Page 1 of Broken Queen
CHAPTER 1
Zira
ten years earlier
Ever since I was a little girl, violence was a warm blanket to me. My father was the director of a brutal secret society of rich men, and so, since the day I was born, I was expected to attend the Masquerades. During these events, initiates and members demonstrated their loyalty to the Marked Blooms Syndicate by sacrificing the people they loved. At age five, I saw a man bleed out while a crowd of men laughed. At age seven, I watched a woman hung by her hair while the men took turns using a nightstick against her thighs. At age ten, I witnessed my mother’s head falling into a basket. There was nothing hidden behind violence; above all else, it was reliable, and that comforted me.
And right then, at age eighteen, I was on my hands and knees, strapped to a bench, completely frozen in place, while ‘the Dentist’ twirled his forceps through his fingers. But I never let fear control me. This was exactly what I expected, and a low heat buzzed in my stomach at that familiarity.
Because I felt nothing.
The forceps clamped down on my canine. Then, to tease me, the pincers released my tooth. The Dentist’s lips pulled back to reveal his natural, white teeth. His head was soft and round like a balloon, and completely hairless. A black mask circled his eyes, and his breath stunk of mouthwash and cigarettes.
What exactly do you do when you’re a billionaire real estate developer with a tooth extraction fetish? You find a secret society that will let you indulge your desires with their loved ones, so long as you give the best sales to your fellow members.
“You ready, darling?” he purred. “Tell me, how much do you think this will hurt on a scale of one to ten?”
A dental gag pried my jaw open, my tongue flailing around like a fish flopping on a dock. The Dentist knew I couldn’t speak, and because of that, he loved asking questions like this.
On a scale of one to ten, tell me, Dentist, how much do you think it’s going to hurt when I kill you? I thought, a viciousness taking hold of me. I’m going to pry your teeth from your mouth and make you swallow them.
But my stomach hardened, a memory swirling inside of me. Pretend like you like it, my mother’s words echoed in my mind. Pretend like you love it. Like it’s exactly what you want to do.
I tried to smile over the gag, pretending like none of this bothered me. That was why I was his favorite; I was a challenge to break.
He ran his hand over my back, his brittle fingers running down my slit.
“Such a little lover of pain,” he said, the forceps gripping my canine again.
With that sharp pull, pain seared through my jaw, white stars filling my vision, knives stabbing through my skull and crawling to the back of my head. A wail fled my body through that dental gag, the sound full of emptiness. My jaw throbbed, each tendril of sharp pain curling toward my mouth, spreading its grip around my head. The Dentist locked eyes with me, a grin on his lips.
“Did you like that, darling?” he asked.
Pretend like you’re devoted to the Syndicate more than your father. More than anyone else in the world, my mother’s advice kept screaming in my mind. They’ll like you too much. That’s how you avoid getting killed.
I forced my lips into a smile over that metal gag, like a clown with an eerily wide grin painted on its face. Blood dripped over my dry lips, and conversation muttered in the background like faint music. My father stood with a group of members, every person dressed completely in black. Every year, my father insisted that he proved to the secret society—a secret society that our family led—that he was dedicated to the prosperity of the organization, even if that meant repeatedly sacrificing his ‘loved’ ones.
And because my mother was gone, that left me.
My father’s eyes flickered over me, then his nose twitched, and he continued his discussion, angling himself away from me.
The Dentist held up the forceps, the canine gripped in its claws. The root of the tooth was like a fat finger pointing down, reprimanding me for breaking some unspoken rule. I let my chin drop; blood gushed onto the ground, an achingly bitter taste on my tongue. The Dentist dropped my tooth and I stared at it.
“You think you can give me one or two more tonight?” he asked. His hands wrapped around my hips, his nubby fingertips crawling up my spine. He rounded my back, then stroked a clammy finger down my slit. “I’m waiting, darling.”
“Juss uh,” I slurred. Just one. His hands left my skin and I froze. Metal clamps pinched the skin between my thighs, gripping onto my slit, a jolt of tension running through me.
“We could do this if you prefer,” he said.
“Naaaa,” I grunted. He chuckled as he circled, then knelt down in front of me. He clamped the forceps down on my other canine.
“Won’t have much bite after this, will you?” he laughed, then he pulled the forceps, wrenching my tooth out.
Sometimes, pain is so unreal that you lose consciousness. There’s nothing in your brain that will help you survive it, knowing that the best way to keep going, is to force yourself out of the experience completely. But there’s also a moment when your brain learns to become accustomed to it. Even as I screamed, I could leave my body, seeing the world around me shift like a kaleidoscope. The twisting images of the Dentist. My father lecturing on world domination to his colleagues. My fiancé in the corner with his head in his hands, knowing that neither of us could do anything to stop the Dentist. This was my fate.
“That’s enough for tonight,” my fiancé said, bringing me back to earth. “Give her a rest. She’s done enough.”
Relief flowed through me. My fiancé, Logan, tall and statuesque as ever, pushed his father out of the way, then began untying me from the bench. A white suit flattered his fit physique. Like me, he had blond hair and blue eyes. He kept his hair short and styled, and was permanently blushing like he was constantly embarrassed. Like he didn’t know why he had to follow his father’s footsteps, but he knew he had to. I could relate to that.
