The Broken Puppet (The Elite King's Club 2)

“You see this?” I run my pointer finger down the blunt side of the knife. “It’s a Fallkniven A1Pro Survival Knife.” I smirk, admiring how the boys—except for Bishop, he’s still crouching beside me—watch me with awe, or fear, or a combination of both, and are all standing behind me. They have my back—but I won’t need it. I launch the knife into Lucan’s pelvis area until I feel his bones crunching against the blade. He screams out, a loud, curdling scream, his back arching and tears pouring down his face.

I bend down to his ear, running my lips over the lobe like he did to me not long ago. Feeling his blood spilling over my hand, I grin and whisper, “You know, since you love to be theatrical… this knife is a survival knife.” I circle the blade, my hand sticky from his blood. It blankets my anger, soothing it like an ice pack on a burn. Putting out the pain.

Pulling the knife out from him, I inch backward, both hands wrapped around the blade, ready to stab it into his head. Needing it to finally put out the burn I have inside me. The burn has only been temporarily eased, when Brantley appears, snatches the knife out of my hand, and stabs it right between Lucan’s eyes. Blood sprays out all over me, the tang of blood overpowering every taste bud in my mouth.

Brantley screams, veins popping out from his neck, his eyeballs almost bulging from their sockets. He has anger; I was right. He has anger just like I did, if not more, because Lucan was his father.

My breathing slows, and when Lucan’s head drops to the side, his death stinking up the air, I collapse into Bishop, my head resting on his shoulder.

He wraps his arm around me, kissing me on the head, as Brantley pulls the knife out of his dad and launches it back into him again. And again. And again. I flinch, digging my face into Bishop. His smell, his just—Bishop. The only sound I can hear is Brantley slicing into Lucan. Again and again.

“Come on, baby,” Bishop says into my hair when he sees Brantley isn’t stopping anytime soon.

“Well,” Hector says, and I turn in Bishop’s grip to face him but away from Brantley making dues with his abusive dad. “This is all lovely, but do any of you fuckers want to tell me what the fuck is going on and why my right-hand man is dead? Brantley, hear that? He’s dead so you can stop that now.” Hector pauses, looking at the mess Brantley has created, and then shrugs like he sees that type of shit daily. He probably does. Actually, all of them seem unbothered by it.

Bishop squeezes me into him. “Lucan would rape Madison when she was a little girl.”

Hector sucks from his cigar, but just there, below the surface, I can see it enrages him somewhat, and that surprises me because he’s Hector Hayes. I wouldn’t think something like that would bother him. He must catch my notice in him, because he laughs.

“Don’t take it to heart, sugar. I personally don’t like you, for a lot of reasons.” He looks at his son and then back to me. “But I don’t condone rape.”

“And…” Bishop pauses but then continues. “…and Brantley.”

The stabbing sound has stopped; now it’s sobbing. Not the quiet sobbing, it’s the ugly kind, and I turn in Bishop’s embrace, finally bracing myself to look toward Brantley.

He has his arms wrapped around his knees and is rocking beside what is left of Lucan. Blood drips from his hair, face, and hands, but he just rocks, sobbing loudly. “I didn’t want to. Why? Why did you have to make me do it? All those times….” He shakes his head. My heart snaps. I slowly start to walk toward him, when Bishop grabs onto my arm.

I turn to face him, and he shakes his head. “Don’t.”

“What do you mean, don’t? No wonder he hates me, Bishop,” I whisper, searching Bishop’s eyes. “He needed someone to blame, so he blamed me for what his father made us do that day. He blamed me, because if I didn’t exist, that wouldn’t have happened.”

Bishop shakes his head. “No, babe.” But then his eyes go over my shoulder.

“Thirty-seven,” Brantley whispers from behind me, and I quickly spin around to face him. “Thirty-seven young girls.”

What? I want to ask, but I don’t in fear that he might snap at me. Instead, I remain silent, hoping he will say more, which he does.

He looks at me, the headlights from the car shining on his face now that he’s level with it. Blood paints his face and clothing, the knife gripped in his hand. He tosses the knife over and it lands near Bishop’s feet. “You’re right though,” he starts, sidestepping around the mangled corpse on the ground. “I hated you. I never understood why you came back. When we were kids, at my birthday party, I hated all kids, not just you, but my father had already started talking about what he was going to get us to do together.” He pauses. “When you started Riverside, I didn’t know at first whether you remembered me or not. At first, I thought you did remember and you were—I don’t know—fucking with us after some revenge for what Lucan did.” Shit, that makes a whole lot of sense. “But also…” He pulls out a pack of smokes and puts one into his mouth, lighting it. “…you were my first. So there was hate for you from that as well. I didn’t make the Silver connection to The Silver Swan, which I should have. I’m an idiot for not making that connection. I just figured it was because of your eyes. They’re murky green now, but when you were a kid, they were silver.”