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“Where do you think? You know exactly who that lock of hair belongs to. And what it would take for me to have it.” I say.
“You think you can scare me, Hunter? I’ve lived with one monster. You know how that ended. Do you think I’ll allow a new monster to take his place?” Hatred gleams in her violet eyes. It’s almost enough to sway me from my plans.
In the beginning, Xavier kept his darkness locked away from her. Treated her almost like a beloved toy. I’d had hope that losing his first wife taught him restraint. He’d never harmed Snow, and I’d rationalized that because Glory was as obedient as she was, he wasn’t hurting her either. The girls kept to the nursery wing of the mansion, so I hardly saw either one of them once Glory came to live here.
Two years ago, I heard the thud of fist striking flesh in the middle of the night. I’d come to wake Xavier with news about a shipment gone missing, only to be halted by the sounds leaking through their bedroom door. When Xavier strolled from the room as carefree as ever, tucking his shirt in and wiping blood from his knuckles with his pocket kerchief, I knew how wrong I’d been all this time.
I did what I could to occupy him after that. Kept him busy with women and drugs, so by the time he made it to their room at night, his appetites would be sated and Glory would be safe. Plans slowly came together to finally topple Xavier from power and claim his crown as my own.
Seems Glory’s little ass isn’t so innocent anymore. While I was planning, she was plotting. I’m not certain yet why she decided, after ten years of whatever Xavier put her through, to finally end him, but she did. Now the weight of a crown far too cumbersome for such a little girl is threatening to snap her neck, and I won’t allow it to happen. Even if it makes her hate me.
“I’m no more monster than you, tiny killer. Do you forget, you’re a murderer now just like the rest of us here. Seizing opportunity where you can doesn’t make you any more noble than me or anyone else in the family, Glory. Don’t delude yourself into believing because you killed a bad man that you’re immune from consequences. They’ll imprison a martyr as readily as they’ll jail a monster.” Watching her eyes grow wide in fear sends a bolt of lust through me, hardening my dick and making me long to see that same fear in them as she chokes on my length.
All in good time, I remind myself. Glory Kingston may have existed as a shadow queen in Xavier’s kingdom, but one day she’ll be the shining gem at the center of mine. As far as the world sees, anyhow. Behind closed doors, I’ll show her all the ways that belonging to the king brings pleasure where only despair has gone before. When she’s ready, I’ll teach her everything Xavier failed to.
“Don’t hurt her. We can negotiate, but I will not tolerate any harm coming to Snow. She’s free of this place now. She’s never coming back to St. Luis.” Steel rings in her words, and I know her love of Snow is the only thing keeping her from shooting me where I sit.
Maybe I am a monster, because the image of Glory standing before me with a gun aimed at my gut should send terror through me. Instead, the electric shock of arousal has precum slicking the tip of my hard on where it’s rubbing against the smooth wool inside my slacks. Soon, I tell my dick. Soon the only weapon Glory will be handling will be mine. Every inch of my thickness will be wrapped tight in her fists. Her rosebud lips snug around it while she sucks and swallows me down. Her pussy clamped like a vise snapped in place, welcoming me to her kingdom.
“I think your emotions need to cool down a bit, Glory. Your hand’s a little closer to that gun than I’m comfortable with. Take two days. Contact Snow and verify that she’s not come to any harm. I’ll be back then, and we’ll talk. Be ready for my demands, and know this; the men in this place may be following your orders right now, but they’ve been under my command for decades as Xavier’s right hand. Who do you think they’ll follow if you try to stab me in the back?”
I leave before the steam I imagine building inside her explodes. Glory needs time to find out for herself that Snow’s alive and unharmed. The world thinks the girl, now nineteen and technically a woman, died with her father. Glory hid her, sending her with the young driver she’d fallen in love with, far away. Not so far that I couldn’t find her. And not so far that I can’t use her existence to open the door to the heart I know Glory will never let me through without force.
Three
Glory
“Where are you? Are you safe? Where’s Henry?” Questions tear from me like bullets the moment the phone connects my call.
“Chill, mom. I’m fine. We’re fine. Just got back from the beach. Henry took me snorkeling with dolphins today!” Joy rings in Snow’s voice and my heart slows from the gallop that had me nearly dizzy.
