* * *

Maria Rivas stared down into the gaping hole embracing her mother’s lifeless body. Only six months ago she stood in this very spot as she and her mother buried her father after his agonizing bout with colon cancer. The day had been torture but at least her mother stood with her.

Today was a nightmare. Today, she was alone.

The damp earth slide between her fingers and Maria grimaced as it hit the top of her mother’s casket with a dull thud, sounding as empty as her heart, before raining over the sides.

A single tear slid down her chin and fell on her hand, leaving a wet streak through the dirt in the creases of her calloused palm. Maria tried to swallow the ache in her chest, choking back the scream of despair threatening to escape and pressed both deep down within her. As one of the few successful female mixed martial arts fighters, fighting through pain was nothing new - broken bones, torn muscles - but never like the echoing chasm where her heart once resided, leaving her hollowed and sapped of all strength. Her knees trembled, and she steeled herself to keep them from buckling.

A watery sniff from behind her drew her attention as her tia moved forward, nudging Maria out of the way to pay her final respects to her sister. Her aunt’s not-so-subtle way of reminding Maria there were others here who wanted to mourn. Others grieving who she should be considerate of, others she needed to be polite to, in spite of her own anguish.

Fuck them.

They lost a sister or an aunt. Maybe a few in attendance even called her mother “friend.” Where they when her mother was fighting for her husband’s life? Or when she killed herself working three jobs just to pay the medical bills their insurance company refused to pay?

Too caught up in their own lives to worry about anyone else.

Fuck them and fuck this.

Maria was burying her mother, damn it, and she would stand here as long as she wanted. Everyone else could go to hell.

“She was so funny. I loved to hear her laugh.”

Maria bit her tongue.

Laugh? When was the last time I saw her smile?

Her mother had been too busy taking care of her father through his illness and then after when the insurance company refused to pay for his medical bills. When his life insurance policy didn't come through, she’d worked more hours than humanly possible. No one should endure the pain her mother had.

The surrounding voices murmured sweet memories of her mother from the past few years but Maria couldn’t stomach any more empty platitudes. These people weren't talking about the same woman. Her mother was too broken by life to be cheerful and sweet. There'd been no energy left at the end of the day to be kind to neighbors.

Rage built within as she listened to the priest pray for her mother’s soul. As if he’d even met her. He didn't remember the frail Latina woman who sat in the third pew from the back, every Sunday morning, after her late shift, praying for her husband to get well, begging God to take her instead. He had no clue how hard her mother tried to save her husband before cancer ate him from the inside out, couldn’t fathom what it cost her mother to watch her husband of thirty years take his last breath. This man didn't witness the war her mother tried to wage on the insurance company when they refused to pay out his life insurance policy, claiming her father overdosed on pain medication. Nor had he witnessed how that battle aged her as she tried to keep the only thing left she valued - the tiny shit-hole of a house she made their home. Instead, she’d made the mistake of trusting her sister who “knew a guy.” It only ended up with her getting played by the system, hiding from ICE and forced to give up her house to her sister. The strain had worked her mother into a heart condition and an early grave.

Her tia shot her a scowl and pushed past her. Maria clenched her jaw, every muscle in her body tense as tears of frustration fell down her cheeks.

This wasn’t fair. This wasn’t right.

She might have been the one in the ring, but her mother was the true fighter. She was the strength that kept Maria standing upright when life came at her, throwing punches. Without her, Maria had nothing left and no reason to keep going.

Someone would pay; someone had to. Maria had no idea who or how, but she wouldn't let her parents just disappear like their lives hadn’t mattered.

* * *

“Sir, I’m happy to report we are showing yet another profit spike in the second quarter.”

Oliver Bolton chuckled arrogantly, waving his assistant off. “I expected nothing less.”

“Again?” Daniel leaned forward on the leather couch gracing his father’s immense office and steepled his fingers against his lips, balancing his elbows on his knees. “That’s what? Six quarters in a row? How is that possible?”

His father glared at him, waiting for his assistant to leave before rising from behind the massive mahogany desk to stand at the wall of plated glass, overlooking the city below, like a king looking down on his subjects.

“How dare you question me in front of anyone.”

He might be almost seventy but Oliver Bolton was as fit as a man half his age, and four times as powerful. The man was terrifying when Daniel was a kid. Now at thirty-three, he couldn’t quite see his father as anything less than imposing.

“I didn’t question you, I'm just surprised--”

“My authority is final. Do you understand? Bolton Financial is not yours and, if you question me again, it never will be.”

Threats, like every dictator who’d ruled before him.

Daniel learned early on not to challenge his father. Hell, the first memory branded into his brain was of his father choking his mother and, to this day, he still didn’t have a clue what triggered his father’s wrath. The man was cold, hard and callous, doing everything in his power to make sure Daniel and his two older siblings were raised to follow in his oppressive footsteps.

Instead, he drove Daniel’s sister, Haley, into the arms of a hotel baron in France where, luckily she continued to avoid contact with their father. Jaime, on the other hand, refused to accept their mother’s suicide, blaming their father for her death, which lead to an investigation and ended with Jaime crucified on the stand for his addictions and their father exonerated of any charges in their mother’s death. Jaime blamed himself for failing her and ended his life, drunk on a mountainside, taking a turn too fast and rolling his car into a ravine. Which left Daniel trying to survive his father’s venomous outbursts alone.

