Page 77 of The Masked King

Malevsky leans over me, making the snake inked around his neck writhe as he cricks his head from side to side. When he speaks, his voice is a low growl. “You felt a connection with Nyx. Why do you think that is?”

I stare him straight in the eye and say, “Maybe it’s because she fucked you over too.”

His fist connects with my jaw, and momentum carries me backward. I hear a crack as my skull hits the floor, and tiny sparks of gold and silver float before my eyes. The pain in my head beats everything else into submission.

Two goons right the chair and place me back in my original position in front of Dmitri Malevsky. I concentrate on him to stop the rest of the world from swimming in and out of focus.

“Here’s my deal,” he continues. “I will hand over Nyx and enough money to make you one of the wealthiest men in the USA, and in return you will give me your brother Giovanni.”

I think about it for half a second. “Or…?”

“Or the world will believe that JADED and everything it stands for is your brother’s creation.”

In other words, the people who matter will believe my brother is a sick fucker who traffics women and minors.

“What if the answer is still no?”

The smile is real if still the kind of look that would give little kids nightmares. “I will find a way to change your mind.”

I tilt my chin and lock eyes with him. “War it is.”

20

DEMI

I don’t crawl out from under the sheet even when someone brings food. I try to empty my head, but all I can see is Enzo walking away from a burning house where innocent children are sleeping in their beds.

I thought I knew him.

I believed he was a decent guy underneath the designer suits and the mafia legacy.

I compromised my beliefs, my future, my heart, because he convinced me that his mafia history didn’t make him a monster.

And now I have the proof, and I don’t know what to do with it.

I’m still in love with him. Brian could turn out to be a living breathing sex-god with a heart of pure gold, but he will never be Enzo, and my heart is breaking all over again. Not only for the love I can’t have, but for future-me destined to a lifetime of playing cops and robbers and going home to an empty apartment and a vibrator in the top drawer of my nightstand.

I doze on and off.

I’ve stopped fighting it. I’ve stopped caring what the assholes dress me in or what photographs they take of me. Every sick fucker who gets off on those images will be on my hitlist when the DI busts me out of here, and I’ll make sure the whole world knows their names. I don’t know how; that’s for the universe to take care of. All I need to remember is why: because people like snake-guy don’t deserve to breathe the same air as the rest of us.

“Demi?” The voice is so faint, I think I imagined it.

I lie perfectly still beneath the sheet and breathe deeply like I’m asleep.

“Demi?” Still a whisper, but this time I know it’s real.

I push the sheet away from my head and find a young woman standing by the bed. Her raven-black hair is tucked behind her ears, her brown eyes so dark they look almost completely black, and she’s skinny, her collarbones protruding above the neck of her tank.

“You haven’t eaten,” she whispers, eyes darting to the covered plate on the nightstand.

I sit up, holding the sheet to my chest. I’m in underwear; I’ve forgotten how it feels to have real clothes against my skin, to tug the sleeves of a sweater over my hands to keep them warm, or to slide my feet into fluffy socks. What I wouldn’t give right now for cozy pajamas and a cup of hot chocolate.

“I’m not hungry.” She’s working for the Bratva; I can’t forget that she isn’t on my side.

“Please.” She pleads with her wide eyes.

Her legs are bare beneath pajama shorts, and the outfit makes her look like she’s here for a slumber party, although the lines across her forehead and around her mouth tell a different story.