Page 6 of Vicious King

Rose blinks rapidly and shakes her head slowly. “I just knew it. But it feels impossible.”

“What’s impossible, Rose?”

She turns her pretty blue eyes up to me. “I don’t . . . I don’t think she’s dead.”

Everyone shifts in their seats. My eyes flit to Rome, to Mateo, and then to Julian, who are all on high alert.

“Why do you say that?” I ask her.

I saw my wife bleeding out on the ground myself.

“About three months or so after I was—after I was taken, all hell broke loose for a while. That’s when his face and hands were all messed up and he was just a wreck. But wherever he was, and whatever happened, he brought a woman back with him, and she was hurt, too, but she recovered.”

The room is spinning.

Blood is rushing through my head.

I’m pretty sure I’m going to either throw up or kill someone. Maybe both. Not in that order.

“Her name was Rina, which isn’t super common,” she says softly. “And I⁠—”

She bites her lip and looks down at her lap.

“What, sweetheart?” Diego asks.

“I helped her escape.”

“Impossible,” I mutter, shaking my head. “Because if she’d escaped, she would have come to my brothers.”

“No, she said everyone was dead,” Rose says as her eyes fill. “She said that her husband was killed because of her, along with his brothers, and her father was horrible to her. She couldn’t go back home, and she had to disappear.”

“She got away?” Julian asks her, clearly stunned. I know all the blood has left my face. I’m feeling things that I haven’t felt in seven motherfucking years.

More rage, of course.

Along with frustration.

Grief.

But most of all, hope.

And if this girl is fucking with me, I’ll end her right here and now, and I don’t fucking care that she’s Violet’s baby sister.

“She did,” Rose confirms, nodding.

“If you helped her escape, why didn’t you go with her?” Rome asks.

“I tried.” Rose’s voice cracks. “I was caught. But she slipped away, and I paid for it.”

The last few words are said on a whisper.

“Damien was hurt so bad,” she continues, “and she and I were in our own room together, separate from the other girls. I overheard a guard say that Damien had given instructions that Rina and I weren’t to be touched, and I don’t think the guards or the staff knew quite what to do with us, so they pretty much forgot about us unless it was time to bring us food. We had our own bathroom, and we spent about a month together in that room, plotting. Then, we overheard that Damien was going in for another surgery, and while everyone was preoccupied with that, we made our move. I got her out, and she ran, and that’s the last I saw her.”

“Where did she go?” Is that even my voice?

“I don’t honestly know,” Rose replies, shaking her head. “We had weeks together, where all we did was talk about getting away. We talked about the Pacific Northwest quite a lot because that’s where I was from, but I don’t think she would have gone to Seattle, or at least she didn’t tell me she was, because what if I was tortured and they made me talk? That’s what we were the most worried about.”

She pauses to take a drink of water, and I can’t help but simply stare at her.