4 years ago

I ran up the staircase, taking two at a time until I was finally in front of the double doors. My heart was pounding, my breath coming in short bursts as I braced a hand against the wood.

This was it. My last chance to say goodbye.

I grabbed the door knob, taking a deep breath before pushing through into the room.

It was bright in there, but thick with the smell of death.

My brother stood by the marble shell sink, washing his hands. He looked over his shoulder when I walked in.

“What are you doing here?” he asked, his voice rough with emotion.

“I… I wanted to say goodbye,” I managed, my hands shaking. I formed fists at my sides, looking at the pile of pillows on the bed. “Is he… is he here?”

“Not anymore,” Olivier threw out, his tone bitter and cutting through me like a knife. “You missed him by a few minutes.”

“He’s gone?” I felt everything inside me sink. I was too late. I hadn’t made it on time. My only chance to make things right was gone forever.

I walked over to the bed where my father’s peaceful figure was sleeping eternally. His eyes were open, glassy and unmoving as they stared at the ceiling. The look in them hurt too much to spend another second looking at him, and I gently closed his eyelids.

“What did he say?” My voice was barely above a whisper. “What was the last thing he said?”

“You don’t want to know,” Olivier told me with a smirk.

In a flash on anger, I was on him, slamming him against the bookcase. Fat tomes fell from the shelves, landing with a crash on the floor. Olivier glared at me, but I didn’t give a shit. He wasn’t going to take this away from me. His last moment with our father should have been my own.

“Ask then,” he snarled at me. “Ask me exactly what our precious father told me. How he ruined my life. Came back to haunt me with the last one of his secrets.”

“The fuck are you talking about?” I growled in response. “What happened?”

“He wasn’t a good man, Bruno,” Olivier ground out. “Whatever the fuck you want to believe, he wasn’t a good man.”

“Tell me what you’re talking about,” I insisted. “I need to know. I deserve to know.”

“But you don’t want to know,” he finished for me. “It would ruin your life. Just walk the fuck away, Bruno. Let me deal with this just like I have with everything else.”

“No!” I ground out. “I fucking want to know what happened here.”

I glanced between the bed and my brother as something dawned on me. My mouth opened in shock and from Olivier’s look filled with guilt, I knew my thoughts were right, and I knew he could read them right off my face.

I let go of him as if I’d burned my fingertips, my hands shaking as I took a step back.

“What have you done?” I asked him. “Did you hurt him?”

“Let’s just say I helped him along into the afterlife,” he smirked. “He fucking deserved it.”

I ran my fingers through my hair, my heart pounding a million miles a minute.

“Are you fucking insane?” I finally managed. “You killed him. Your father. The King!”

“He deserved it,” Olivier hit back in response. “You don’t know what he did.”

“Then tell me,” I begged, rubbing my temples.

“No,” he replied.

I was on him in seconds again. Once more, he was slammed against the bookcase. But his devilish grin didn’t falter.

“What the fuck did he do?” I whispered.

“You’d better sit the fuck down,” Olivier ground out. “It’s a long goddamn story.”

I paced the room, unwilling to take a seat while Olivier occupied the Chesterfield sofa. I was nervous, my head pounding. In my eagerness to find out what happened, I nearly forgot about the dead body in the room. The dead body my brother was responsible for.

“Your mother,” Olivier begun. “Evalina. How old were you when she died?”

“Seven,” I managed. “What does that have to do with anything?”

“Do you know how she died?”

“Of course,” I snarled. “She passed away peacefully in her sleep.”

“Is that so?” Olivier repeated.

“I don’t like your fucking tone,” I ground out.

“Just wait,” he raised a hand. “Just wait until you hear the rest. Your mother didn’t die peacefully, Bruno. She was killed.”

“What?” I stared at him in disbelief, shaking my head. “Start at the beginning. You’re confusing the fuck out of me.”

“Two boys born on one night,” Olivier began. “One to the Queen, one to the royal mistress. You know my mother resented the King even though he picked her in his own competition. She resented him because he kept Evalina on as a maid. She resented him because he fucked her more often than the Queen herself.”

“Get to the fucking point,” I growled.

