Dukes of Madness: Royals of Forsyth U (Royals of Forsyth University Book 5)
Dukes of Madness: Chapter 12

Daniel came to me first.

A lot of people don’t know that. They think I just put on my shoes one day, started walking, and didn’t stop until I hit the Avenue. It’s bullshit, though. Daniel had been trying to recruit from other Kingdoms for a while before he found me. Obviously, I told him to go fuck himself.

And then Tate was killed.

Getting close to a King, earning his favor, is an opportunity many don’t get. Sure, I’m a Bruin, first in line for a Dukeship, but I was just out of high school. Getting close to Saul would have taken years. Doing Daniel’s dirty work was the easiest, fastest way into the inner circle.

When I finally accepted his offer, I only told one person why: My dad. He’s always understood me a little better than my pops. Tate used to replace it fascinating, the whole biological aspect of our relationships being largely superficial. Pops gave me his DNA and his name, but my dad—Sy’s biological father—was the one who really taught me how to fight with something other than fists. He taught me how to fight with my mind, how to look and see, how to play things to my advantage. Davis Bruin knows how to fight in the ring, but Manny Perilini knows how to fight in the streets. That’s why it had to be him.

Naturally, he didn’t like it. He spent hours trying to talk me out of it. It wasn’t a good weekend. Tate had just been put in the ground. Remy was locked up in the hospital. Sy was roaming around bars and begging for as many fights as he could get. The fault lines between us were already growing too deep to cross, so I figured, what better time? Everyone would believe, and they’d need to, if Daniel was going to buy it.

Dad realized pretty quickly that I wasn’t going to change my mind. “Well, if you’re going to do something stupid, you might as well do it smart.”

So we made a plan.

I had to get in touch every Sunday, no matter what. I’d slink away to whatever dark corner South Side allowed me and leave him with any intel I’d gained from the week. He’d protect it, keep a record, and then I’d crawl back into the gutter to collect more. The deal was that, if there ever came a time when Monday arrived without word from me, he’d come down to the Avenue and replace me. I had some close calls, but it never actually came to that. Still, though. Useful.

Problem is, we put an end to that when I returned to West End.

I could rot here for a week and it wouldn’t send up any flags.

The cage is hard and cold, and when I wake up from another brief doze, my neck is fucking killing me. I’m not sure how long I’ve been here, but the sun stopped shining through the tiny garage door windows hours ago. Probably early morning, if the October chill is any indication.

There’s nothing to do here but think, and that’s what I do. I try to fight with my mind. Look and see. Play something to my advantage. There’s no way out of the cage. I spent my first few hours in here working that out. The bars on the front are electrified, and it’s just enough voltage to put me off touching them.

I’d try yelling out, but some force inside my chest makes me turn away from the idea. Pride, I guess. At least there’s water. Gotta hand it to her. It’s sort of fucking brilliant. If I want to drink—and I’ve been putting it off as long as I can—then I need to reach through the bars and get zapped, which makes the bucket she left me to piss in a particularly nice touch.

Christ.

My girl is a fucking sadist.

Into the suffocating darkness of my cage, I grin.

It’s in the small hours of the morning that I hear anything. The air has that feel to it, a touch of damp, a stillness that settles like a void, that tells me it’s maybe three or four. I’m curled up tight, just as much to preserve my body heat as to endure the confinement, when I hear a disturbance from inside the house. My muscles coil anxiously as I listen, waiting.

If the Lady told her Lords, then I’m as good as dead. She wasn’t wrong. I suckered them into this shit. If it’d been the Lords playing the Dukes, then we’d do the same. Even worse, it could be Sy or Remy. This would mean they found her out. That they’d need to punish her. That they’re about to replace me here, defeated and diminished, trapped, helpless. There’s really no good way this ends.

I don’t think I’ve ever heard anything as loud as the door to the garage opening. It cleaves through the silence, making me stiffen in anticipation.

But when the light comes on, it’s just her.

The tension drops from my muscles like a boulder. “Morning, Little Bird.”

She’s standing in the doorway, her eyes blank as she takes me in. The sweater she’s wearing is Sy’s. It’s so long on her that I can’t tell whether or not she’s wearing shorts beneath it, but the slight bulge near her hip is a tipoff. Her hair is pulled up into a sloppy bun, little locks of pale blue escaping every which way, and her eyes are bloodshot. Her boots are tightly laced, and it’s the only thing about her that feels deliberate. She took time to lace them. My car keys are dangling from her right hand, and her left hand is holding a paper bag.

She walks into the garage, tucking my keys into her pocket.

“Is that a gun in your shorts,” I ask, voice rusty with disuse, “or are you just unhappy to see me?”

Wordlessly, she drops the paper bag before reaching beneath the sweater to take out the gun. She folds herself down onto the garage floor, and she’s only four feet away from me, which is why I suddenly know what’s in that bag.

