King for a Day (26 page)

“This is what we have been debating. We were left instructions, very specific instructions. King said that he would be going away for a while but under no circumstances were we to interfere.”

My jaw dropped. “But…but…” I threw up my hands. “Obviously he didn’t anticipate being captured by that sick psycho.”

“I am afraid we can do nothing,” Stefanos said.

“You’ve got to be joking! He needs our help.”

Stefanos shook his head. “I am sorry, but we will do whatever we can to help you find your brother.”

I sighed with relief. Well, at least there was that. But I wasn’t about to leave King in some horrible basement to rot. He didn’t deserve that. Not after all of the suffering he’d already endured. “Can anyone at least tell me if they know where this Vaughn guy lives?” It couldn’t be that far. After all, I’d washed up on a beach here in Crete.

They exchanged glances. “We do not know, but our king has prohibited all but Arno from engaging with members of this club he runs. It is too dangerous.”

He “runs”?

“I wished King ran it,” I said. “Then he could shut that damned thing down.”

The woman with the long, wavy hair said something sharp to Stefanos.

“Oh. Did I say he ran it? I misspoke. My English isn’t always so perfect. I meant that he belongs to the Club.”

I held up my hands. “No worries. Can I call my parents now?”

Stefanos cleared his throat. “No. I’m sorry, but you cannot.”

“But you said—”

“I said
we
would help you. Which means,
we
will.”

“I’m lost.”

“Though the formal ceremony has not been conducted yet, you are still our queen. We will need to keep you here until it is safe.”

“What the hell is the matter with you people?” I screamed.

“I’m sorry, my quee—”

“Mia! My goddamned name is Mia! I am not your queen, but so help me God, if you try to stop me from helping my brother, I will—”

Stefanos cut me off again. “I would be very careful. Words once spoken cannot be taken back, especially when one makes a promise—even a cruel one. We would lose all respect for you if you didn’t follow through.”

Huh?
“You are all completely mad.” I wasn’t about to stay there with this strange King cult. Not on my life. And if they didn’t want to help me, then I’d go it alone. I was sure I could find a way to get access to my cash—tourists got robbed of their belongings all the time. As for the passport, there had to be an embassy in Athens. I could find a way off this island and get there.

“I’m leaving.” I turned for the doorway, but two large men who reminded me of Arno blocked my way.

“Ah. There, you see,” said Stefanos. “That is how we do things around here. We speak only words we are prepared to follow through with.”

“You can’t be serious,” I seethed, glancing at the faces around the table.

Stefano glanced at the two large Greek guys behind me. “Please make sure that our,” he hesitated, “that Mia does not leave the grounds or contact anyone.”

Furious was too tame a word to describe my feelings. “How dare you people? You have no right to subject me to the stupidity of your little congregation. My brother is in serious shit, and he needs my help. So does King.”

“We will begin searching for your brother and do what we can to assist him.”

“How? How do you even know where to start looking? The answer is you don’t, and I’m the only person here with a rat’s ass of a chance in finding him.”

“Then you will share what you know and let us do the work—we cannot risk something happening to you.”

“I can handle myself,” I argued. Hell, I’d just come back from the dead! And survived Vaughn’s basement! What else could possibly be tougher than that?

How about being declared queen by a bunch of fanatical King groupies?

“You are but one person,” said the woman with the long hair. “We are Spiros. We are thousands.”

I lifted my brows in confusion.

Stefanos must’ve understood my expression because he offered, “We are the king’s council, but there are many more Spiros.”

Another secret society? Or were they more like some crazy religious cult?

Does it matter? They are going to keep you here.

Ohmygod.
I shook my head. How did I keep getting mixed up in all this crap? And why did everyone want to keep me against my will?

“What about King?” I asked. “You’re not going to leave him in that man’s basement forever, are you?”

“We will obey King’s wishes, even if we do not agree with them,” Stefanos said coldly.

Sheep. They’re mindless, stubborn sheep
. I could see there was absolutely no use arguing with them; therefore I would need to wait for the right moment and then run for it. In the meantime, I hoped one of them was able to find and warn Justin; Vaughn was coming for him.

CHAPTER
SIXTEEN

The two burly men wearing khaki shorts and white Polos escorted me back upstairs toward the room with the pool. On the way, I once again glanced at the miniature coves displaying what had to be some of King’s coveted treasures.

“What are these?” I asked the shorter one.

“They are Minoan artifacts,” he said proudly.

I didn’t want to admit my ignorance about who the Minoans were, so I simply nodded. I made a mental note to read up on them later. “Am I going to be held prisoner indefinitely?”

We stopped just outside the double doors leading to the room.

“You are not our prisoner,” answered the taller man. “This is your home, and we are protecting you in it.”

I stared blankly. They were all delusional. Fucking delusional. I was ready to pull out my frigging blonde hair by the roots and make them choke on it.

“My home is…” Okay. It was my parents’ guest room. “San Francisco.”

The tall guy stepped around me and opened the door. “Your meal has been set out on the balcony. If you need anything, simply let us know. We’ll be right out here.”

I stepped inside, and he closed the door, leaving me all alone with nothing but my terrified thoughts.

I walked through the room and outside to the balcony. The maid—couldn’t remember her name (so typical of me)—had set out a plate of flatbread, cheeses, grapes, olives, and some other goodies on a small table facing the magnificent view. A white tablecloth and bottle of wine made the meal look more like an event rather than simple food.

