Page 82 of A Knight’s Revenge: The Complete Series

CHAPTER ONE

ZACH - PRESENT DAY

R amon’s hard, emotionless face took up my entire field of vision as he knelt in front of me.

To anyone who didn’t know him, he looked as blank as he always did when he worked—directing Ferrero Enforcers, hovering around my mom, carrying out orders—but I could make out the excited glint in his eyes.

He fucking loved giving me what he thought I deserved, and he hadn’t been given this chance in years.

“Your mother has done nothing but give you everything you could have ever wanted, and this is how you repay her?”

I spat a wad of bloody saliva in his face, and he buried his fist in my gut. “You ungrateful little shit.”

I coughed. It hurt, but honestly, I’d had worse. Max Miller had hit me harder, and I’d enjoyed that shit. Ramon was getting soft in his old age.

“Is that the best you’ve got, motherfucker?” I rasped. “My girlfriend can throw a better punch than that. You better get it all out now, because I’m going to break every bone in your fucking body before this is over.”

He scoffed at me before standing to launch a hard kick to my side, and I coughed again as I bit off a groan. He spat, “You’ll be lucky if your mother lets you out of Ferrero Tower after this, boy. I suggest you think long and hard about how you’re going to grovel for her forgiveness.”

I snorted out a laugh. Mom was still delusional after all these years .

She still thought these tricks could break me. That they could keep me in line and force my loyalty to Ferrero.

That I didn’t have any power beyond what she allowed me to have.

I tracked Ramon’s path back to the middle of the empty warehouse where I was being held under the watchful eyes of at least ten Ferrero Enforcers.

They’d smartened up over the years, apparently, because they’d locked my arms securely behind my back with good old-fashioned chains since I’d long ago learned to break zip ties.

The chains looped around my wrists, securing me to the cold metal pole I’d been reclining against for the past twenty-four hours or so.

I’d also gotten a bit better at figuring out how much time had passed during these little episodes, tracking the comings and goings of what was left of Ferrero’s highest-level Enforcers as they’d entered and exited in shifts during my confinement.

So far only Ramon had the privilege of beating on me. I guessed he was pretty pissed that I’d killed five of the eight guys Mom had sent after me before they’d managed to take me.

Ramon approached again, kneeling to offer me a drink from a new bottle of water. They’d also allowed me a few energy bars during my stay, and I’d eaten them. I was no longer the dumb kid who threw a tantrum and went on a hunger strike when I was being punished like this.

I needed my strength because I was going to end everyone in this fucking room for making my Princess worry.

And I knew when I didn’t show up to her bed last night or answer any calls today, she was going to go off. My baby girl loved me, even if we hadn’t said those words yet, and she was not to be fucked with when she was angry.

“If you think your little girlfriend is going to come save your ass,” Ramon said, yanking the water bottle from my lips after I’d drunk half of it, “I have bad news for you. We have a small army set up on the bridge. No one’s getting through.”

That confirmed what I’d suspected—I was in some nondescript, off-the-books warehouse in Industrial City.

I’d been in and out of almost every Ferrero cell and torture space over the years, and I knew this wasn’t one of our properties in the City.

Instead, we were in the rundown, uninhabited area to the east of the river, made up mostly of shipping containers and dilapidated warehouses.

It was accessible from the City by a single narrow bridge or by the occasional container ship that parked at the docks to the north.

I hadn’t known that Ferrero held any property over here, but I knew for a fact that Hargraves had storage facilities somewhere in Industrial City where it kept some of its less-than-legal medicinal products.

I eyed Ramon, giving him my most unaffected stare.

“Tell Mom she’s really fucked up this time.

I’m not a kid anymore—she can’t have you beat loyalty into me.

And if one hair is harmed on my girl’s head because of this stupidity, I will burn Ferrero Tower to the fucking ground with all of you in it. ”

Ramon shook his head like he was my disappointed dad. “She’ll be so ashamed. You can kiss all the freedom she’s so graciously given you all these years goodbye.”

I snorted. Freedom—is that what we’re calling it?

“Let me have a shot at him, boss!” Anderson yelled from the group guarding the entrance. “He killed our fucking team lead.”

I sent a savage grin in his direction. “He washed out, Anderson. If you let your mark steal your gun and get your head blown off in an eight-versus-one fight, then you clearly can’t hack it as a Ferrero Enforcer.”

Ramon slammed a fist into my side. “Shut the fuck up. I’ve had enough of your mouth and your attitude to last a hundred goddamn years.”

I stifled a pained groan. He’d already nailed me on that side once, and if I didn’t already have a broken rib, I probably did now.

As Ramon stalked off again, I felt the chill of the night seep into the stark warehouse floor.

I was thankful I’d managed to get my long-sleeved T-shirt and sweatpants onto my body after my shower and before Ramon’s team of assholes had burst into my room in our penthouse, but I definitely wasn’t wearing shoes.

I was not looking forward to another sleepless night chained to this fucking pole with icy feet and a numb ass.

I’d only dropped by the tower in the first place to appease my mom, deciding to swing by for a brief visit when she’d summoned me during my evening workout.

I grabbed a shower in my room before I was supposed to meet her in her home office, intent on also packing a bag with the few things I had left in my room that meant anything to me in case it was the last time I returned there.