Everything I have done since the moment I foolishly allowed the nanny agency I had just started working for to send me to Xavier Kingston’s estate has been to protect Snow. Her happy giggle and the way she calls me mom as though it’s as natural as breathing warms the ice that has been creeping through my veins for the last few weeks.
I suspect Snow knows I’m responsible for her father’s demise. Maybe I should feel some guilt from the night I slit his throat while he sweated and grunted his orgasm into my unwilling body and allowed him to bleed out on top of me. I feel not a single ounce of guilt. I feel pride. Pride and power.
When Snow was twelve, he ordered me to move into the bedroom next to hers in the nursery wing. I’d thought it was a reprieve. A chance to be out of his bed, meant to enable him to bring his mistresses home with him without having to put up with their complaints about being fucked in the bed where his wife pretended to sleep. Because that had been one of Xavier’s favorite mind games. Torturing both me and whatever woman he’d brought home with him.
Not that I cared who he fucked. In fact, I relished those nights because it meant he left me be. Gave me time to heal and repair from whatever torment he’d last inflicted. When he bade me move to the room in the nursery wing, I believed he’d finally grown tired of the game. Little had I known, he’d devised a new torture.
Being so near to where the daughter of my heart slept meant when he visited me at night, any cry or gasp in pain could wake her. Protecting Snow was the only reason I’d agreed to marry Xavier in the first place, and protecting her kept me quiet all the nights he came to my room to taunt and torture me.
Eventually it wasn’t enough for him to bleed me physically. Xavier had begun to whisper depraved promises of the things he intended to do to Snow, his own daughter, once she came of age. It’s why I knew my time was limited. Once there was no protecting Snow any longer, Xavier would have no hold over me. I knew when that happened, he’d kill me.
Three weeks ago, on the eve of her own mother’s passing and mere days before her eighteenth birthday, Xavier crawled into my bed, knife in hand, and cut away my nightgown and panties. The entire time he shoved himself into me, roughly enough I know it was my own blood easing the way for him to rut me, he nicked the tender skin along my neck. The promise was clear. In a matter of days, I’d be dead and he’d be subjecting my beloved Snow to this.
Xavier’s grip on the knife slackened as his orgasm crested. The heat of his spend scalding my insides incinerated the helpless weakling he’d beaten me into and left in its place a phoenix rising from ash. Reborn.
I wrested the knife from his grip and slammed it into his neck, a place mirroring the spot he’d carved into me moments before. He’d tried to fight me then. His arms flopping around us like a marionette with no strings. I’d laughed as his blood gushed out over me, the burn of it nothing compared to the incandescent rage forging me into a new life as he bled out over me.
“Mom? You still there? Henry says to promise you he made me put sunscreen on three times so I wouldn’t burn in the sun.” Sweet, innocent Snow. With her skin as unmarked as a babe’s and her violet eyes still filled with hope that the world will treat her kindly.
I let her goodness pull me from the memories that are always biting at my heels, trying to drag me under. People have considered me shockingly beautiful, but my stepdaughter is on an entirely different level. She’s the real deal; stunning in appearance and pure of heart. Everything beautiful and pure inside me shriveled up and died when I married her father at nineteen. Marrying him was the only way he’d agree to let me stay and protect her.
The police think she died in the car accident they believe killed Xavier; both of their bodies damaged so badly only my tearful identification could provide information about the vehicle’s occupants. No one but me, Snow, and Henry know anything different. And now, through some twist, Hunter.
Henry, Snow’s driver and bodyguard has loved her since he was hired a few years ago. Careful to keep himself in check until now, his worship of her was plain for my mother’s heart to see. It’s the only reason why, as I lay there under Xavier’s body, I had the courage to stretch to the night table where my phone was plugged into its charger and all him for help. The young man had walked in, taken one look at the carnage, and gone to work helping me get free and covered.
The two of us had worked for hours to clean the room, his brawn lending strength to my years of experience cleaning up the blood from where Xavier bled me. When the room was put to rights, Henry had listened to my plan to make Snow disappear for her safety. Henry knew, as surely as I did, that in the wake of Xavier’s death, men from the other crime families would crawl from the woodwork to claim his throne. If it meant marrying her to get at it, so be it. Neither of us were prepared to allow that to happen.
