Page 49 of Venomous King
“I never said that, you did. I’ll do whatever it takes to get to Issy, and I will not miss a wink of sleep over ending anyone who gets in my way. Got to go, I see an opportunity to put the second one into a permanent nap. Make sure you don’t lose sight of her, dick.”
Mia starts moving toward the dressing rooms at the back of the store with a bunch of garments, and with a deep breath to steady my nerves, I follow her at a distance until she moves around the corner and she’s out of sight. Fuck! Diego will have my head if she slips through our fingers. I slink like a creeper around the corner, with a last look back into the store, to see if any of the salespeople are watching. Once I turn the corner, I’m immediately confronted by Mia, who throws a fist right into the side of my face, and has my head smacking against the wall. “Jesus fuck!” I groan, as I attempt to shake off the pain now radiating from my jaw, and the ringing in my ear. Why the fuck does she hit so hard?
“Why are you following me around, Kai?” Mia demands, her hands fisted on her slim hips and a look of outrage across her face. I take a step back, not wanting to get punched again, and meet her blue-green eyes, ones that always seem to remind me of the Caribbean sea; beautiful but deadly. In their depths, I seefury but also compassion. “I’m not, I just happen to be in the store.”
“So you’re shopping for bras and thongs, is what you’re saying, hmmm? For yourself, or for someone other than my sister, who will have nothing to do with you?” If it’s possible, she looks even more menacing, at the mere implication of me shopping for undergarments for someone other than Isabella. “No, wait! Fuck no, of course not, there is no one else. You know that. How could you even think that would be possible? I love Isabella with all my heart.”
Her eyebrows furrow, and one of her arms rises again, and I swear she’s going to beat on me before she wags her finger at me. Her pretty pink daggered nails look sharp, and like they could easily tear out my throat.Shit, I’m going to die here, I’m an idiot for listening to Diego.“Did that snake put you up to this, Kai? You know you don’t have to do what he says, right?” She takes a step forward, but I panic and take one backward, to keep out of her reach. Some fucking stalker I turned out to be, I’ve already been caught, and she’s going to swing at me again, I can feel it. Not to mention now that I’ve screwed the plan up, Diego is going to lose what little brain cells he has left. Either way, I am dead; it’s been nice knowing you, world.
“What snake?” I try to play coy and avoid directly looking at her. I know I am not fooling her, Mia is not stupid, she can see right through me. She discards my deflection and darts forward, getting a fistful of my shirt and yanking me to her, as I release an undignified squeak. Christ, for such a small and slender woman, she’s strong as hell. “I can smell Diego all over this shit, Kai. Do you know what would happen to you if my security detail, or one of my men, caught you sneaking around and following me? Not to mention that you would further incur more of my grandmother’s rage.”
“Pretty sure the gorillas won’t be a problem,” I mumble under my breath, and she gives me a curious look. Her head tilts to the side, and her frightening eyes narrow on me. “What was the plan here, Kai? Were you trying to speak with me privately? You know I can’t help you with Issy. I’ve already tried, and she refuses to listen to what I have to say.”
My shoulders slump at her words. I know that Mia is on my side, and she doesn’t believe that I should be separated from Isabella and Julia, but my beautiful rose is not listening to reason. She’s got it in her head that we can’t be together anymore, and she hasn’t even completely explained why. I get it, we were both assholes, constantly fighting over her like two street dogs fighting over a bone. Does she not understand how much I love her, how much that prick Diego loves her too? We can be better, and we can make this work if she gives us another chance.
“I need her back, Mia. I can’t survive without her. My world is nothing but grays and darkness now. Nothing has any meaning without her. She ripped out my fucking heart, and took it with her when she left me, and I’m barely breathing.”
Mia’s shoulders droop as she releases her hold on me, and averts her eyes from observing how disgustingly pathetic I now am. I should be embarrassed at falling apart and spilling all my emotions at her feet, but honesty, that ship has sailed. “Goodness, Kai. You need to pull yourself together. I get it, you love her, but what if she never relents? Have you thought about what you’re going to do if she never comes back to you? It’s been months, Kai.”
Her words are a blast of fury through my veins, and cold, brutal rage fills me. She will come back to me, I refuse to even consider any other possibility. Diego is right; I have to pull myself together and get this done. This is the first step in getting my Isabella back, and if I don’t put in the work, nothingwill change. Every day that I am away from her, she adds more distance between us. What if one of these days, she meets someone else with whom she believes she can have a future? I’ll kill him, I’ll rip his throat out while my little rose watches. She’smine.
“I’m sorry, Mia, truly I am. Just know that there was no other way.” I pull the gun that Diego gave me from the small of my back, and point it at her chest. She releases a deep sigh and rolls her eyes, as if I’m not a threat to her in the slightest. “What are you going to do with that, Kai? Are you going to shoot me? How will that help you get my sister back?”
