King for a Day

  “Then you will share what you know and let us do the work—we cannot risk something happening to you.”

  “I can handle myself,” I argued. Hell, I’d just come back from the dead! And survived Vaughn’s basement! What else could possibly be tougher than that?

  How about being declared queen by a bunch of fanatical King groupies?

  “You are but one person,” said the woman with the long hair. “We are Spiros. We are thousands.”

  I lifted my brows in confusion.

  Stefanos must’ve understood my expression because he offered, “We are the king’s council, but there are many more Spiros.”

  Another secret society? Or were they more like some crazy religious cult?

  Does it matter? They are going to keep you here.

  Ohmygod. I shook my head. How did I keep getting mixed up in all this crap? And why did everyone want to keep me against my will?

  “What about King?” I asked. “You’re not going to leave him in that man’s basement forever, are you?”

  “We will obey King’s wishes, even if we do not agree with them,” Stefanos said coldly.

  Sheep. They’re mindless, stubborn sheep. I could see there was absolutely no use arguing with them; therefore I would need to wait for the right moment and then run for it. In the meantime, I hoped one of them was able to find and warn Justin; Vaughn was coming for him.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  The two burly men wearing khaki shorts and white Polos escorted me back upstairs toward the room with the pool. On the way, I once again glanced at the miniature coves displaying what had to be some of King’s coveted treasures.

  “What are these?” I asked the shorter one.

  “They are Minoan artifacts,” he said proudly.

  I didn’t want to admit my ignorance about who the Minoans were, so I simply nodded. I made a mental note to read up on them later. “Am I going to be held prisoner indefinitely?”

  We stopped just outside the double doors leading to the room.

  “You are not our prisoner,” answered the taller man. “This is your home, and we are protecting you in it.”

  I stared blankly. They were all delusional. Fucking delusional. I was ready to pull out my frigging blonde hair by the roots and make them choke on it.

  “My home is…” Okay. It was my parents’ guest room. “San Francisco.”

  The tall guy stepped around me and opened the door. “Your meal has been set out on the balcony. If you need anything, simply let us know. We’ll be right out here.”

  I stepped inside, and he closed the door, leaving me all alone with nothing but my terrified thoughts.

  I walked through the room and outside to the balcony. The maid—couldn’t remember her name (so typical of me)—had set out a plate of flatbread, cheeses, grapes, olives, and some other goodies on a small table facing the magnificent view. A white tablecloth and bottle of wine made the meal look more like an event rather than simple food.

  Instantly salivating, I sat, realizing how starved I felt. I began devouring the bread, then the cheese and fruit, not stopping until I was almost done, at which point, I finally looked up. It was noon-ish now and a perfect day—crisp blue sky, an endless stretch of breathtaking, deep-blue ocean, and a tepid, calm breeze. I could honestly say that under different circumstances, I’d die of happiness if this place were my home. But there wasn’t a chance in hell I’d ever go along with such insanity or agree to be King’s. Yes, I understood I felt attracted to him. Yes, I knew that somewhere deep down inside, there was a good man looking for salvation. Yes, I wanted him to have it. But none of that meant I would ever agree to be his. He was dangerous. His world was dangerous. And the guy was a frigging ghost whose need for revenge completely consumed him.

  As soon as this was over, if I survived, I would be turning the full force of my efforts toward separating myself from this entire mess.

  My mind quickly hopped over to the deal I’d made with King right before he’d stopped my heart. He’d said that if I gave him one night, just one, and I still wanted to leave, that he’d let me. Yes, I believed he’d meant it. King wasn’t the type to break his word or make a deal he didn’t intend to keep.

  My tired mind drifted off, wondering what being with King might be like. Would his idea of “a night together” consist of throwing me over that goddamned desk, or would he take his time like he’d said and, perhaps, bring me here, where we’d soak our sweaty, sore bodies in between sessions of hard, hot, voracious sex?

  I swallowed. Why am I thinking about this right now?

  What I needed to be doing was find a weapon I could use to get the hell out there.

