“You betrayed me!” She took a step back, holding her chest as if he had delivered the next blow to her instead of me.
“No…I…I…” she started to stammer weakly.
“You fucking knew!” he threw back at her and just as she whispered his name in a plea to get him to understand, he turned his back to her,
“Enough, I will deal with you later!” At this she found her anger and was about to speak when something finally penetrated my whole entire being.
I could no longer feel Amelia.
Meaning she was no longer inside the building!
This was when the second Dom’s fist came at me again, I caught it in my hold and allowed my true nature to take back control, telling him,
“That’s the last one you are going to get, now get the fuck out of my way!” Then I forced him back, using my grasp on his fist to do so, letting my true nature ripple through me. The blood dripping down my face started to be absorbed back into my skin as the Venom of God darkened my veins. The cuts, bruises and breaks he had caused, healing instantly this time as my demon rumbled dangerously beneath my vessel wanting to break free and chase down what was rightfully ours.
“Why, so I can just let you run after my daughter, I don’t fucking think so!” he shouted back and this time when he tried to swing for me, I moved with deadly calm, ducking out of the way of his throw, causing his fist to embed into the shelves behind me.
“You are never to see my daughter ever again, do you understand me, Luc, I will fucking kill you, so help me, by the Gods I will end you!” Dom roared at me the second I started to walk away.
“I don’t need your fucking approval!” I snarled over my shoulder and just as I was making it out of the library, he made it clear he wasn’t finished with me. I was grabbed from behind and pushed face first up against the wall next to the door. My face quickly became part of the plaster as it now had the side of my face imprinted there.
“She’s my daughter!” he roared next to my head and I had finally hit my limit, doing something I had once vowed never to do again, not since the last time. And I started by elbowing him back in the face, spinning the moment he loosened his hold so I could face him. Then, just as he was bringing forth his blades one more time, I knew now was the time to end this. So, using the power of my will against him, one that not even he was strong enough to fight against, I forced him to drop to his knees. Then I willed his arms to cross, embedding his blades into the floor to keep them there.
“ARRGH, DAMN YOU!” he thundered in anger, or should I say his demon did, for his vessel was under my control, whether he liked it or not and he was about to find out why. As there was something I had come to understand. It was a fundamental rule that he himself had taught me once. One I had to learn the hard way and one that was a lesson I would now be giving back to him.
For you never got in between a King and his Chosen One.
“Lucius, release him!” Keira shouted making me look back up at her and say,
“Not this time. Not when he stands in my way.” Then I took the few steps needed towards him and looked down at him.
“She may be your daughter, Dom…” I told him, pausing before I could then lean down slightly, getting closer so I could tell him the truth of it all.
“…but she is my Chosen One.”
Dom’s gasp of shock was one I ignored as I walked towards the door, doing so with purpose, stopping briefly when Keira asked me,
“What are you going to do?”
“I am going to right a wrong…once and for all,” I told her with a certainty I felt in my bones.
“It can’t be…it can’t be true! You can’t…Luc, I forbid it, she is my…!” Dom tried to say one last time, but with a slash of my hand I cut him off by force. Then, when I looked down over my shoulder, no longer granting him my expression for only my words of promise were needed,
“She is yours no longer, for she belongs to me now…and you should know, Dom…nothing gets in the way of me claiming what is mine!” Then after this, I allowed his roar of anger to become the background echo to my journey while running to her room. It was the last place I felt her presence, so I was hoping… no, more like fucking praying that she was still in there! That the ache in my heart had been wrong. That pit in my gut that she left was nothing more than misplaced dread. That it was a mistake and she had not left me. For her heart might be damaged but at the very least it was still in the building ready for me to fix!
But the more I ran and the closer I got the less and less that hope held power, for I knew what I would find the second I opened that door.
“Amelia!” I shouted as I burst inside only to find the start of my nightmare playing out.
She was gone.
The moment I saw this I allowed my hands to curl into fists morphing the pain into a controlled anger that I dared not let loose inside this room for fear of destroying her things. Besides, I knew that if I did give into my demon’s urge to break free that I would then be no use to anyone, the very least of all to myself.
For starters, I argued the fact that she couldn’t have got far, as she didn’t even have a car here…or did she? Would she have taken one…could she? These were things I needed to know, so without another thought I ran back to the library, knowing that I would find Dom released of his mental bonds and unsurprisingly I found him arguing with his wife, shouting about her deception.
“Amelia is gone!” I snapped the moment I made it back through the door and just at the sight of me, Dom was about to act when I held up a hand and warned,
“Don’t make me put you on the floor again, Dom, my Chosen One is fucking missing and could be in danger, now you either help me find her or I will fucking put you on your knees and force your help! Now where the fuck would she go?!” I all but roared this at him making him take pause and think twice now that my words had taken the time to sink in. As, thankfully, the most important part was what he chose in that moment to focus on,
“She is missing?!”
“Oh, God,” Keira said covering her mouth, the tears running down her cheeks starting afresh once more. I snarled at them both,
“I don’t have fucking time for this! Now, where would she go!?”
“Draven, did she say anything when she saw you?” Keira asked, making me grateful that finally someone was asking the right fucking questions! Dom frowned down at the floor as if recalling the moment before he had flown inside here with the sole intent on killing me for supposedly kissing his wife. Something I assumed Amelia had told him as a way of a diversion, as it had certainly kept me busy enough for her to make her escape.
“No, but it would be easy for her to take one of the cars and…” I didn’t listen to the rest as I was already out the door and travelling with unnatural speed down to the lower levels of Afterlife and where I knew Dom kept his car collection. Hell, when I got there under any other circumstances, I would have scoffed at the sight of his Ferraris all lined up. But instead it took me no time at all to see an empty space closest to what I knew was an automatic door that would have been on a sensor.
The second I knew Dom had turned up next to me, I snapped out my question,
“What car is missing?!”
“Ferrari SF90 Stradale,” he answered quickly.