“No, he’s not going to shoot you, Mia, he doesn’t have it in him. I, however, will, without any remorse, but first, you’re coming with us.” Diego pops around the corner, his forearm around his cousin Mateo’s throat, and a gun pointed at Mateo’s temple. “Or better yet, I’ll make sure Mateo never sees another sunrise, if you don’t cooperate.”
“Don’t... do... this...primo (cousin),“ Mateo grunts.
“I’m going to rip out your fucking throat, you snake, release Mateo immediately,” Mia shouts and takes a step forward towards Diego, but I place myself in her path.
“Temper, temper, littlereina (queen). I suggest you do what we say without causing a scene. I kinda like myprimo(cousin) here, and I would rather not end his life, even if I would be doing him a favor, so he doesn’t spend eternity with you.“ Mateo tries to push against Diego’s hold, but he tightens his forearm until Mateo’s air is being cut off. I try to catch Diego’s eye to give him a‘What the fuck are you doing? This is not part of the plan’look,but the asshole never takes his eyes off Mia’s hostile and enraged form. If I thought she was scary before, I was mistaken. Right now, she looks like she could spit fire, and rip both our heads off our necks. He’s going to get us killed before we can even try to get Isabella back.
The safety clicking off of Diego’s gun gets all of our attention, and Mateo goes statue still, and stops attempting to dislodge Diego’s confining grip. “You would hurt your own cousin, to force my assistance with whatever half-cocked plan you have in that psychotic mind of yours, to get my sister to take you back? Are you truly that unscrupulous?” Mia questions, her face becoming more and more blotchy as anger fuels her.
Diego bares his teeth at her, the expression giving him an utterly villainous look. “I will pull the trigger, and walk out to the taco truck and have a bite to eat, with no fucking remorse and his blood on my hands, if I don’t get what I want. Don’t fuck with me, Mia. I’m not playing games here. I want myPrincesaback, and you’re going to help me accomplish that, or you’ll be down a King of Casbury, and have one less baby daddy.”
“Jesus fuck, Diego. We said we wouldn’t hurt them! You promised me Mia wouldn’t get hurt.” My hand shakes as I continue to hold my weapon pointed at Mia.
“I lied. Nothing is going to stop me from getting Issy back, and I don’t care what I have to do, or who I have to hurt, to make that happen. Cuff the bitch, and gag her, we’re getting out of here now.”
I do as he says, after placing my gun back safely in the waistband of my pants. Mia doesn’t fight my hold as I pull her arms behind her, and position the handcuffs around her wrists. As I go to wrap the gag around her face, she turns her head, her intense gaze meeting mine. “My grandmother is going to rip your beating heart from your chest, and when she is done with that, I am going to set it on fire. You just fucked up; you decided to play games with a Stratford.”
Why are all these Stratford women so bloodthirsty? Fuck, we are all going to die.
Chapter thirty-five
Issy
“Your memory feels like home to me. So whenever my mind wanders, it always finds its way back to you.”
Ranata Suzuki
“Miss. Stratford, there is a call from your sister on the house phone. She was attempting to reach you on your cell phone, but you weren’t answering,” my grandmother’s housekeeper, Gretchen, tries to get my attention from the beautiful winter sunshine I’m consumed with, and I have to pry my eyes away. Those beautiful bare-branched trees resemble me. They, too, have been stripped of all their life; and are now a mere imitation of what they are when in bloom. Looking at them, I realize that although they stand tall and strong, with their roots deep in the ground, and their branches reaching for the sky, they are worn, empty, and waiting to die eventually, just like I am.
“Thank you, Gretchen, I’ll take the call here.” I move away from the large window, and to the desk in my grandmother’s sitting room. I used to hate this room growing up. It was always too quiet, cold, and felt empty, regardless of the furniture, and who was in it. Now, I find solace here. It’s where I come when Julia is playing or napping. A place where I can hide from the world, the demands that my grandmother is ever so slowly making of me, and the life I was positive I never wanted to have. It is the place I come to when I want to mourn them. The men I thought I could leave behind, even though my heart is slowly shredding itself, one bleeding cut at a time, with every day that I am apart from them. Did I make a mistake letting them go?
“Mia?” I raise the portable phone receiver to my ear, and take a deep breath to prepare myself for her nagging. Now that we are all living under the same roof again, it’s hard to miss her disapproving and worried glances. She’s tried to speak to me about Diego and Kai, and why I walked away from them, but I have shut her down every time she does. I don’t want to have to articulate my thoughts and feelings, it’s bad enough that I am plagued with them. I know what I have done might not make sense to someone looking in. Why would I push away the twomen who love me in the worst moments of my life? One would think that I would want their support, to grab and hold onto them tighter.
The problem is that those two very stubborn men have the habit of overwhelming me, and taking decisions out of my hands, in some misguided need to protect me. They call it loving me, but I call it controlling me. After everything that I have been through, and all that has been taken from me, the only thing I have left is my right to control my own destiny, and yet the two of them could not understand that. I can’t allow myself to ever go down that route again, no matter how much my decision is hurting me, and them.