“Fuck,” I mutter, knocking my head back into the metal wall of the box. “You’re actually fucking diabolical.”

She pulls out one of the foil wrapped tacos and slowly—torturously—unwraps it. “Have you ever read The Bet?” Holding my gaze, she takes a big, borderline pornographic bite of the taco. Her jaw works for a few seconds. “Short story. Published in the 1800s. Anton Chekhov?”

I stare.

“No?” She chews, watching me. “Essentially, it’s about these two guys—a banker and a lawyer—debating the death penalty. The lawyer says it’s more humane to confine a person for life than to kill them, because life is inherently valuable, even under the worst of circumstances. The banker says a life of confinement is the cruelest punishment of all, and that death would be a mercy. What’s life without freedom?” She takes another bite.

My stomach rumbles.

“So they make a bet,” she goes on, looking far too comfortable. “The banker tells the lawyer to spend five years confined to a room on his property. If he can endure it, then the banker will pay him a shitload of cash.” Her smirk is dark and brittle. “This doesn’t need a spoiler alert, does it? The lawyer forfeits.”

Sighing, I wonder, “Is there a reason you’re giving me a book report? Because I’m not the one who put you into that chest.”

“You put me into the elevator.”

“Yeah,” I snap, getting annoyed. “Because you were being unreasonable. It wasn’t a punishment.” She stares at me for a long stretch. Angrily, I relent, “Fine! It was, but it wasn’t the same.”

“Of course it was the same.” Her face hardens, but she continues eating. I wonder if she’s even hungry. “And even if it wasn’t, here’s the thing about boxes and cages, Nick. They aren’t always literal.”

Tiredly, I ask, “What do you want from me?” I’m expecting her to think about it. To really dig in deep. To probably come out with something annoyingly demanding, like an insistence that I sit and reflect on my naughty behavior, or craft a sincere apology, or dedicate my life to saving kittens or whatever.

Instead, she answers instantly. “Oh, I just want you to suffer.”

I know Remy and Sy think I’m a little crazy when it comes to her, and maybe they’re right, because yeah, I’m completely fucked right now—locked up, no way out, completely at the mercy of someone who wants revenge.

And it’s a physical battle to stop myself from smiling.

Clearly, I fail.

She freezes, lip curling. “Are you smiling?”

“You hate me.” I shrug. “And you’re going to let me out.”

She shakes her head. “Wow. How do you even begin to reconcile those two thoughts? Either your last two brain cells are busy fighting for third place, or you literally don’t know me at all.”

“I don’t know you?” Nodding, press my shoulders into the wall of the box. “You didn’t tell the whole story. The banker was free, but it didn’t do him much good.”

She pauses, brow knitting together. “What?”

“The Bet,” I remind her. “In the years the lawyer was locked away, using his time to study and enrich himself, the banker lost all his wealth. He fucked his life up.”

Slowly, she puts the taco down. “So you have read it.”

“Who do you think brought you books, Lavinia?” I tilt my head, smirking at the shock on her face. “That’s right. I’ve read everything you’ve read, from Augustine’s trashy romances to that tattered clock manual you fished out of our cabinets. I’ve read the textbooks. The magazines. The poems. I’ve read the fucking shampoo bottle you keep in the bathroom.” I lean so close to the bars that I can feel the hum of the electricity. “Every piece of knowledge that’s gone into your head these last two years has gone into mine. I know every fucking inch of you.”

I watch her recover, tucking away all of her surprise and replacing it with scorn. “That doesn’t mean anything. Except that maybe you’re a psycho with far too much free time.”

“No?” Looking away, I remember, “The whole point of the story is that freedom is a corrupting force in the hands of the wrong people. I mean, on the last day of the bet, the banker was going to kill the lawyer just to avoid paying him.”

She gapes at me. “That’s not—!”

“And it’s not even like the lawyer decided captivity was too much. He just reached the end of his enlightenment and wanted to go to heaven to unlock his last achievement, so really, you’re kind of misrepresenting the whole thing.”

Her eyes flash so hot, I can almost feel them warming me. “You’ve been in that cage for eighteen hours, and you’re seriously telling me… what? That freedom is overrated?”

“That’s not what I’m saying at all.” I shift as much as I can, pinning her with a look. “Those years you spent locked away, I was locked away with you. You didn’t know it. You didn’t even care. But you see, Little Bird, I’m the lawyer in this clumsy little metaphor you so arrogantly walked in here with. I could have left anytime, but I didn’t. I stayed. I studied. I reached the limits of my enlightenment, and you know what I learned?” I rap my knuckles against the bars of the cage, making the voltage surge. “Hate is big, baby. Bigger than love. People move mountains for hate. They kill for it. They fuck because of it. They feed it, stoke it, nurture it.”