  I stilled. Was I really prepared to hurt someone? Because I knew the Spiros were fully prepared to do what it took to prevent me from leaving. What if I ended up not just hurting someone, but killing them? Could I do that to help Justin?

  Crap. I don’t know.

  Other options? Other options….Given the estate was guarded and fenced, perhaps I could wait until nightfall and sneak out. There had to be a way out along the rocky shore even if it meant swimming part of the way. And it couldn’t be more than a few hours walk back to the main town. By morning, I could be parked outside the American Express office—there had to be one, right? They had an emergency card and passport replacement service, which I knew because I’d lost my stuff once in Italy while working. If I acted quickly, I’d be armed with a prepaid cell and on the first ferry or whatever-the-hell boat to the mainland before anyone found me.

  I only prayed that I was not too late to help Justin. In the meantime, it was going to be a long, long night, and I needed to get some rest. Because I wouldn’t be stopping until I reached my brother.

  I lay down on the heavenly soft bed and closed my eyes for a quick nap. A huge fucking mistake. Because when I opened them again, I was no longer in King’s beautiful bedroom overlooking the Aegean Sea. I was standing in a dark, empty apartment permeated with the stench of death.

  ~~

  I didn’t know how I’d arrived or exactly where I was, but I knew the person kneeling before me sobbing hysterically over a rotting corpse.

  “Justin!” I cried. I lunged for him, but my arms passed right through his shoulder. I stilled for a moment and inspected my translucent hands. What the hell?

  Justin continued weeping over the decaying body, clasping something tightly in his hand.

  “Justin!” I yelled once again, but as far as he was concerned, I was, I was…a ghost?

  Justin opened his hand, cursed at the object, and placed it on top of the body’s forehead.

  It looked like a small gray stone with crisscrossed etchings over the surface.

  The Artifact? Why does Justin have the Artifact?

  He slowly rose from the floor and hobbled over to the breakfast bar that divided the kitchen from the living room.

  “What’s happening?” I said aloud. “Justin! Justin!” I swiped for him once again, but my hand sliced through thin air instead of making contact.

  He began scribbling on a notepad with one hand while wiping his tears away with the other.

  Oh my Lord, what is happening?

  The only source of light in the entire place was a solitary light above the kitchen sink a few feet from where Justin stood. I leaned in closely to make out what he wrote.

  Test 53, no response. Held artifact in left hand.

  He slammed his fist into the counter. “Come back to me, Jamie. Come back.”

  Jamie? This was Jamie? The woman who worked at the embassy and was marked by Vaughn as his “special someone”? What happened to her? Why was Justin trying to bring her back?

  My eyes swept the horrific-looking, bluish figure in a brown dress stretched across the floor over a tarp. She had a sticky-looking black stain over her left breast, and…No. No. No. Oh Lord. I held in a horrible cry. She had an inflated belly.

  Pregnant. She had been pregnant. Oh Lord, when we’d spoken on the phone those few time
s when Justin originally went missing, I remember she’d been rudely crunching away on crackers. This was why.

  Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. My mind whirled in a frantic mess. Why was Justin with her dead body?

  My brother had told me about meeting her. That was how he’d known the significance of my “K” mark. But their relationship had to have been much, much more than he’d let on.

  My eyes took in the painful display of my baby brother desperately trying to revive the woman. Yes. Of course their relationship had been more. He loved her. Was the baby his, too? I wondered.

  Oh Lord. I couldn’t take it. This was simply too much.

  I sat next to him on the floor and cried, watching him as he worked relentlessly to make the Artifact work.

  How had he gotten it? He’d said he left it in some empty apartment on the day that King was taken by Vaughn. Had he lied to me? Did he make his own deal with Vaughn to keep the stone? After all, Vaughn had said it was a worthless rock.

  Because that’s what Justin told him.

  Shit, Justin. What did you do?

  I ran my hands through my hair, groaning and trying to make sense of all this. Okay. Somehow, somewhere along the way he met Jamie and fell in love with her. Was that how he’d gotten mixed up with Vaughn? He met Jamie? Or was it the other way around? I didn’t know, but then something must’ve happened to Jamie. Then Justin set up King in exchange for keeping the Artifact so he could bring her back.