“Evalina wasn’t innocent,” Olivier said carelessly. “She wanted the power the Queen had. The power her son, as a bastard, would never have.”

“Thanks for rubbing that in my fucking face.”

“Shut up. Listen.”

He got up, walking over to me.

“Evalina was unstable,” he said. “Had been since the competition. She wanted the best for her child. So, she made the ultimate decision. Kept her secret for years, until our father found out, and had her killed for it. I suspect the Queen still doesn’t know.”

“Know what?” I asked with my heart pounding.

“Know that Evalina switched the babies.” Olivier’s voice was low, but unwavering. “Put her son in the royal crib and took the heir and raised him as his own.”

“You…” I stared at him in disbelief. “We were switched?”

“Yes. The King admitted it to me seconds before you got in here. Just like he admitted killing Evalina when he found out what she’d done.”

“Why?” I asked, shaking. “Why would he kill her?”

“He chose the Queen once,” Olivier said. “You really think he wouldn’t choose her again?”

He strode closer, crowding my space.

“He couldn’t tell the truth. He was too afraid of the scandal. The traditional, good king. He couldn’t admit to this. Would never fault himself for what Evalina had done. So, he went along with it. The lie. The switch. But he made sure I suffered the consequences. We both know he always favored you.”

“This… this is insane,” I muttered. “Does this mean I… I’m the heir?”

“Not so fast,” Olivier laughed. “There’s another solution. One that involves getting revenge on the Queen.”

“My…”

“Your mother,” he finished for me. “Not mine.”

“Why would I want revenge?” I asked. “She’s done nothing wrong.”

“She’s the one who killed Evalina,” Olivier delivered the final blow. “She’s the one who killed my real mother. Now listen to what I’m going to tell you very carefully. There’s a way out of this mess for us both.”

He grabbed my shoulder and made me look at him, asking, “Are you with me?”

I stared into his eyes, noticing the gray flecks in them for the first time. My brother.

I glanced toward the bed, where the King’s body marked the end of an era.

I nodded.

By the time we were done speaking, Amber was a shivering, pale and pretty mess.

She’d inched off Olivier’s lap, gotten up at one point and backed herself up against a wall. She was scared, eyes wide, arms held out in front of her as if to stop us from going on.

“You killed someone,” she whispered to Olivier. “Your own father. How could you?”

“I think it’s fairly obvious he deserved it,” my brother ground out. “Now we need to talk about the rest of our plan.”

“Plan?” she repeated disbelievingly, shaking her head to get the thought out. “I don’t want to be part of any plan. I don’t want anything to do with this. You two… you’re sick. You’re sick for what you did to your father.”

Olivier stood up, slowly approached her and gently wrapped his hand in her hair.

“Think about this,” he said, his voice soft. “If you could, would you stop your father from hitting your mother every single fucking night when you were a little girl?”

Amber gasped, tears blinding her vision. I walked closer, joining my brother as he practically held her up. She was shivering, and she’d never looked more beautiful. There was something exquisitely delicate about her fragile beauty.

“How d-do you know that?” she whispered, breaking for us so beautifully.

“We do our research,” my brother responded, touching her cheek with gentle fingers. “You would have stopped him, wouldn’t you, Amber? Didn’t you try? Didn’t you try so many times?”

Her eyes closed tightly, and I tried to imagine what the police report had said happened.

Amber, aged thirteen, with her hand still clasped over the neck of a bottle when the police arrived. The broken glass had left scars on her palms, scars that weren’t the only way she’d pay for her crime. Her father had buddies in the police department, and they made damn sure the case got filed in a dusty drawer forever, forgetting all about it.

But Amber’s father didn’t forget.

He never would. Not until the day he died, clutching a bottle just like the one his eldest had attempted to kill him with and failing miserably. He tormented them until his last fucking day.

She’d hit him when he attacked her younger brother. Hit him right over the head.

But it wasn’t hard enough, not hard enough to kill him. He would punish her for trying to protect her sibling soon enough.

“How do you know that?” Amber repeated, her voice panicked.

“Police records,” I replied. “Daddy dearest wasn’t the only one who could get his hands on them.”

