Page 26 of The Black Lotus (Fatal Florals Duet #2)

NINETEEN

SERENA

I groan, my body feeling as though it weighs a ton.

My head is killing me. I try to rub the sensitive spot, desperate to relieve some of the ache, but my hands don’t move.

What the fuck? I can’t panic, maybe this is some test from Aster.

If I get caught, how would I free myself?

Slowly blinking, my eyes adjusting to the bright light shining down on me, I look around. Where… where am I?

Tugging again, I realize my hands are strapped behind me and my legs tied to each of the chair legs.

My shoulders burn and are begging for some type of release.

I try to wiggle them, which just makes the soreness worse.

“Hello?” I croak, my throat feeling like it’s on fire.

I need water. I try to swallow, but my tongue sticks to the roof of my mouth.

Now I know how Spongebob felt in that one episode where he was literally dying without it .

Furrowing my brow, I try to remember how I got here.

I was at Sinister Beans with Aster when I got a call from Sharon saying Dad was in an accident.

My breath catches, the pain in my shoulders fading for a moment.

That’s right, my dad is hurt. Wiggling around, I try to loosen my restraints, but the harder I pull, the tighter they become.

It’s like that finger trap toy every kid played with.

The one where the harder you tried to free your fingers from the holes, the harder it would be to free them.

“You can try all you want, but you can’t escape.” I hear a familiar sickly sweet southern accent from somewhere from the shadows. My head whips up towards the direction of her voice as I squint my eyes to see where she hides. It isn’t Aster training me, but Sharon who has kidnapped me?

“Sharon?”

I blink as her figure walks into the light and shields me from the incessant brightness. “I’m losing my touch; you woke up far quicker than expected.”

I tug against the ropes until I feel the burns lining my wrists. “Where am I? Where is my dad? Is he okay?”

Sharons shakes her head, tsking with disappointment. “You stupid girl. Are you really na?ve enough to think your dad was hurt?”

I cock my head to the side. “Yes. You’re going to be his wife, why would I not believe you?”

She walks around me, like a shark circling its prey while waiting to strike. Her cold hand caresses my cheek, her touch leaving a clammy feeling. “Your naivety is going to get you killed.”

She walks away, leaving a cold chill in her wake and sending shivers up my spine. “Why are you doing this?” I ask, dreading the answer.

“It’s simple. I want your father to myself, and you, just like your whore of a mother, are in my way.” Her hands flail in the air as she speaks, her eyes wide like a mad woman before she clears her throat and turns around.

Her words don’t make any sense. From what they told me, my mom pushed them to be together. How would my mother be in her way if she’s the reason they’re together?

A cold plastic touches my wrist, my fingers feeling around for what it is, before I remember Lena’s warning.

The box cutter! She said to keep it out of sight so I wrapped it around my bicep, out of sight.

Sharon is a lousy kidnapper considering she didn’t even search my body; I still feel it.

I rub the back of my arm on my back so the key to my freedom can be within reach while Sharon composes herself.

My hand moves around to grab the blade just right, finding the lever that will free me so

I can escape. Thank you, Lena.

“I thought you loved my mother,” I say, keeping her talking long enough to free myself.

“She thought that too, but in order to get to your father, I had to pretend. Which was hard because I’m a classy, southern lady who has never been with a woman, but when you come from the family I came from. Well…” she scoffs, “let’s just say acting comes easy.”

“You only wanted my father?” She wormed her way into their lives, tricked them both into believing she actually cared, when she only wanted my father. She was a snake in the grass just waiting for the perfect time to strike. Anger boils inside me building like a volcano the more she speaks.

Sharon grabs a pair of scissors from a tray I didn’t notice behind her, swiftly turning around and pointing them in my face. “Are you even listening, you stupid girl,” she spits.

“I am,” I say, trying to calm my voice to not give her the reaction she wants. “I want to know why you think my father would ever leave my mother.”

She sticks the blade of the scissor under her fingernail, treating it like a nail picker and making my lip curl. “I knew he wouldn’t; that is why I decided your mother had to die.”

“She was already dying.” The anger swirls inside, blending with the sadness of remembering my mother slowly withering away and not being able to do anything to save her. No. Concentrate Serena. You need to escape.

She growls, her knuckles going white around the scissors. “Until she wasn’t.”

I stop fiddling with the box cutter, my breath catching in my throat.

My mother had cancer. She was dying. The treatments were not working.

I was by her side the whole time. She was never not dying.

She had a moment where it looked like the treatments were working; she was brighter, more herself, but she relapsed.

My heart breaks, my eyes burning as tears blur my vision.

She got so sick, she couldn’t even leave her bed.

