PSST.. here’s the first chapter of VIOLENT REIGN. Be warned, it contains MASSIVE spoilers for the series! If you haven’t read book 1 and 2, make sure you do before feasting your eyes on this!
AVERY
Someone’s tied my wrists.
It’s the first thought that comes, and the most salient one. It hurts. Whatever reality I’ve awoken in, it isn’t comfortable. There’s a persistent humming, a buzz inside my skull, but at the same time it feels like my head has been stuffed tight with thick cotton wool. The sound in my ears is like the roar of an angry ocean - loud as each merciless wave pounds the shore, then quiet for a brief moment as the water recedes before smashing into my senses again. Over and over. I’m stuck, hovering in the space between sleep and wake, between life and death. And the worst part is the way I feel like I’m swaying violently, side to side, my flesh almost vibrating around bones and muscle, my sense of balance entirely gone. I saw a movie once when I was little, about Peter Pan and Captain Hook. Peter is caught by Captain Hook in the climactic scene, trapped in a net over the ocean, his life swaying violently back and forth over the relentless tide. That’s how I feel right now. I have been captured, in a net above the ocean, and I am powerless to control what comes next.
Why can’t I wake up? Time passes. My eyelids grow less heavy, until finally I can creak them open with considerable effort. I blink and I blink, my vision still blurred, as I try to understand where I am.
I’m not vibrating. I’m not moving. My wrists are tied. No, they’re taped. Duct taped. Each word swims into my mind in its own bubble. The bubbles pop. I’m drugged, too. I remember that part, at least. But I’m not in the basement, I’m not in that room, this is—
My eyes fly open, and my vision is clearer this time.
This is Nathan’s apartment.
This is Nathan’s bed.
Horror seizes my stomach, turns it inside out. Nathan. I remember the woozy slide of the forkful of macaroni, the scar on his hand, and—
It’s him. He’s the one who did… who did everything.
My own cousin. My best friend. Nathan, who has sat in my walk-in closet at the Capulet mansion a thousand times, talking me through another panic-inducing round of dress-up. Nathan, who wiped away my tears at every funeral this godforsaken family has endured. Nathan, my constant companion since we were kids.
He held my hand. Betrayal burns the back of my throat. He held my hand in the hospital, when that doctor had to—
A wail claws itself up through my throat, turning into a scream, but the sound dies as surely as my escape attempt does. Duct tape on my wrists. Duct tape on my mouth. I’m helpless.
My body catches up with my mind. This is a horror show, a nightmare—I can’t breathe. My lungs pinch and pinch again, folding up until I can’t get any air. I can’t do the breathing exercises I learned because they involve breathing through your mouth and I can’t breathe through my mouth. I’m going to die like this. Avery Capulet, dead of a panic attack. The stupidest fucking thing I could die from, in the end, but my windpipe is closing and dark nothingness teases at the edge of my vision.
Nathan.
No, no, not Nathan.
Please let it not be Nathan.
But it is.
I yank my hands against the duct tape one more time, but it only makes my wrists hurt more. He’s taped me up nice and tight. The smell of his sheets and the earthy cologne he wears makes my stomach churn. If I throw up now, I’ll be really and truly fucked.
Shocked tears rally themselves at the corners of my eyes.
How the fuck did it come to this? How did I get here?
There are no good answers.
And I might not have time to figure it out, because I’m in Nathan’s apartment. With Nathan. Who I’m rapidly coming to understand is a complete and total psychopath.
A gentle knock at the front door—it’s not far away—shuts me down like a marionette whose strings have been cut. Limp in the bed, that’s it—I pretend to be sleeping. Like prey in the jungle, playing dead is the only defense I possess. My heart thuds loudly in my chest, a painful reminder of the fragility of life. If he comes in here and puts his fingers on my neck, then he’ll know I’m not really asleep.
The door to the bedroom swings open. One breath in, one breath out. Deep. Imagine the drugs are still working, Avery. Imagine you don’t know how bad it’s going to be when you wake up. Nathan makes a small noise, something close to approval, and then the door closes again. I don’t dare open my eyes. He could be standing at the edge of the bed, silent, waiting for that to happen, fuck—
“Jesus, Eliza, you look like you’ve been gang-raped.” Nate, ever the gentleman, greeting his distraught adoptive mother with insults. “You’re a hot mess.”
“Nathan, Nathan, oh, god, Nate.” My aunt Eliza’s voice, thick with tears, high and hysterical, pierces the heavy quiet of the apartment. “He’s been stabbed. Enzo—” A sob wrenches from her. “Enzo’s been stabbed. On the plane. The paramedics—” Her voice gets closer. One breath. Another. Knowing anything is better than knowing nothing, so I’ll lay here and pretend, pretend... “He’s going to die,” she shrieks, and then there’s a soft thud like she’s sunk down to the carpet.
“He’s going to die Nathan, he’s—”
Relief floods my veins. If there’s any chance I have of getting out, it’s Eliza. If she finds me in here, then she’ll do something. I strain to get out of my restraints. The duct tape bites angrily at the skin of my wrists. I kick my feet tentatively against the bed. I can’t make much noise, but I can make some.
But then...if she finds me, Nathan might kill her too. I can’t do this now. I have to wait, as much as it kills me.
“Of course he is.” Nathan’s voice is casual, the same tone he’d use ordering coffee or picking up drycleaning. “I’m the one who stabbed him.”
