Page 82 of Evil King

“Go Ciara,” Cherri huffed.

“No kidding,” I said with a smile.

Finally, I got to the picture I’d been looking for, and my stomach twisted into a knot. “Fuck.” I dropped the picture on the table, and Cherri and I stared in awe at the naked photo of Jessica Abrams.

“Gross!” Cherri squeaked. “Connor slept with Miss Abrams too.”

“And then blackmailed her into sleeping with Nathan. I wonder if she told him she’d been with his dad and threatened to out them. Shit, it was probably Connor’s idea.”

“Why would he do that?” Cherri asked.

I tossed the picture back in the box and covered it up, disgusted. “I have no idea, but I’m actually starting to feel bad for Nathan.” Cherri’s phone vibrated on the table next to her, and she lifted it. Her eyes widened. “What?” I asked.

“It’s Ali,” she replied. “Nikita found Nathan.”

36

Cherri

The Royal Court was a caravan of cars following Alistair as he led the way to the address Nikita had sent to him. It was a few hours outside of town, and Nikita had at least laid eyes on Nathan and agreed to wait for us to get there as her backup. Given the seediness with Connor and Miss Abrams and Alicia’s death, on top of having Deon with us, we knew we couldn’t call the police. Deon was confident that he could handle Connor if he needed to, so we decided we were going to take care of the matter ourselves. Avery was with Alistair in his car, I had Deon and Colette in mine, and Brayden and Jaxon were in Kyle’s truck, pulling up the rear. My heart pounded as Alistair finally led us off of the highway and down a shady backroad, well into the woods of Maine, and to an isolated cottage.

We parked the cars several feet away so that Connor wouldn’t hear us approaching, and then we quietly stepped up to where Nikita was standing near the cottage window, staring in. She looked terrified and terrifying. It would honestly be a toss-up between Deon and Nikita to see which one of them would have their hands around Connor’s throat first.

“Nikita,” I said as I approached.

“He’s in there,” she said. “Connor’s been screaming at him nonstop. He has a gun.”

“Screaming about what?” I asked.

Carefully and very quietly, Nikita reached up and slid the cottage window up, just a crack. It was quiet enough that it didn’t seem to catch Connor’s nor Nathan’s attention, but his voice came blasting out into the quiet forest afternoon.

“Explain yourself!” he barked at Nathan. “I gave you your revenge. You said you wanted Cherri. I brought you Cherri. You said you wanted an army. I helped you draft one. You said you wanted Deon out of the picture. I had him framed. You tell me exactly why you don’t appear to have the dick to carry out any of the plans I set up for you. These are softballs, Nathan! You were pointing a gun at his face. Why didn’t you shoot? Why isn’t he dead right now?”

“I…” Nathan said. “I don’t…”

“What?” Connor said. “Oh, suddenly you don’t want him dead? What? Let me guess. He’s your brother, and you want to try to make it work? You’vealwaysbeen spineless. All I wanted was an heir that I could hand everything to. I’m supposed to give my company toyouwhen you don’t even have the stones to step on a few people to get where you need to go? You couldn’t even make it work with that littleslut, Cherri. What’s wrong? Can’t get it up?”

Next to me, Deon’s hands were balled into fists. I reached out and touched his arm, but it didn’t seem to have that much of an effect. Insulting Nathanandme in one fell swoop appeared to be something of a sore spot for him.

“We’re not in love,” Nathan said. “It just didn’t work.”

That crushed me to hear. Not that he wasn’t in love with me, but that he was aware of it too. He put so much effort into trying to keep me around just to appease his dad.

“Oh! You’re in love with the dumb one whose been following you around all this time?” he asked with a scoff. “She’s not even pretty! What’s wrong with you?”

Nikita ducked her head next to me, and I reached out and put my hand on her back. Connor was wrong, anyway. Nikita was quite beautiful. She just didn’t go for a bold and out-there look like Avery, Colette, and I did.

“She’s pretty,” Nathan grumbled.

Connor shook his head and then cocked his gun. “It’s time to end your reign of disappointment.”

Unexpectedly, Deon jumped up on the window frame and went crashing through it. He tackled Connor to the ground and started to tussle with him, trying to get the gun out of his hands.

“Go!” I screamed, and Nikita led the way to the door and through it, grabbing Nathan and dragging him out of harm’s way.

“Nikki,” Nathan said.

Nikita seemed to die at the nickname. “It’s been a long time since you’ve called me that.”