But Daniel learned the man’s expectations. There were only two options in life - succeed or die trying - and he would probably going to fall in to the latter category. He simply didn’t have his father’s cut-throat business acumen, nor did he want to. He was a disappointment, he’d been told so often enough by his father that he believed him. There was nothing he could do to change the man’s view of him this late in life.

“I am shocked by how lucky we’ve been. Reports show our new client numbers have fallen. How can we possibly continue to see this sort of increase in revenue with only returning clients?”

Daniel realized he was pushing his father’s buttons by asking about the profits, but he was unwilling to back down. Something didn't add up, and he didn't want to get blindsided by the ramifications of his father's unethical methods. He wanted to get to the truth so his T’s were crossed and his I’s were dotted before authorities came looking for him.

“It’s not luck.” His father clasped his hands behind his back, staring at the street far below, not bothering to deign to look at his son. “You see those people?” Daniel moved to stand beside his father. “Those people are sheep. They believe what we tell them. Whatever we tell them. They will always believe the shepherd because they trust him. I am the shepherd. And when my sheep cease being profitable, they become expendable.” His father glanced his way, arching a regal grayed brow. “Do you understand what I’m saying?”

Daniel nodded, disgust welling in his gut as he came to grips with his father’s depravity. The man held no sense of virtue, no decency. They were talking about people, not lambs led to the slaughter.

“You will care for those who continue to listen, or continue to pay their dues. With the rest, you ‘cull the herd,’ so to speak.”

“You’re learning.” His father slapped his shoulder roughly as his lips split apart, his smile looking more like a sneer.

Self-loathing filled him with every acerbic bit of his father’s approval. He would have to sell his soul to gain this man’s admiration.

His father turned back to his desk, leaning his hands on the top of it. “Becoming less like your mother and more like me each day.”

His father’s words pierced his heart. Daniel adored his mother until the day she died, on his twelfth birthday. The only bright spot of his miserable young life, it infuriated him to hear her constantly degraded. Daniel balled his fists, trying to contain the rage bubbling up within him.

“Don’t.”

His father glanced up with a chuckle, leering at him. “Feeling your oats, boy?”

Daniel turned away from the man, intent on getting out of the office as quickly as possible. He’d listened this mocking tone from his father enough times to know the man was baiting him, looking for a fight, for whatever reason, and Daniel wasn’t going to play his game.

The fist cuffing the back of his head didn’t come as a complete surprise, but his reaction to it did. Daniel spun, grasping the front of his father’s suit. His fingers curled into the material, lifting his father off the ground and shoved him backward and against the wall of windows, easily clearing the four steps between them and the wall. A faint crack pierced their ragged breathing and Daniel wondered if some of the glass might give way, but he wouldn't let go. They might be the same height but Daniel had youth and adrenaline in his favor.

“Never mention her again.” He shook his father slightly. “Do you understand?”

His father’s smile was sinister as his hands wrapped around Daniel’s wrists, digging into the flesh. “You’d better finish what you’re starting because once you let me go, you know what will happen.”

Daniel clenched his teeth together and shoved his father. The man’s arm caught the edge of a chair as it skittered sideways as he crashed to the ground.

“Nothing will happen. I’m done with you.”

Daniel spun on his heel, wanting to getting as far away from this man as possible. He was finished with his tyranny. Whatever his father might be doing with this company, whatever questionable activities his father had invested in, walking away would protect him more than anything he might accomplish by staying.

Daniel froze with his hand on the door. If he turned back he was giving in to this man’s authority again.

“Stop!”

His father tried to yell again, but it only came out on a wheeze of sound. His father gasped for air and empathy won out over self-preservation as Daniel turned back in time to see his father collapse on the floor beside his desk, his eyes bulging from their sockets as he sucked in shallow breaths. Daniel didn’t think; he ran back to his father as the old man clutched at the tie dangling from his neck, his hands clawing at the strip of designer silk. Daniel jerked the perfect Windsor knot loose and jerked open his shirt, sending buttons skittering over the hardwood floor.

“Someone, help!” He reached a hand to the desk, trying to press the intercom button, calling for his father’s assistant. “Call nine-one-one,” he yelled, praying someone still sat at the desk. “Dad?”

His father’s hand reached for the front of Daniel’s shirt, weakly pulling him forward. “You…” Fingers dug into his arm like talons. “…did…this.”

“No.” Daniel scrambled backward as his father’s assistant came running into the room with a cell phone in his hand.

Daniel barely noticed the instructions of the operator on the phone. The assistant set the phone on the floor and prepared to give his father CPR.

“He’s not breathing.” His father’s assistant spoke but Daniel wasn’t sure whether the comment was directed at him or the operator on the phone.

“One, two, three, four, five,” the assistant counted.

The man continued to compress his father’s chest, using his hands to force a heartbeat where Daniel suspected there never had been one.

Daniel backed away as the assistant worked on his father, unable to dredge up the slightest bit of sympathy for the man who’d driven his mother to her death. Oliver Bolton was a cruel man, heartless and deadly, and it looked like karma would come back to bite him in the ass. The irony of his father, dying on the floor of his penthouse office, high in the sky overlooking his kingdom wasn't lost on Daniel.

The king is dead.