The sobbing cuts off, and for a horrifying instant my mind fills in the blank—maybe he’s stabbed her, too. But there’s no gurgle, no struggle. Just a rustle—Eliza standing up, perhaps—as she clears her throat.
“You stabbed him?” All trace of her crying is gone, replaced by a casual incredulity. “You. You stabbed Lorenzo. Are you out of your fucking mind?”
What in the ever-living fuck is going on right now? She’s not running or screaming, the way I want to be. She sounds… pissed. But more than that, she sounds inconvenienced. I must be imagining it, though. She must be trying to get away, right? She has to be trying to get away. Words fly uselessly against my closed lips and the duct tape holding them shut. Get the hell out of here, Eliza. Get away from this psycho. Call the police. Call someone so I can get out of here, so they can find me one more time. I only need one more miracle and then I’ll never ask for anything, ever again. I swear on my life. I swear it.
She doesn’t get away. She doesn’t even try.
A rumble of a laugh from Nathan. I didn’t think it was possible for the hairs on the back of my neck to stand up more than they already were, but it happens. “Oh, but I did.”
“Baby. Why?”
Baby? That’s something you call a toddler, not a grown man. Not a killer. My stomach rolls again. “You know better than that.” Eliza’s tone is mildly scolding, as if she’s caught Nathan sneaking out after curfew. “How many times have I tried to teach you, that’s not the way to solve problems.”
My stupid, premature relief crumples and bursts into flame. It’s ashes in seconds. This is not the way a mother talks to her son. This is something else. Something sick.
“It solved plenty of mine. I thought you’d be pleased.” The casual way Nathan confesses to his crime chills me to the core.
“I’m always on your side. You know that.” Her voice gets a bit muffled, like they’re hugging. Or worse. “But what about the fallout? Baby, our family is going to have a PR nightmare on its hands with Enzo downed like this and Augie in the hospital. And Avery—where is Avery?”
“She’s having a little nap. I’ve got everything sorted, don’t worry.”
“And that annoying boyfriend of hers? The Montague boy?”
Nathan chuckles. “Not a problem anymore.”
Rome. No.
Eliza must look concerned, because Nathan follows it up pretty quickly. “I didn’t kill Rome Montague, mother. Jesus fucking Christ. Always the pessimist, you are. He’s a chess piece I still need in play.”
Tears of relief roll down my cheeks.
“Nathan,” I hear Eliza speak. “You didn’t stab your father because of… me, did you? Because of us?”
Nathan laughs, and Eliza makes an exasperated click with her tongue. “Don’t flatter yourself, Eliza. You and I both know Dad couldn’t have cared less about who you let fuck you while he was busy running the goddamn criminal underground of California.”
Oh, God. Oh, shit! This is some Game of Thrones, Cersei Lannister level shit I’m hearing.
“You watch your mouth, Nathaniel,” Eliza snaps.
A low groan interrupts the conversation - At first I think it’s Nathan groaning, but the sound stops almost as quickly as it starts. An anguished sob, so quiet it’s barely perceptible.
I struggle to listen. It’s not coming from me. It’s not Eliza, or Nathan making the sound. My heart beats faster. Who else is here?
“Do you have a girl here?” Suddenly, Eliza sounds on edge. Nathan murmurs something I can’t make out. “Nathan—”
“Don’t worry about it, Mommy Dearest. Didn’t I promise you that everything would be all right? Don’t you believe me? Or do you need me to prove it again? I mean, that’s why you came over, right? For me to scoop you up off the ground and help you forget all about Papa Bear?”
A muted slap—skin on skin. She’s batting him away. At least I hope she is. “Who is in the bathroom?” The second bathroom in this apartment butts up against Nathan’s bedroom. What - or who - am I sharing a wall with?
Not enough air, not enough air. Tighter, Rome. The ghosts of his arms around my body, holding me tight, get me through the next heartbeat, and the next. “Is it Avery?”
“Don’t go in there.” A warning. His voice is as cold as ice.
But Eliza has been Nathan’s mother for longer than he’s been her fucked-up lover. Eliza Capulet is a woman who does what she wants. She barges into the bathroom, the door slamming open against the tiled wall. Her gasp is what I expected to hear when Nathan announced that he killed his own father—a high, involuntary thing. I’ve made that sound myself. I made it when I found Rome hunched over my sister, when I saw the knife in the XO Killer’s hand. In my uncle’s hand.
“Oh my god.” Eliza’s voice has been stripped of all the dark playfulness. She sounds genuinely shocked. “Nathan. What did you do?”
I can’t see into the bathroom, but I can’t help looking wildly around Nathan’s bedroom. Information. I’m starving for information, even though I know there will only be familiar things here. Things like a hoodie of Nathan’s tossed over the back of a chair. His leather wallet, on the dresser next to Jennifer’s favorite handbag. Yes, I’m buying it for you, I hear myself say in some distant memory from a hundred lifetimes ago. We were shopping at Neiman’s. Her eyes lit up when she saw that slouchy bag in blush rose. It’s a celebration. What were we celebrating? It doesn’t matter. We made it all up.
My eyes follow the line of the dresser down, down, to the very edge of my vision. If I tilt my head like this I can see...
Her phone.
Next to a dark blotch on the carpet. I crane my neck to see.
A cold horror sweeps over me. Jennifer’s lipstick, on the carpet. A broken bracelet.
And on the very bottom of the doorframe, leading out?
A bloody swipe of a handprint, like she tried so hard to hold on.
