Only the Wicked: a dark contemporary romance drawn from Rapunzel by C. J. Verge

Author:C. J. Verge [Verge, C. J.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Punk Rawk Books
Published: 2024-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

TWO SHOTS ARE sitting out on the breakfast bar in the vast kitchen of the mansion. Due to spending most of my time in the tower, I’ve rarely used this kitchen, which is all dark wooden cabinets and white marble countertops. The shots are in tumbler-sized glasses, and they’re blue—bright blue, like a robin’s egg.

Madison lifts one and takes a sip. “Blue caracao,” she says. “Isn’t it fun?”

“Are we here to have fun?” I say.

She nods at the shot. “Come on. We drink together, and then we pour another, and then we talk, and when we’ve come to an agreement, we take the final shot.”

It occurs to me that I didn’t have to agree to this.

I could have called the police and reported Madison for keeping Rhiannon prisoner for years. I spent the afternoon looking up people who have been arrested for imprisoning children. It’s a thing that some crazy people do, usually to their own children, admittedly, when it’s a woman. It’s men who kidnap strangers and keep them locked up somewhere in their houses. However, those men tend to get those captive women pregnant and they keep the babies captive too.

Maybe I was too uncomfortable reading that to know what to do with myself.

Madison wants to say that we’re equally to blame for abusing Rhiannon.

Maybe she’s right.

But women do it—crazy women do it. They lock children up in rooms and starve them and punish them.

And why do they do it?

No one knows.

Just to see what would happen, as Madison said, is as good a reason as any.

I’m pretty sure Madison is a psychopath.

“Let’s drink,” says Madison.

“How did you get involved in this?” I say. “What connection do you have to anything? Were you looking for a child you could imprison, one that no one would miss?”

“A girl who everyone thinks is dead is a good bet,” she says cheerily. “We can do this after. Take the drink, Easton.”

I pick up the shot. It smells… off. I can smell the cloying smell of liqueur—probably whatever that blue stuff is she’s talking about—but underneath, it’s not right. Except, it’s familiar.

She clanks her glass against mine. “Come on, then. Bottoms up.” She starts to take the shot, and notices I’m hesitating. “Easton.”

I tip the shot into my mouth.

Swallow it.

And then… the taste…

I drop the glass and collide with the breakfast bar, bent over, feeling it work its way into me. That was not alcohol.

“Not enough of a man for a drink like that?” says Madison’s voice, above me, somewhere above me.

I lift my head and stagger towards her.

She has a gun.

I freeze, wavering on my feet. Why bother making me a drink—whatever that was—if she was just going to shoot me?

She pours the glass full again, holding the gun on me. “More.”

“No,” I snarl. I think I’m going to vomit, in fact.

She presses the barrel of the gun into my forehead. “Maybe, Easton, if you take the shot, I’ll just leave you here, and you can call for an ambulance, and they’ll take you to the hospital, and you’ll survive.

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