I’d barely pulled my pants on when I was ambushed, and I fucked up by not putting my Rolex back on my wrist first thing. It, along with the internal panic button the three of us all had hidden in our watches, sat uselessly on my nightstand, right next to my fucking gun, so I had to improvise.

They won, and I lost, but five Ferrero Enforcers had to die before they managed to knock me out and drag me all the way out here.

And while my Princess will have missed me at bedtime, it was a stroke of luck that Frankie would have missed me even earlier—we’d been set to have a drink together in a basement dive bar near the Academy about an hour after I was nabbed.

If anyone could possibly be more hacked off about me disappearing without a word than my brothers or my girlfriend, it would be Frankie.

One of them would hunt us down eventually, and I could only hope it would be before my mom ordered me moved to another location or Ramon slipped and inflicted more lasting damage than usual.

Just as I was steeling myself for another cold, uncomfortable night, the heavy door slid open, and the telltale click-clack of high heels announced the inevitable.

My mom had arrived.

Without a word, she stalked through the team guarding me, her long wool coat swaying as she moved.

She pushed her oversized sunglasses to the top of her head, revealing her cold, dark gaze as she took in my battered form sprawled on the floor and chained to a pole.

She frowned, as if seeing the violence she wrought up close and personal was surprising to her.

Then she pulled her two-thousand-dollar scarf tighter around her neck, like she was bracing against the cold that she no doubt found reflected back at her in my stare.

“Oh, Zachary.”

She knelt in front of me, stretching her tight skirt to its limit, and she reached up to caress the side of my face. Fortunately, I still had use of both of my eyes, but I had a gash in the side of my head, and the blood that had oozed from it was now dried on the side of my face and my neck.

“Mom,” I said, smiling like my usual charming self. “Come to join the party? We haven’t done this in a while—I was starting to think you were getting soft.”

Her concerned frown morphed into the anger I was certain she really felt. “I see you’re not taking this seriously. I shouldn’t be surprised—these little corrections never did seem to make a permanent impact on you.”

“Wouldn’t be in the best interest of Ferrero to permanently scar this pretty face, Mom,” I quipped, still forcing a smile through the throbbing pain in my ribs.

She pulled her hand from my cheek and stood up to peer down at me with her nose in the air. “Do you know why you’re here, Zachary?”

I let my shitty smile fall away, a blank look then settling over my face. “Because Jolie Knight got one over on you, and you’re taking it out on me.”

She began to pace in front of me, the loud clicking of her heels against the cold cement floor grating on my ears.

“No, baby. You’re here because I suspect you’ve actually fallen for that little tramp.

And that calls your loyalty to our Family into serious question, because by the end of this little fight she’s started, she will be dead, and Ferrero will have everything she stole from us and then some.

” She paused to look down at me. “And it would just gut me, Zachary, if you were standing in my way.”

“It would be pretty inconvenient for you to have to find a new Heir.”

She rolled her eyes at me before resuming her pacing.

“I gave you and your little friends access to the most coveted, beautiful women in the City who were at your beck and call any time of the day or night, and still you let yourself be pulled away from your own Family by that girl. Why? Because you have some fond childhood memories?”

I glared at her. “Because she belongs with us. Whatever bullshit reason you and the others concocted for murdering the Knights didn’t change that.”

“She’s trying to destroy us, Zachary,” she snapped. “What we did that night, we did for the Families. I did it for Ferrero. For you .”

I barked out a laugh. “Sure, Mom. Just like you have your bodyguard beat on me for me .”

She sighed, that look of faux concern back on her plastic face. “I’d always assumed you had more of me in you, Zachary, despite the fact that you look just like your poor father. But maybe I was wrong. He always was just a beautiful idiot.”

I scowled, feeling protective of my dad even though I had only vague memories of him.

He’d died in his sleep of a brain aneurysm when I was five, but I did remember him as a happier, blonder version of me.

In hindsight, I had no idea what the fuck he saw in my mom besides what was in her bank account.

“So,” Mom continued, “I think I’ll leave you here with Ramon and his team a little longer, baby. I need you to really think about what’s important to this Family.”

I didn’t need to look across the room to know that Ramon would be giving me his version of an evil smile, which was just slightly less of a grimace than he normally wore.

“And,” she went on, “once Ramon is satisfied with your… course of treatment, you’ll be coming home with me.

I’m certain the Academy will allow you to finish the semester via correspondence, and that will allow me to keep a close eye on you until I’m confident you’ve chosen the right path.

” She knelt in front of me one last time, her dark eyes boring into mine with the vicious ferocity she normally directed at everyone but me.

“And that will also give us time to put that obnoxious little Knight skank in an unmarked grave next to her parents. I suspect that once she’s removed from the board, you’ll remember who you are, Zachary. ”

I tried to smother the shiver that wracked my body. I knew Jojo was ready for her war with the Families to turn violent, but it didn’t stop the brutal wave of panic and despair at the thought of losing her again.

Through that terror, I forced one last smile for my mother. “Game on, Mom. I can’t wait until you realize just how badly you’ve fucked up.”

She shook her head, standing once again and turning on her heel. She stalked back across the room, motioning to Ramon as she approached the door.

“Fix this,” she barked, and then she was gone with a loud slam of the door behind her.

Ramon watched her go, like the sick, devoted puppy he was, before he returned his dead eyes to me.

He advanced, and I braced myself for a long night.