Stone Cold Queen (Sick Boys #2) - Lucy Smoke Page 0,1

the chair against my spine, and he leans in close until I can see the individual flecks of various blue shades in his eyes.

That's when I see it—the oddity that sets his looks off from others. There's no emotion in them. Even with Brax or Abel or Dean—when they're at their breaking points—there's something there. A wildness. A wickedness. A feeling. In this man's eyes, I see none of that. What I see is just … nothing. No emotion. No happiness. No glee. No remorse.

"Last question," he says. I meet his eyes and force my heartbeat to calm, shoving down my own questions and thoughts as I wait with bated breath.

"Are you afraid of me?" he asks.

Perhaps I should be. It would be a lie to say that my heart isn't pounding in my ears, and I don't have a million and one thoughts racing through my head. It would be a lie to say that he doesn't unnerve me, that I like being tied up and constrained and unable to fight back. But am I afraid of him?

I laugh. “That’s cute,” I say. “You think you’re scary.” I lean even farther back until my skull is as flush with my back as it’ll ever be. “I’ve got bad news for you—I’ve seen scary, and you don’t look anything like me.”

His smile widens. “Best answer I’ve ever heard,” he says. “And I think it also answers my first question about you.”

“Oh yeah?” I inquire.

He nods. “I hope you’re strong, Ms. Manning, because with what I’m planning to do to you, you’ll need to be.”

1

Dean

12 years old…

“Do you know what death looks like?” The question, itself, might seem random, but I’ve learned that nothing is truly random when it comes from my father. Nicholas Carter is a man that carefully plots and considers his every word and action and executes them with purpose. To him, everything is a competition.

"No, sir," I say, watching him with caution.

"You will soon," he says with finality, with the confidence of a man who has killed, will kill again, and knows that he will pass on the skill to his only son. To me.

I shift uncomfortably in the seat facing his giant desk. I’m almost thirteen but the thing still looks massive to me. Like a giant, foreboding presence that remains behind even if the king that sits at it is absent.

"Death is a gruesome occurrence," my father continues. "It's not like it is in your movies and video games." He always prefaces things like that—movies and video games—with "your" as if he's too busy or perhaps too inhuman to enjoy things that normal people like. Because he's not normal and as if that reminder must be repeated until it’s pounded into my brain that what he really means is that I'm not normal either. I'm just like him.

"Death is an act that must never be doled out in anger, do you understand?"

"Yes, sir," I say, but I don't. I'm going to kill, but I shouldn't be mad about it? Not when all I am is mad. I'm mad that I'm missing my time with Brax and Abel for this. I'm mad that he's never home, and when he is, I'm pulled into his office for stupid lectures about stupid things. I'm mad that Mom's always drunk, and when she isn't, she's worse. All I am is mad, and even that, too, only compounds and makes me feel even angrier than before.

Nicholas Carter looks at me, and for a moment, I think he's going to call me out on my bullshit automatic response, but he surprises me. He doesn't. Instead, he gets up from his desk chair and strides to the other side of the room. The knobs to his special liquor cabinet—the only one in the house that even my mother dares not touch—turn and he pulls out a glass decanter full of orange-brown liquid. He pours himself a glass and carefully places it back into the cabinet, shutting it before he turns, holding the small amount he poured for himself—only an inch or so in the otherwise giant glass—swishing the liquid around in circles as he stares into the top of it.

"Taking a life is very personal, Dean," he says quietly. “I want you to understand that.” I want to ask why. Why do I have to understand something like that? If he wants me to kill, he should just say so. The media says it’s wrong, but … people die all the time,