King of Me (The King Trilogy #3)(6)
Author: Mimi Jean Pamfiloff

I stared in anticipation. This news was already big. Huge, in fact. We had the goddamned Artifact! All I needed now was…well, to trust the guy and find some way to love him.

That’s what all this vacation and marriage crap is really all about. Now that he had the rock, he’d planned to woo me because he needed me to develop some sort of romantic feelings for him. Always one step ahead.

King’s handsome face sparked with an arrogant grin, indicating I was right. “I also bartered for my wedding present to you.” He dipped his neatly groomed, full head of black hair, gesturing toward the kitchen. “Right this way.”

My mind twirled in ecstatic circles as I followed King down a set of stairs hidden toward the back of the enormous home, near the servants’ wing. I couldn’t believe it; he’d managed to get the rock. That meant I’d soon have Justin back to my poor parents.

“Where do these stairs go?” I asked.

“My dungeon, where else?”

That explained it. The stairwell was scary as hell with violent colors dripping down the walls. Sometimes, I felt grateful for my Seer gift. Sometimes I wanted to turn the damned thing off.

“I’d hoped it was your laundry room,” I replied.

He laughed. “That room is behind the kitchen.”

“Nice to know.” Because I am going to be washing my underwear later.

King chuckled at my little unspoken joke, but I wasn’t exactly kidding. The further down we went, the more petrifying the energy. It reminded me of Vaughn’s basement, actually.

As mentioned, Vaughn was a murderous psychopath and the world’s most twisted f**k of a human being. Not only did he enjoy mutilating women, but he took their skins and put them on his dead lover. The monster had murdered hundreds of women and also ended my brother’s life. Not a shock that he was the leader of 10 Club, too.

King stopped at the bottom of the stairs and punched a code into a keypad at the side of the door. When the door sprang open, the smell of dank seawater filled my lungs. A faint orange light glowed from inside.

“You weren’t kidding, were you?” It really was a dungeon.

“No.”

I held my position mid-stairs. “Who do you have down there?”

King smiled at me, a wicked gleam in his beautiful eyes. “Come see for yourself.”

I was too afraid to move.

“You have nothing to fear,” he said coolly.

“Then why do I see those color—”

King grabbed my wrist, his hand covering the “K” tattoo, which meant I couldn’t easily resist doing what he told me. It was an instant override switch for my mind. This was why I frequently found myself hating the man. When he couldn’t persuade or manipulate me into doing something, he forced me.

Not knowing what I was in for, my heart thumped wildly inside my chest. One step. Two. Before I knew it, I stood in a long corridor lined with empty cells. The black walls dripped with seawater and tiny cascades of slimy green algae.

“This way. I promise you will not be disappointed.” He yanked me to the door at the end of the passage and punched in another code. This time, when the door popped, he shoved me past him and shut the door behind me.

What the hell? I turned and pounded on the door. “King! You son of a bitch! Let me the f**k out of here!”

I heard no reply. Instead, he shoved a thin blade underneath the door.

My hand froze mid-strike. “What the f**k, King?”

“That knife won’t do you any good,” said a familiar voice, a voice that made my heart turn into a lump of dread coated in corrosive acid.

“Vaughn?”

His beady, brown, cataract-covered eyes gleamed with joy from behind a set of rusty iron bars. “Yes, Miss Turner, it is I.”

CHAPTER THREE

I felt Vaughn’s eyes drilling into the back of my head as I pummeled the door with my fists and screamed. Of all the messed-up things King had ever done, this took the cake. Bastard!

What I couldn’t begin to fathom was why? Why would he call this a gift? Why would he risk pissing me off when we were so close to breaking his curse?

“Aren’t you going to say hello?” Vaughn chuckled with a slithery tone that reminded me of a snake who’d swallowed its own blackened heart, the pitch somewhere between a hiss and a cancerous cough.

I slowly turned to address the monster sitting in the cell behind me. He wore a brown sweater torn at the shoulder and brownish slacks. His stringy silver hair was caked with dried blood from what appeared to be a large festering gash on the side of his head.

“King do that to you?” I asked.

He dipped his head. “Who else?”

“With your philanthropic track record, the possibilities are endless.”

His thin lips curled into a treacherous grin. “Yes, well. One doesn’t enjoy life without acquiring a few foes.”

“One of whom is standing right here, contemplating killing you.” Was that what the knife was for? King thought I might enjoy a little revenge?

Christ, he probably did. King had a dark, ruthless side, one he didn’t hesitate showing to his enemies.

“Kill me? You?” Vaughn crossed his legs, and that’s when I noticed his hands were cuffed behind him, anchored to some sort of metal ring on the wall.

That’s pretty messed up. The guy can’t even scratch his nose or take a piss. Nice work, King.

He continued, “You may be my enemy, but you don’t have the balls to pluck a hair from my head, let alone stick me with a knife.”

“You sure about that?” I asked.

“Quite. You’re weak, Miss Turner, just like that piece-of-shit brother of yours.”

I turned to the bars and gripped them with enough force to strangle a man. “You don’t know a thing about Justin.”

“I know more than you.” Smug satisfaction gleamed in his eyes.

“Such as?”

“Have you ever asked yourself how this whole thing got started? You, me, King?”

I knew Justin had somehow met Vaughn and Vaughn’s significant other, Jamie. I knew Justin had made a deal with Vaughn to get funding for his archeological dig, and in exchange, Vaughn would get dibs on anything Justin unearthed. I knew Justin, at some point, fell in love with Jamie and got her pregnant, which is when they tried to run from Vaughn. Of course, it all ended badly for her, the baby, and Justin.

“I know all I need to know,” I replied.

“Oh, but you don’t. The little f**ker thought he could take my woman and have me killed. He thought he could walk away with my money and power. The entire tragedy is his doing.”