  I knew that wasn’t the entire story, but the pieces fit. And it explained why Justin lied to me. He loved her and wanted to bring her back.

  I stood and looked at his notes. He’d laid out, in detail, every attempt made to use the Artifact. He’d done everything I might have attempted, including praying, holding it, and laying it on the person or a photo of them.

  So how did it work? Or was the Artifact nothing more than a rock?

  I didn’t know, but I had to help him end this gruesome experiment. Besides, King had been dead for a long time, although I didn’t know exactly how long, but it was a while. So if that damned stone actually worked, I had to believe that one didn’t need a rotting corpse to make it function.

  Lord, I hope.

  Suddenly, there was knock at the door. Justin’s eyes widened with horror.

  “Justin, we know you are in there.”

  Vaughn? No! No! “Justin, run!” I screamed, but he couldn’t hear me.

  Justin’s head swiveled as he looked around the empty apartment. “Shit.” He looked at the rock in his hands and blinked several times.

  “Run! Fucking run! Run!” I wailed.

  Justin took the stone and popped it into his mouth. I watched as he struggled to swallow. But the moment the door burst open and Vaughn entered with a sharp knife in hand, Justin found the will to choke it down.

  “Where is it?” Vaughn asked.

  Justin’s body shook. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  Vaughn looked down at the dead body on the floor. Rage filled his hazy brown eyes. “You little fucker. I was going to kill you for lying to me about the Artifact. Then your bitch of a sister robbed me of my fun, so I thought to skin you alive. But now,” he roared, “now I find you here! With her! Dead! I’m not gonna kill you; I’m gonna torture the living hell out of you!”

  Justin held up his hands. “I didn’t kill her. Some tracker woman you hired shot her in Edinburgh.”

  Oh no. It was Jamie who’d been shot in that warehouse in Edinburgh. King and I showed up moments after, looking for Justin, who’d been spotted earlier. We found the tracker’s body, but I knew someone else had died there, too. There was a pool of red light spread over the floor. But someone had taken that second body, and I couldn’t figure out why.

  Now I knew. Justin had, in fact, been there. Justin had taken her.

  “Do you think I give a fuck?” Vaughn screamed. “You think you can steal from me? You think you can lie to me, you little piece of shit. Where is that fucking rock?” he yelled.

  “The Artifact is a joke. I traded it away.”

  Vaughn shook his head. “Really, now? To whom?”

  Justin didn’t answer.

  “I’ll give you one chance, Justin. Tell the truth, and I’ll let you live. I’ll even let you keep the rotting bitch, too. But if you’re lying, I’ll burn you both.”

  “Don’t believe him, Justin! He’ll kill you either way. Just run! Please,” I sobbed.

  “All you need to know,” said Justin, “is that I traded it away for a potion that will resurrect her. I’m just waiting for it to work now,” he lied. “But you’ll never see the Artifact again. Not that the damned thing works. It’s just a fucking roc—”

  Vaughn lunged at Justin, and I screamed. There was nothing I could do as the knife plunged into my brother’s stomach.

  Justin screamed, but Vaughn held tight and twisted.

  “No! Justin!” I yelled.

  Vaughn tossed Justin to the floor and spit on his body. “May you fucking rest in peace with that fucking whore.”

  I crumpled to the floor. God no…

  “Mia! Mia!”

  My eyes snapped open, and I found myself panting, yet unable to truly breathe.

  “Mia!” Mack shook me hard.

  “Mack?” I sat up and threw myself forward. “Vaughn killed my brother. He killed him,” I sobbed.

  Mack stroked the back of my head. “Shhh…It’s okay.”

  But it wasn’t. Oh my God. It wasn’t. My brother was dead.

  “No,” I hiccupped. “He killed him.”

  “It was a dream,” Mack said.

  I shook my head and looked into his wide blue eyes. “It was real. But I couldn’t do anything because I was a ghost. That’s what happened when I died.”

