Page 53 of Protect Your Queen

“Michael Dryden.”

Jareth and I stared at the near-dead man that hung from the middle of the room.

“What was that?” I asked, stepping forward so that he could see me in the light of the bulb that swayed over his head.

“Michael Dryden was the one paying me. He wants her gone.”

“Why?” Jareth asked, his free hand in a fist. The other looked so tense that I was surprised the blowtorch wasn’t launching him to the fucking moon. “What did she ever doto him?”

The man shook his head. “I don’t know. I think he just hates her. Maybe she rejected him, I don’t know.”

“It’s not because they were lovers? She wasn’t his mistress?” I hated asking it, but it was a logical thing to wonder.

Jareth’s head swung around to me. He barely restrained himself from punching me square in the nose.Same, buddy. Same.

“No. I think she has something on him. Something that would ruin his marriage.”

Mario’s eyes began to close, his breaths coming in long, terrible, sloppy inhales that sounded wet. He was choking on his own blood, and he was done fighting.

“Mario?” I said, grabbing onto his belt – away from his piss – and shook him. “Stay awake, man. Stay awake.”

His head snapped up, and his eyes opened.

“How can we prove it was Dryden?” I shouted the question at him, hoping it’d get through his thick skull. “How did he communicate with you? How did he send you orders?”

“My phone.”

“Seriously?” Jareth lifted a brow. “Your phone? He just called you and had you plan a hit on one of his celebrities? Really?”

Mario nodded. “He used a burner, but I didn’t… I… I… I’m sorry.”

“No, you’re not,” Jareth smiled. “But you will be.”

With that, Jareth lit his flame, andveryslowly burned the man alive. The room filled with the scent of charred meat. If his bowels weren’t still in him, and he’d been butchered correctly, then it wouldn’t have been so terrible.

The real scent of despair isn’t in acrid sweat, or in the mood of a space. It’s the literal smell of shit as a terrified man voids his bowels, before giving in to his last breath.

Chapter nineteen

Good Friends

Jestiny

He hadn’t touched me. That was the important thing. Hehadn’ttouched me.

I replayed that moment over and over again in my mind. I knew every way it could have gone wrong. But it didn’t. He had gulped down his whiskey and sleeping pills. It hit him so fast that his large fingers barely had time to undo his belt. Then he got dizzy. He stumbled backwards, and I pushed him onto the couch, beneath the poster map of the Philippines I had hung on every dressing room wall since my first winning pageant when I was 14 years old. It was in every selfie and every declared win. People would know where he was.

He had unleashed his limp cock, letting it slip between the opening of his black briefs. His hand clutched it like a lifeline as his head lolled back. His knees spread in a disgusting way as his pants fell down his hairy thighs. He looked at me with fear in his beady, little eyes.

“You’re not having a stroke,” I told him, coolly.

Then he broke wind, in a loud, wet, sloppy sound that made me wrinkle my nose in disgust.

I brought up my phone and took several photos of him: some with flash, some without. Then I sent it to a server that I could access, deleting the incriminating evidence from my phone.

“We are about to beverygood friends,” I had told him.

I redid my lipstick, which had faded onto the glass when I took a drink.

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