Instantly salivating, I sat, realizing how starved I felt. I began devouring the bread, then the cheese and fruit, not stopping until I was almost done, at which point, I finally looked up. It was noon-ish now and a perfect day—crisp blue sky, an endless stretch of breathtaking, deep-blue ocean, and a tepid, calm breeze. I could honestly say that under different circumstances, I’d die of happiness if this place were my home. But there wasn’t a chance in hell I’d ever go along with such insanity or agree to be King’s. Yes, I understood I felt attracted to him. Yes, I knew that somewhere deep down inside, there was a good man looking for salvation. Yes, I wanted him to have it. But none of that meant I would ever agree to be his. He was dangerous. His world was dangerous. And the guy was a frigging ghost whose need for revenge completely consumed him.

As soon as this was over, if I survived, I would be turning the full force of my efforts toward separating myself from this entire mess.

My mind quickly hopped over to the deal I’d made with King right before he’d stopped my heart. He’d said that if I gave him one night, just one, and I still wanted to leave, that he’d let me. Yes, I believed he’d meant it. King wasn’t the type to break his word or make a deal he didn’t intend to keep.

My tired mind drifted off, wondering what being with King might be like. Would his idea of “a night together” consist of throwing me over that goddamned desk, or would he take his time like he’d said and, perhaps, bring me here, where we’d soak our sweaty, sore bodies in between sessions of hard, hot, voracious sex?

I swallowed.
Why am I thinking about this right now?

What I needed to be doing was find a weapon I could use to get the hell out there.

I stilled. Was I really prepared to hurt someone? Because I knew the Spiros were fully prepared to do what it took to prevent me from leaving. What if I ended up not just hurting someone, but killing them? Could I do that to help Justin?

Crap. I don’t know.

Other options? Other options….
Given the estate was guarded and fenced, perhaps I could wait until nightfall and sneak out. There had to be a way out along the rocky shore even if it meant swimming part of the way. And it couldn’t be more than a few hours walk back to the main town. By morning, I could be parked outside the American Express office—there had to be one, right? They had an emergency card and passport replacement service, which I knew because I’d lost my stuff once in Italy while working. If I acted quickly, I’d be armed with a prepaid cell and on the first ferry or whatever-the-hell boat to the mainland before anyone found me.

I only prayed that I was not too late to help Justin. In the meantime, it was going to be a long, long night, and I needed to get some rest. Because I wouldn’t be stopping until I reached my brother.

I lay down on the heavenly soft bed and closed my eyes for a quick nap. A huge fucking mistake. Because when I opened them again, I was no longer in King’s beautiful bedroom overlooking the Aegean Sea. I was standing in a dark, empty apartment permeated with the stench of death.

~~

I didn’t know how I’d arrived or exactly where I was, but I knew the person kneeling before me sobbing hysterically over a rotting corpse.

“Justin!” I cried. I lunged for him, but my arms passed right through his shoulder. I stilled for a moment and inspected my translucent hands.
What the hell?

Justin continued weeping over the decaying body, clasping something tightly in his hand.

“Justin!” I yelled once again, but as far as he was concerned, I was, I was…
a ghost?

Justin opened his hand, cursed at the object, and placed it on top of the body’s forehead.

It looked like a small gray stone with crisscrossed etchings over the surface.

The Artifact? Why does Justin have the Artifact?

He slowly rose from the floor and hobbled over to the breakfast bar that divided the kitchen from the living room.

“What’s happening?” I said aloud. “Justin! Justin!” I swiped for him once again, but my hand sliced through thin air instead of making contact.

He began scribbling on a notepad with one hand while wiping his tears away with the other.

Oh my Lord, what is happening?

The only source of light in the entire place was a solitary light above the kitchen sink a few feet from where Justin stood. I leaned in closely to make out what he wrote.

Test 53, no response. Held artifact in left hand.

He slammed his fist into the counter. “Come back to me, Jamie. Come back.”

Jamie? This was Jamie?
The woman who worked at the embassy and was marked by Vaughn as his “special someone”? What happened to her? Why was Justin trying to bring her back?

My eyes swept the horrific-looking, bluish figure in a brown dress stretched across the floor over a tarp. She had a sticky-looking black stain over her left breast, and…
No. No. No. Oh Lord
. I held in a horrible cry. She had an inflated belly.

Pregnant. She had been pregnant.
Oh Lord, when we’d spoken on the phone those few times when Justin originally went missing, I remember she’d been rudely crunching away on crackers. This was why.

Fuck. Fuck. Fuck
. My mind whirled in a frantic mess. Why was Justin with her dead body?

My brother had told me about meeting her. That was how he’d known the significance of my “K” mark. But their relationship had to have been much, much more than he’d let on.

My eyes took in the painful display of my baby brother desperately trying to revive the woman. Yes. Of course their relationship had been more. He loved her. Was the baby his, too? I wondered.

Oh Lord
. I couldn’t take it. This was simply too much.

I sat next to him on the floor and cried, watching him as he worked relentlessly to make the Artifact work.

How had he gotten it? He’d said he left it in some empty apartment on the day that King was taken by Vaughn. Had he lied to me? Did he make his own deal with Vaughn to keep the stone? After all, Vaughn had said it was a worthless rock.

Because that’s what Justin told him.

Shit, Justin. What did you do?

I ran my hands through my hair, groaning and trying to make sense of all this.
Okay. Somehow, somewhere along the way he met Jamie and fell in love with her.
Was that how he’d gotten mixed up with Vaughn? He met Jamie? Or was it the other way around? I didn’t know, but then something must’ve happened to Jamie
. Then Justin set up King in exchange for keeping the Artifact so he could bring her back.