  Mack grabbed my face and stared into my eyes. He didn’t speak. There was nothing to say.

  Justin is dead. Dead. Vaughn killed him…

  “Mia? Can you hear me?” Mack gently slapped my cheek.

  I blinked and looked at the people standing around the room. Spiros.

  I wiped my eyes with my arm and stood, staring each and every one of them in the eyes. Hate and sorrow filled every ounce of my soul.

  “Mia? Are you all right?” Mack said quietly.

  I looked at the people around me. “No. I’m not fucking all right. And you fucking Spiros have twenty-four hours to find my brother’s body, or I will curse each and every one of you. Do. You. Understand? Do you hear me?”

  Mack grabbed my arm and shook me hard. “Mia, Stop! You’re in shock. Don’t—”

  “No!” I snapped my arm away. “I mean every goddamned word, and now there is nothing they, or anyone, can do to me.” I held up my hand to show them the ring on my finger. “And that includes killing me. So you better find my brother or start running. Because I’m done. Do hear me? I’m done playing nice with you fucking people.”

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  After my verbal rampage ended, the physical one commenced. I’d never been so enraged and devastated in my life. And I seriously doubted I ever would be.

  The question I’d had earlier about being able to hurt another person simply to save my brother? Well, that had been answered. I was willing to hurt anyone just to feel better. Because Justin was gone, and that wasn’t right.

  How he’d ended up being Jamie Henshaw’s lover or possibly the father of her baby, I didn’t give a fuck. They were all dead, and the person who’d taken Justin’s life wasn’t worth the dirt stuck to the bottom of Justin’s shoes.

  I started in King’s room, breaking anything I could get my hands on. I threw chairs into mirrors, I slammed vases into walls, I broke anything within arm’s reach.

  When I was done trashing that room, I yanked open the doors to the hallway, ready to destroy his precious fucking palace and burn it to the ground.

  “Mia!” Mack yelled, trying to get me to stop, ducking and hiding behind doorways. I’m sure he hoped I’d get it all out and return to the nice girl I on
ce was, but that was impossible. She was gone. Dead. Reborn. Angry.

  Not even the valiant Spiros dared to get in my way. Perhaps they were smarter than they looked.

  I marched into the hallway and spotted those fucking stupid Minoan artifacts. “Do you love these, King?” I yelled. “Well, you can’t have them!”

  I swung hard, determined to knock a beige vase to its death, but a hand reached out and caught my arm. I glanced up at the stupid a-hole with a death wish and froze.

  “Ju-Ju-Justin?” I whispered, unable to believe what I saw.

  His big green eyes were filled with conflict, but he didn’t speak. Instead, he stared at me, his face filled with agony.

  “Oh my God. Is it really you?”

  He stared with an ominous expression, his eyes scanning the surroundings as if he was just as confused as I.

  He dropped my hand and gazed blankly into my eyes.

  “Can you hear me?” I snapped my fingers. “Justin?”

  His eyes sharpened, and he suddenly appeared to be acutely lucid. “Mia?”

  “Yes. It’s me.” I nodded, the tears trickling from my eyes.

  “How did I get here?”

  I shook my head slowly. “I don’t know.”

  “I think…I think…I’m dead.” His voice was filled with regret and pain.

  I nodded, but couldn’t speak.

  “I lost her, Mia. I tried, but I couldn’t bring her back. King was right. It only works for him.”

  The Artifact only worked for King? King had told him that?

  “She’s dead, Mia. That tracker shot her in Edinburgh. She’s dead.”

  “I know, Justin,” I sobbed. “I know. But what happen—”

  “Why am I here?”

  “I don’t know,” I whispered, but half of me was overjoyed to see him one more time. The other half wondered why his soul wasn’t at peace. Was it because he’d swallowed that damned rock?

  “Can you bring me back?” His voiced quivered. “I have to keep trying. The baby—the baby…” His words trailed off, and I winced. I suddenly wondered if this was real. Or was my mind trying to reconcile the truth with what I wanted to believe?