Chapter 82 #2
“Vicky, this is bigger than me. Our father loves you with all his heart, and he would never force you to do something like this. He would never threaten or blackmail you. Christov plotted to kill me and my mother when I was just a child. That is why she ran. Is that really who you want to side with?”
Her hand shook harder.
“Vicky, I knew then what you know now. She needs to die,” Christov whispered in her ear. “All your problems will be solved. All you have to do is pull the trigger.”
“Please, Vicky,” I said softly. “I’m your sister, and I love you. No matter how we got here, you are my family,” I said, and the tears spilled from her eyes.
“I can’t do this,” she said.
“Yes, you can,” Christov urged, his voice edged with violence.
“No, I can’t,” Vicky said, firmer. And for the first time since I opened my eyes, hope sparked in my chest.
“Useless.”
Christov growled and hit Vicky harder this time, knocking her to the floor and sending the gun sliding away. He bent over and grabbed Vicky by her hair. Blood ran from her nose, and she screamed as he hauled her up to her knees.
“Leave my sister alone,” I yelled and fought the restraints.
He hit her again.
“You’re a coward,” I snarled. “No wonder my mother shot you when she had the chance,” I said, wanting to draw his attention.
His head slowly turned in my direction. “Forget it. I’m going to enjoying wrapping my hands around your throat and watching the life drain from your eyes.”
I held his glare, seeing exactly what my mother had. Understanding her fear more now than ever.
Christov let go of Vicky and took a step in my direction but froze as a shot went off a bullet hitting the wall.
“You shot me,” he growled.
I looked over to see Patricia standing near the duffel, shaking with a gun in her hand.
“Leave her alone. No one touches my daughter.”
He looked at his arm.
“You bitch.”
Christov peeled off his jacket and looked at the hole in his shirt, but the bullet had only grazed him.
“You fucking shot me.”
He balled the coat and threw it at Patricia as he ran at her.
She screamed and pulled the trigger. I yelped as plaster exploded from the wall.
The fight was on, but I didn’t think it would last long.
“Vicky, free me, I can help your mom. I know how to use the gun.”
I yanked on the tape trying to loosen it.
Vicky crawled toward me, the side of her face bruised.
“I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t kill you,” she mumbled, and then bit the edge of the tape on my left arm and tore it in two. “Did you really mean what you said about being my sister?”
She pulled the tape off my left leg as I worked on my right arm.
“Yes, I meant it and have from the first moment we found out. You’re my family, and always will be,” I said, rubbing my wrists.
The gun went off again. Vicky and I ducked as it hit the ceiling this time. Bits of dust and wood sprinkled down on top of us.
“Get off of me,” Patricia yelled, and I watched as she fought hard and smacked him across the face.
Bending over, I pulled the tape from my right ankle as quickly as I could and grabbed Vicky by the shoulders.
“Thank you.”
It was only a heartbeat, but that second between us meant everything. Another shot rang out, and I pushed Vicky to the floor.
“Stay down.”
I crawled toward the gun that Vicky had dropped, but realized too late that the last shot had hit Patricia. Vicky screamed.
“Mama!”
Vicky’s pain-filled wail echoed in my ears.
“Mama, no.”
I froze.
Patricia collapsed to the floor, blood blooming across her blouse as Christov loomed over her. He turned toward me then, smiling like a crazed clown.
He ran at me, and I scrambled to reach the gun, but my feet slipped and my coordination was off, making me slow. The thumping of his feet were loud, and shaking the floor. Terror filled me but I had to push it aside as I focused on the black metal.
I lunged for it, desperation burning through my limbs, but my fingers only brushed cold metal before he yanked me back by the ankle.
The world spun as I hit the floor hard. My chin smashed against the wood and my breath was forced out of my chest. I rolled onto my back Christov’s gun was aimed at my heart.
Time slowed. Not in the way people romanticize, but in a cruel, clarifying way.
Images flashed behind my eyes—my father’s smile, my mother’s fire, the kings who had chosen me and those that died to protect me.
The life I had clawed back piece by piece became a movie that played on fast forward in my mind.
