Crowned by Fate (Crowned 2)

My eyes remain trained on Stacey, who still hasn’t taken hers off Max. I’ve noticed he’s not paid her any attention. None at all.

Max continues. “I stayed after-hours to run all the tests I needed to do. MRI scans, blood work, studying her sleep patterns, and how she reacted to certain environments of sleep and sounds. She seemed normal until they’d give her her daily drugs, then she’d be out again, sometimes for days at a time. She would either wake up as Isa or as Brooke.”

“That.” Bryant snaps his fingers, leaning back in his chair. He snatches the pack of smokes off the table and puts one into his mouth. Flicking open his Zippo, he breathed in the sweet nicotine. “That’s what her father said. She was a schizophrenic and her other personality was called Brooke. As if she was possessed by her.”

Max grunts, seeming uncomfortable with the current conversation. “Yes and no. Brooke was a real person—”

“—I fucking know that,” Bryant snaps, flicking the ash off the tip of his cigarette.

Max clears his throat when he notices Bryant’s hostility toward the woman who killed our daughter. “What I mean, is that Isa somehow placed all of her bad characteristics into a personality and called it Brooke. In her head, the same story would play, only different from the true events of what happened. With Isa, she was the one who killed Brooke. Brooke exposes herself, rapes her, and then Isa kills her, or Brooke kills Isa. How the ending finished in her head would depend on who Isa would wake up as.”

Bryant leans forward, snatching up his glass of whiskey before taking a sip.

“Where were you, Bryant?” I finally ask, my eyes fluttering closed. Grief has decided to take anger’s hand and now I’m left with a cocktail of feelings stirring inside of my soul with no outlet. This isn’t going to end well. “You didn’t come for me?” When I finally open my eyes, I find him focusing solely on me.

“I couldn’t,” he simply answers, as if it’s just another question that I had asked. As if it didn’t pain me to even ask him to begin with. To display raw emotion to the person who has shown me none. Agh. He could be so impossible. I didn’t fight my rage anymore, but I also didn’t want to have this argument around other people.

Stacey stands from her chair, picking up her glass of champagne. “Am I the only fucking one who thinks this is weird?”

“Excuse me.” Pushing off my chair, I exited through the kitchen and made my way out to the main lobby where I knew the guest bathroom was. I pause in my tracks when a piece of artwork catches my eye down the hallway. The splash of color against a concrete canvas with gray stencil is a dead giveaway on who the artist is. This is why you weren’t looking for things. Because of this. Now you’ve found something.

I feel his presence behind me before I see or hear him, but I remain focused on the art. “I thought you said that you’d never hang Banksy on your wall…”

Silence for a beat. “That was before I lost you.”

I freeze, turning slightly to face him. My eyes clash with his, a tornado of torment and pain aching to be understood. “You didn’t lose me, Bryant. You left me. There’s a huge difference in that.”

He steps forward, his glass hanging from between his fingers. He chuckles, swiping his mouth with the back of his other hand as he gets closer.

I back up until I’m colliding with the wall. There’s no way out. I didn’t become a wolf when I married one, I’ll always be his prey. The single meal he always wants, the only feast to satiate his wild hunger.

One hand slowly comes to the wall beside my head as he takes another long pull of his whiskey. His eyes remain on mine. He finishes his sip leisurely before his tongue sneaks out and absorbs the liquid from his swollen bottom lip. “One, I didn’t leave you, and two.” He grins. “You’re not going anywhere now.”

I shove his chest. “Leave me alone, B.”

His eyes drop down to where I just pushed him before slowly coming back to mine. He deliberately places the glass on the table beside us before pressing the palm of his hand to the other side of my head. Now I was caged in, and with Bryant, there’s no escaping the cage that he confines you into.

“I didn’t leave you,” he repeats, his tone bored but forceful. This is my first warning that I’m treading painfully close to him losing his patience with me.

I tilt my head in challenge. “Sure you did. That’s why you didn’t save me.”

His hand is at my chin so fast I almost missed it. He squeezes while tilting my head up to face him. “I. Didn’t. Leave. You.”