“No.” He shot her a stern look. “There’s a reason I’ve kept killing her, and it’s lying on the floor right now. She can burn in hell.”
“I just want Mack back. That’s all,” I argued.
“You can find a deep dark hole to wither and die in. I will get my brother back.”
“I am not going to sit on my ass, waiting and hoping,” I said. “Not when he’s just as important to me as he is to you.”
King had a sinister look in his eyes.
“King, no,” Mia protested. “I know what you’re thinking. But your bartering days are over.”
Okay. What was King thinking? I continued listening.
“Not exactly,” King admitted.
“What?” Mia snapped. “But you told me you were done with running the 10 Club.”
Later, I would learn what the 10 Club was and why Mia seemed so adamant about King not being a part of it. For the moment, however, it was just one more piece of a world I was only beginning to understand.
“Mack was helping me dismantle it,” King said. “Obviously, that’s now put on hold. And I cannot leave it to run itself or someone else will take power. I must remain in charge until I can figure out a new plan.”
“Fuckingshit, King. No,” she barked. “Those people are dangerous.”
“So am I,” he replied.
“We have a baby. We have a life now,” she pleaded.
“Which is why you will return to the safety of our home in Crete while I do what I must to locate the chalice and take care of this hiccup with the 10 Club leadership.” He turned and looked at me. “As for you, I meant what I said. And I will give you five seconds to leave this place before I kill you for the sixth time. Or is it the seventh? I cannot remember.”
Mia’s face turned an angry shade of red. “I won’t let you—”
“No,” I interrupted. “It’s fine. I’ll go if it means I get to see Mack again.”
King growled. “If you so much as breathe my brother’s name again, I will remove your head and place it in a jar. But you won’t die, little Seer. You’ll live—for thousands of years if I wish it—screaming for help. But no one will hear you. Not a soul.” Mia opened her mouth to speak as he turned toward her. “And before you say a word, woman, I will remind you what you did to the man who gutted your brother like a fish.”
Mia snapped her mouth shut and looked up at him, visibly fuming. Yes, I now wanted to know what happened to this man King had just spoken of, but I had bigger issues, and clearly it was pretty heinous if it could make this Mia woman stop talking. Still, I had to plead my case. I had to try.
“I don’t care if I ever see Mack again,” I lied. “I just want to get him back. I want to know that he’s all right. Please, just let me help.”
I guessed that King didn’t like that idea, because I felt something slam my body into the wall before I blacked out.
~~~
When I woke, still in that cabin, I felt like I had been dismembered by a taffy puller. Every fiber of my being ached and felt paper thin, unable to carry its own weight. I glanced over to the spot where Mack’s body had been.
Gone. So was the woman.
I groaned and rolled from my side onto my back, wishing I was dead, too. I missed Mack. I missed him so much that all I could think of was digging that hole King had mentioned.
Mack. Mack. Less than a week ago I had been a woman focused on her career. I’d lived a life that was colorless and absent of love. Now, I loved so much that I could hardly breathe. Yes, I barely knew this man. But my heart and soul knew him like the sound of my own voice. It was such a difficult thing to have such a profound connection with a person and not have the memories of how you got there—dates, a first kiss, making love for the first time.
And as I lay there, wheezing and trying to find the strength to get up and fight, one question circulated in my mind.
Why can’t I remember?
It seemed that my memories wanted to push through but couldn’t. Whoever had done this to me didn’t want me to learn about my past with Mack or find him. And I didn’t get the impression that King (or Mia) had anything to do with it.
So why? What was it they wanted to hide from me?
I started to sob, dripping with misery, drenched in agony. Fight, óolal. Fight. That bastard King can’t really hurt you, and he knows it. It was that voice inside me speaking. Me. Not me. Familiar and unfamiliar.
“How can I fight when I can’t even move?” I whispered.
Without reason or thought on the matter, I painfully edged my hands over my heart. I closed my eyes and stopped fighting the pain. Something inside told me to let it in.
I inhaled the hurt and consumed its heavy weight, like eating cement. Within seconds, I felt myself fading away to another place…