This couldn’t be the end. It couldn’t be after everything I survived, everything I’d endured, everything I’d become. I had not fought this hard, burned this bright, just to be erased by the man who started the terror so long ago.
But if this was the end, then I would not die begging to be spared. I would not shrink. I lifted my chin, met his eyes, and let him see exactly what he had failed to destroy. I wasn’t a little girl anymore. I wasn’t his to break. And I would die unafraid, staring down the man I once called Daddy.
“God, this is going to feel good,” Christov said and with a smirk, he pulled the trigger.
Click.
Nothing happened. His smile fell.
Click.
Nothing.
I didn’t wait for the third one.
With a bloodcurdling roar, I kicked him with all my strength, just as Liam had taught me. Christov yelled as his knee popped out of the socket with a sickening sound.
I moved backward as he went down.
“You bitch, you fucking little bitch,” he snarled, holding his leg. Agony written across his face.
I reached behind me, and my fingers wrapped around the handle of the gun. I slowly stood and stared down at him.
This moment felt—wrong. But it also seemed inevitable. My life had been bending toward it since my conception. The day I was born, I’d unknowingly become the weapon that would finish the monster who tried to take everything from my parents and then me.
I raised the gun. Christov looked up, hatred burning in his eyes.
“Say hi to Lawrence for me.”
My voice was cold as I pulled the trigger.
His body jerked.
Christov stared at his chest. My ears rang. He looked at me and then the blood on his fingers as disbelief and reality converged.
“What have you—”
I fired three more shots to shut him up forever.
Christov collapsed backward and his body hit the floor with a final, hollow thud. He continued to stare at me, and I would’ve sworn that I felt a cold draft touch me as the light left his eyes.
Only Vicky’s cries cut through the silence, and my head jerked in her direction.
I ran over, put the gun down, and wrapped her in my arms as she cradled her mother’s lifeless body. She was sobbing, and I could feel it tearing her apart from the inside.
“I’m sorry,” she cried. “I’m so sorry.”
I held her tighter, my own chest cracking open as grief and shock collided.
Gunfire erupted outside, and it sounded like a war zone. The window shattered, and I ducked as glass flew everywhere, but Vicky didn’t move. She was frozen to the spot, lost in her pain. I couldn’t leave her. The fighting didn’t last long before footsteps thundered up the stairs.
“Ren,” Nash yelled.
“In here!”
The door exploded inward. Nash was first through, gun out, eyes hard as he took in the scene. The other guys rushed in behind him, and then—my mother.
A complex combination of relief and sadness twisted in my gut as Vicky’s sorrow felt like an echo of what I’d once experienced. Like we’d swapped places. Nash slowly walked closer, his eyes never leaving mine as he kneeled and placed a hand on my shoulder and then one on Vicky’s back.
She cried harder, rocking her mother.
“I’ve got you,” I whispered in Vicky’s ear. “I’ve got you and I’m not going anywhere.”
For the longest time, I thought surviving was the same thing as living. I thought if I stayed standing—if I didn’t break—then the pain would eventually make sense. That the fear, the blood, the impossible choices would stop following me like a shadow.
But with the room full of those I would die to protect. I understood the truth. This was never about endurance.
It was about love.
Love was the reason my mother ran with me and then left again to protect me when she thought she had no choice.
Love was the reason my father stayed away, why Neil sacrificed himself, why Ella stood in the line of fire, and why Nash kept his secrets.
Love was the reason five Kings stood in front of bullets and monsters and didn’t ask me to choose between them.
Every secret, betrayal, and night I cried believing that I was alone led me here—not to become harder, but braver. Not to stop caring, but to learn that mercy was not weakness, and hope was not a flaw.
I had been hunted. Used. Nearly destroyed. And still, I stood. Still, I chose a future where love did not have to bleed to be real. This was the cost of that choice.
One thing had become clear. The darkness may have shaped me, but it did not own me. The war tried to take everything, and it failed.
Because I was never meant to survive this story.
I was meant to rise from it.
And I finally understood—queens weren’t created in safety.
They were crowned in fire.
And I was always the phoenix in my mother’s painting.