When Sy brought her back, she kept giving me these looks, like I was nothing. It was fucking unbearable. I wasn’t lying that day when I explained to Remy that I need things when I’m near her. Her attention. Her touch. Any of her.

All of her.

I let the smirk free. “Right now, I’m the most important person in your life.”

The light fades from her eyes, leaving behind a girl—a woman—who looks too worn for her age. Suddenly, I regret saying it, because tears begin welling in her eyes.

“This is just a joke to you, isn’t it?” Even through her tears, I see the hatred, but beneath it is the exact same hurt I’d been so terrified to see the night I ran away to South Side.

I turn away from it now, staring at my knuckles, and the letters tattooed across them. D-U-K-E. A fist of Forsyth, protector of West End.

A fucking joke.

She laughs, quiet and strained. “You want to know what’s sad? For a while there, I actually wanted to believe you loved me. No one’s ever said those words to me before. Just figures, doesn’t it? Someone finally notices me long enough to feel something for me, and it’s this… this fucking insanity.” There’s a ghost of a sniffle, but I’m too much of a chicken shit to face it.

Again, I ask, “What do you want from me?”

“I already told you!” she snaps. “I want you to fucking suffer!”

The explosion building in my chest abruptly breaks free. “You think you had to lock me up to do that?!” I hurl the words at her, and for the first time, I feel like this cage can’t contain me. It’s too small, pressing against the parts of me desperate to spread, expand. I clamp down the urge to thrash against the solidity of it. “You wouldn’t let me save you, but you let Sy save you! You sleep in his bed.” I ram my fists against the bars, feeling it zap into my knuckles. “You sleep in his fucking bed!”

Her expression twists. “Sy doesn’t expect me to be his pet slave in repayment for it!”

“Is that what you think?” My laugh is edged with disbelief. “When’s the last time you touched his dick, Lavinia? Open your fucking eyes.”

“That’s between him and me,” she insists, eyes growing darker. “This stupid fucking jealousy shtick of yours? You have no right to it. You had a million chances to really save me, and you didn’t, because all you care about is yourself!”

“You were mine,” I remind her, teeth gnashed. “I was honest with you. I gave you everything in my power to give. I protected you, and you spat in my fucking face!”

Her eyes grow wide and wild. “You protected me?!” The shrillness of her voice cuts through the room like a bullet, ricocheting. “You couldn’t even protect me from yourself!”

“I did protect you from myself!” I roar, the words coming from a place so deep inside that it feels like an exorcism. “Why the fuck do you think I gave you back!”

She stares at me, her eyes growing impossibly wider. “You can’t seriously be telling me you gave me back to my psychotic father for my own good.” I know the admission was a mistake the second she reaches for the gun in her lap, because there’s a violence in her eyes, and it’s screaming. It promises pain, misery—death if it can give it.

But Lavinia’s always had this anger problem. It’s part of why I knew she’d work as Duchess, and it’s part of why she’s going to fail at it. Because every Duke eventually comes to learn that it can lead to a win or a loss, and anger doesn’t really care which.

In her anger, she fumbles the gun.

It bounces against the smooth floor, knocking against the hard epoxy and skittering across the distance.

I react on instinct, lightning-fast, pushing my arm through the bars just as she dives for it. The electricity burns like a bitch, making my teeth clench as I grab the cool metal of the pistol. Her fingers barely get a graze on it before I’m yanking it through the bars, growling against the pain of the shock.

And then I have the gun.

Lavinia falls back, heels scrabbling against the floor as I raise the barrel. “Oops,” I say, tapping it against the metal. “Sucks for you.”

The color drains from her face and she freezes there, sitting on the cold floor, eyes fixed to the gun. “You’ll have to kill me.” Her face hardens as she says the words, as if she’s just realizing the truth of them.

She’d rather be dead than let me free.

My brain flicks through all the paths that diverge from here, but mostly I think about the words still ringing in my ears.

… this fucking insanity…

I turn the gun over in my hands, knowing just from feel alone that it’s mine. This pistol was with me all through my years in South Side. It’s the same gun I’ve trained on her countless times—long before she became Duchess. If it were a person, it’d know her almost as well as I do.

“We could have been good together,” I tell her, testing the weight of the gun in my palm. “If you would have given me one fucking chance, we could have—”

But it’s useless.

Even I know there’s just no coming back from some things.

The look on her face when I toss the gun back would almost be funny if I weren’t on the verge of braining myself against the wall of the cage.

Clearing my throat, I explain, “If you’re going to do something stupid, then you might as well do it smart.” I hug my legs to my chest, thinking of late nights spent in her grimy, South Side motel room. If those are the best I’ll ever have, then what’s the point? “Don’t let me out until you stop hating me,” I decide, voice gruff. “It’s all the same to me.”