Tyrant (King #2)(62)

My father didn’t budge. Instead he pulled me in closer to his side, my head resting on the shoulder of his suit jacket. “There is no need to do this,” my father started, his accent filtering out of his voice. His cool and calm political persona taking over. “You have a lot going on for you and a bright future ahead of you. You don’t want to throw it all away just because my daughter broke your heart.”

“No, not just because she broke my heart, because she’s been toying with it since we were f*cking kids!” Tanner took a few more steps into the room. He was in the kitchen area and we were facing him with our backs to the sliding glass door. “But she hasn’t left me. Not yet. I got to her just in time.” Tanner cocked the gun. “Now put her the f*ck down, Senator. I won’t be repeating myself again.” Reluctantly, my father loosened his grip around me and gently set me back onto the floor. “Good, now step aside.” My father looked down at me and with a pained expression on his usually unreadable face, he took two steps to the side and raised his hands in the air.

“I can help you, Tanner,” the senator offered. “Just like when you were sick and I got you help. I can do that for you again,” he said calmly. “I can help you.”

Every movement of Tanner’s was jittery, sweat poured off his forehead. His white polo shirt was wet and yellowed at the armpits. “You wanna help me? You can get the f*ck out of my way,” Tanner screamed. “All I need is her!” He pointed his gun toward me and then back to my father.

“How do you want me to do that?” the senator asked.

A good negotiator asks more questions than he gives answers to…I remembered my father always saying.

Tanner laughed and licked his bottom lip. Sucking it into his mouth he bit down on it and scrunched up his nose.

“You can f*cking die.”





Chapter Thirty




King


The first thing I heard was a whimper. A small mewing coming from somewhere in the houseboat.

Pup.

I scanned the room, but I didn’t see her, my eyes instead landing on the senator, who was standing between the kitchen and the main room with his back toward me.

I cracked my knuckles. “Where the f*ck is she?”

My answer was the resounding explosion of a gun-shot that tore through the senator’s chest. His back exploded. Pieces of his suit along with flesh and blood splattered warm and wet against my clothes and skin. The senator fell backward onto the floor, his eyes rolled upward into his head as he gurgled and strained to breathe. Blood pooled in his mouth and spilled down the side his cheek.

What the f*ck?

I looked up from the dying senator at my feet, to where the shot had come from. Standing in the kitchen—gun now aimed at me—was Tanner. The senator’s gold watch on his wrist. “You?”

“You looking at this?” Tanner asked, holding up his wrist and gesturing to the watch. “Nice, right? The senator gave it to me last night after the party. A wedding gift for his new son-in-law.” Redness crept from his neck to his face. His eyes dated back to me and he pushed out the gun as he spoke. “But I guess it wasn’t as good as the gift you gave, Ray,” he spat.

“Where the f*ck is she?” I roared. I took a step toward him and he cocked the gun, stopping me in my tracks. “Tell me where she is now and I promise that when I kill you, I’ll make it quick.”

“Sit f*cking down and cuff yourself to the chair, and maybe I’ll tell you where she is.” He gestured to the single wooden chair in the center of the room.

“Fuck you.”

“Let me rephrase. Sit in that f*cking chair and cuff yourself to it or I’ll shoot her just like I did her daddy. Only I think I’ll aim for her f*cking head, seeing as that’s where all the trouble seems to be coming from,” Tanner said, an evil glint in his eye.

I reluctantly did as he asked and sat on the chair. He tossed me a pair of cuffs. “To the chair. Behind your back.” I cuffed one hand and then the other, looping the chain through the back of the chair. Tanner circled around me and tightened the cuffs. “You know, I’m kind of glad the * I hired to kill you couldn’t do the f*cking job I paid him to do, because how does the saying go? You want something done right—you have to kill it yourself.”

“What’s your f*cking play here?” I asked.

“This isn’t a f*cking game, *. This is my life. A life that you are trying to take from me. You didn’t think I was just going to step aside and let that happen now did you? She’s supposed to be my wife.”

“No she f*cking isn’t,” I said, clicking the cuffs in place. It took all the self control I didn’t know I had not to destroy the kid with my bare hands.

“Yes, she f*cking is! We said vows goddamn it!” Tanner stomped his foot on the floor and his face turned bright red. “I have her father’s f*cking blessing!”

He looked around my chair to the senator who lay lifeless on the floor. “Or…should I say, had.” Tanner smiled his toothpaste ad manic smile. His eyes were blood shot and rimmed in red.

I pulled on the cuffs, itching to damage him in any way I could but they didn’t budge.

“Listen, you f*cking amateur, there ain’t no way you’re getting out of this without feeling blowback from someone. Even if you kill me and her you don’t get out of this clean.”