She was shivering so deliciously as we held her. Two pairs of comforting hands on one pretty girl. She would be ours soon enough. She’d been primed and conditioned for this, after all.

“What do you want from me?” she asked, her voice breaking over the voice. “I don’t want anything to do with this.”

“Isn’t that a lie, little girl?” I whispered in her ear.

My fingers wandered over her back, her spine straightening when I stroked my fingertips over it.

“You came here with a purpose, didn’t you, Amber?”

“For O-Olivier,” she stuttered, and we both laughed in reply.

“No, not for me,” my brother said. “For the money. Isn’t that right, chérie?”

She was quiet now, her eyes darting between the two of us.

“What do you want?” she repeated.

“What we want,” Olivier growled. “Is this…”

His hand moved over her body, over her generous tits and her smooth navel. He tapped his finger on her dress, so gently. One rip and that dress would be in shreds, and we all knew it. But we were being gentlemen. For now.

“What?” she hissed. “You can’t have me. It doesn’t feel right… not after what you told me.”

“We’re not going to force you into anything,” I told her, gently trying to reassure her. It seemed to work, and her body stopped shaking for a moment, just until I placed my lips on the shell of her ear. “We just want your submission in exchange for one thing.”

“W-What?” she muttered, her eyes dancing between the two of us. “What do you want?”

I gathered her hair in my hand, pulling on it so her head snapped back. I got fucking jealous when she looked at Olivier for too long, and he knew it.

“An heir,” I told her with a low growl. “We want to fuck a baby into you.”

“What?” she looked incredulous. “How is that going to help with anything?”

“Well, you see, Luxuria is a very traditional place,” I told her. “Just like I told you when you first got here, remember?”

She nodded.

“Turns out, there’s an old law that’s still valid,” Olivier went on. “And it says that the rightful heir to the throne is the firstborn legal son… but it also says there’s a chance of diarchy.”

“Diarchy?” she repeated.

“A rule of two kings,” I told her. “That happens only when two men share the same woman.”

I could see the goosebumps spreading over her skin.

“She has both their sons,” I went on.

“And she serves them both,” Olivier added.

“You’re crazy,” Amber managed. “Why… why go through with the competition then? What’s the point of all this? Why not just tell me from the beginning?”

“Because you would have said no,” Olivier shrugged. “And this way, it’s going to be more fun to see the Queen fall right after she hands the kingdom over to me. She thinks I’m her good little boy. She’ll never suspect a fucking thing. She may not like you… but she’ll accept you in the end, because she can’t deny what I want. And that’s when we’ll strike.”

“But you… I…” She was blinking fast, like a doe in headlights. She looked at me. “She’s your mother, Bruno. How can you do this to her?”

“She’s not my mother,” I ground out. “Evalina was my mother. And the Queen got her fucking killed.”

“Enough of this chatter,” Olivier snapped.

He glanced at me and I nodded in understanding.

We left Amber standing by the door, shivering and wide-eyed as we walked over to the desk. Olivier handed me a suitcase, and I placed it on the oak wood, fiddling with the lock and finally opening it.

Amber’s eyes grew wide when she saw the bills inside.

“One-hundred thousand pounds,” Olivier told her easily. “To be sent to your mother once you let us have you. A good payment for one night, don’t you think, chérie?”

“I’m not a whore,” she spat out.

“No, Amber,” Olivier told her with a grin. “You’re what you always have been. A rich man’s toy.”

I sat down on the armchair now, with Olivier standing before me and the suitcase positioned on the floor between us. The scent of money was intoxicating, but not as exciting as Amber’s pure, unadulterated lust mixing with fear.

“If you want the money,” Olivier started.

“If you want us,” I went on.

“You’d better come forward now.” My brother grinned at her.

She took a bewildered step toward us, then realized her mistake, blushing fiercely. But she didn’t step back. She stood there, scared and willing us to go on.

“Ah, Amber,” I interrupted with a sly smirk. “I think we should settle where you belong. If you want the money…”

I nudged the suitcase with my steel-capped boot.

“You’re going to crawl to it,” I finished. “And don’t you dare fucking look at the ground.”

“What will it be, chérie?” Olivier ground out. “Clock’s fucking ticking…”