Page 57 of Daddy's Reluctant Queen

I look at his legs, bruised and cut in a million places. His ankle looks twisted in the wrong direction. He wouldn’t get far even if I did decide to do something so foolish.

“If you’re thinking of trying to break me out of this place,” he says, “you might as well give up on it. I’m not going anywhere unless your boyfriend says so.”

“He’s not my boyfriend,” I say softly. “He’s just… He’s just decided to keep me alive. That’s all.”

He looks up at me, reading my face carefully with his good eye. “I doubt that,” he says. “Truly. Or else, he never would have brought you here and risked your doing something as stupid as trying to break me out.” He tilts his head slightly and adds, “Or maybe this is part of my penance, too. Maybe this is some kind of new torture for the both of us to endure. Watching me broken and bleeding on a dirty warehouse floor. While I look up at you in your clean clothes and well-fed glow.”

“I never wanted this for you,” I tell him. “Adam, I swear, if I could?—”

“Don’t, okay?” he says in a gentle tone. “It’s too late, right? I ratted and now I have to pay the price.”

I sigh and glance at the closed door. Titus’s man is probably back by now. Cyril. He’s probably waiting to have another go at my brother’s face. “I can ask him to stop torturing you,” I tell Adam. “Maybe have his goons lay off for a while. Give you a chance to heal.”

Adam snorts a laugh. “I don’t think that will happen. And if it does…” His smile fades as he looks back down at the floor. “Oh, God,” he says. “This is it, isn’t it? It’s over. It’s all over.”

I don’t respond. He just sits and hangs his head as the silence overtakes us. He knows he’s a dead man. Now we both know it.

After about a minute, he sits up straight and sniffles again, wiping at the smeared blood under his nose. “Are you still going to kill him? Titus, I mean?”

A lie would be good here. To tell him that his death will be avenged. That might give his soul peace if I sounded like meant it. I can’t lie to him, though. Not with him like this.

I shake my head. He smiles broadly, showing bloodied teeth.

“Of course. I’m jealous, you know. Titus Malkin must be a legendary lay to have caged you without bars or chains.”

“It’s not as simple as that,” I say.

“I know, I know. Sorry. Ignore that.” He sighs, and I hear a rattling in his chest. “I know who you are. And this guy… I hope he knows, too. I hope he comes to understand just who the fuck you really are and appreciates it. Something good has to come from all this shit.”

“Adam, I’m so sorry I couldn’t do more. You were right all along. We should have just taken our chances and run for the hills. Maybe if we had?—”

“Too late for maybes,” he mutters. “It’s over. All over.” He looks up at the wall by the door, into the darkness where I can’t see. “There’s a gun in that cabinet.”

I follow his gaze and see the shadow of a cabinet in the wall by the door. I don’t really understand what he’s getting at, so I ask, “How do you know?”

“The one you beat up? The rough looking one with the bald head? He says so all the time. Says that when the time is right, he’s going to open that cabinet and carrying out his boss’s final orders.”

My stomach tightens and I ball my fists up tight again. “Don’t think about that. He won’t do anything unless Titus says?—”

“He will say it. You understand that, don’t you? It’s the whole point of this. The whole end game of keeping me here. This is my punishment for breaking the code of silence. There’s only one way out of this for me, Sof.”

My heart is pounding hard in my ears. “I don’t like how you’re talking, Adam.”

“We can beat them in one way, at least,” he says. “Take some control over what’s happening to us. We can rob them of their kill.”

“Adam, stop, please. I can’t?—”

“I want you to take the gun out of the cabinet?—”

“Stop it. Stop talking.”

“Please, just listen.” He leans into me, his one functioning eye boring into me. “Just take the gun out of the cabinet and point it at my head.”

Sobs start to take me and I shake my head before I can finish. “I’m not going to?—”

“Youhaveto. Whatever beef Titus had with Papa that caused him to do this, you can’t let him have it all. Take away this one kill. Just this one. Put me out of my misery.”

He’s staring at me, waiting for me to act. I can’t. I can’t get my feet to move.