effect on her. “You won’t keep me here,” I spit out, my voice raw with determination.
“I don’t plan to.” Charlotte lunges for me and I swivel around, only for my foot to catch on the edge of the mattress. She grabs my hair, yanking me further off-balance. My vision blurs as my head whips back. Gritting my teeth, I twist my body and kick at her knee, making her stagger back a step and release her grip.
She pants, her eyes narrowed, oozing venom.
“Sebastian doesn’t want you. You’re a fool if you think he does,” I say, trying to hide the doubt creeping into my mind.
“Keep telling yourself that, sweetheart,” she bites out, landing a blow to my side by my stomach, but thankfully not hitting my babies. I double over, gasping for breath, but I force myself to straighten up again.
“Your time is running out, Charlotte,” I hiss, taking a step back from her to regain my bearings, gripping the block tighter in my hand. “When he finds out what you did, there’ll be no place left for you to hide. And think how pathetic you are.” Now it’s my turn to laugh as I see the outline of her phone in her pocket. And the gun in the other. She didn’t even draw it when she entered. “The tracking apps send out an alert if you shut them off. Sebastian had Javier add that after Samil nearly killed us both. You have the same tracking apps on your phone as I do. He’s not a stupid man.”
Fury flashes across her face, her rage growing at my threat.
“I can easily talk myself out of that. But you, sadly, willalready be gone,” she retorts, delivering a sharp kick to my shin. I swing wildly with the wooden block, hitting her in the back as hard as I can. She cries out, her body stumbling forward, and I seize the opportunity and dive at her, but she’s quicker than I anticipated.
In the blink of an eye, she regains her balance, spins around, and kicks my hand holding the wooden post. I cry out, my knuckles splitting open, blood spurting from the wound, and the wooden bedpost falls to the ground with a heavy thunk.
Before I can react or reach for it, she whips out the gun and points it directly at my chest.
“Enough!” she snarls, her finger hovering over the trigger. “You’ve caused enough trouble already.”
My heart feels like it’s about to explode as I stare down the barrel of the gun, knowing that my life hangs by a thread. Panic grips me, my breaths coming out in short, rapid gasps.
“Don’t do this,” I choke out, my voice trembling with soul-crippling dread as my arms cover my stomach in a useless attempt to protect my babies.
“I don’t have any other choice with you.” Charlotte’s eyes are cold, void of any compassion. The room seems to shrink around us, the air thick with tension.
I brace myself for the end, my entire body tense as I prepare for the searing pain of the bullet tearing through me. The world narrows down to that one dreadful moment, the agonizing wait for the inevitable.
Then, it happens. The click of the trigger and the deafening bang of the gun.
33
SEBASTIAN
Isit in the car, my hands gripping my thighs so tightly my knuckles turn white. Javier and Rowan are with me, their faces tense as they stare at the tracking app on Javier’s phone. We’re waiting for Charlotte, the woman I once trusted to care for my children, to hopefully leave the palace.