I was there when the doctor told us she didn’t have much time left.

My mind races, refusing to believe her lies. They are lies… right?

“What do you mean?” I whisper, my voice hoarse, resuming my cutting with a new sense of urgency.

“Now you’re asking the right questions!” She taps my nose with the scissors, a manic glee in her eye. “But before I tell you the truth, don’t you want to know why I'm killing you instead of turning you in for your crimes?” No. I want to know your so-called truth.

The first strap snaps, quietly enough Sharon doesn’t hear it.

A sigh of relief leaves me as I move the blade to my other hand to cut the other.

Her question is irrelevant; she’s obviously going to kill me in order to have my father all to herself.

Turning me in would mean I was still a part of his life.

But I’ll play her little game, for now, until she tells me whatever truth she claims to know.

Her incessant need to explain everything, like a villain would, is grating on my nerves, but the longer she talks the higher chance I have of getting free.

Whatever she tells me will decide her fate; will I run or will I kill the woman who wears a mask?

“Why not turn me in?” I ask, my eyes piercing hers.

“Because,” she sneers, “you would still be in your father’s life.

We both know he would visit you every chance he got.

All turning you in would accomplish is you stealing my time with him.

The only way to ensure we were truly there for each other is to kill you, and while I was devising a plan, I got the letter.

” A feral grin stretches her cheeks too wide.

“I got the hit on your head from Cynthia.” All my movements cease as her words hit me like a ton of bricks.

Sharon is one of the killers after me? It’s kill or be killed–she has to die.

She said she came from a family that did things.

Are they a family of serial killers like what Aster grew up with?

She wears her mask, never slipping up to let her true colors show; a woman who others would fear.

But I’m not like everyone else and she knows that, but she doesn't know my true face.

She will cower away when she finds out who I truly am.

She turns around, fiddling with something I can’t see on the tray in front of her.

My hands are finally free, my fingers tingling from the returned blood flow.

Now I just need to figure out a way to cut my feet free while keeping her back to me.

I reach down, cutting the strap on one foot, never taking my eyes off my prey.

Before she turns back around, my back snaps up, and my hands go back to where they should be.

I hold my breath, scared that heavy breathing could alert her, and I wait for her to turn back around.

She squints, then shakes her head. She should learn to trust her instincts. “What luck! Not only could I kill you, but I’d be rewarded for it too. But here’s the kicker, the one I was shocked about, she included another letter, one just for me.”

She turns once more, returning to what she was doing and I bend down quickly, slicing my last leg free but keeping it locked against the leg chair after kicking the rope under me so nothing looks out of place.

If she got close enough, she could see, but by then she’d be dead.

I don’t think she’s smart enough to realize I’ve cut myself free since she was too stupid to check my body.

She holds up a letter, one I can only assume to be the hit on my head; the words that are tempting people to put the nail in my coffin. I want to read it to see if Nate had been telling us everything or if he’d left anything out. But I need to be patient, that can come later.

She clears her throat, reading aloud in a Massachusett accent.

“ Sharon, as you can see, I have put a hit on your future step daughter’s head, but my sources tell me you’re already looking for ways to get rid of her.

I think we can come to a mutually beneficial arrangement.

If she is still alive, then the others have failed.

I hope you won’t fail me like they did. My foolish son has fallen for her, and she is distracting him from his work.

Be a dear and get rid of her for me; not only will you be compensated generously, minus my cut of course, but you will finally have her father all to yourself.

Sounds like a win/win to me. If you agree, send in your bid to the untraceable account in the other letter.

I hope you don’t disappoint me. Cynthia. ”

Sharon drops the letter, I watch it slowly fall to the ground as if it were a feather floating in an invisible breeze.

“Who would have thought Aster was the Patchwork Killers’ son!

I wonder if he takes after his parents..

.” Her finger taps her bottom lip, contemplating as she eyes me with unveiled disgust. “Since you’re still alive, I doubt it. ”

“Wouldn’t you like to know,” I taunt, wanting to cause her the same curiosity she’s awakened in me.

She clicks her tongue, her sneer answers enough. “Would you like to know the truth before I kill you?”

There she goes again. Gritting my teeth, my fingers flex around Lena’s blade. I honestly couldn’t care less, I just want to kill her, but I need an opening. And if I’m honest with myself, a tiny part of me is curious as to what she is talking about.

“Yes,” I state simply, refusing to give her anything more.

“Pity.” She pouts, pursuing her lips as she shakes her head. “I was hoping for more begging. Oh well.” She shrugs, “maybe you’ll beg for your life instead.”

I bite my lip to keep back the snarky comeback on the tip of my tongue and losing my chance to distract her.

“The truth is… I killed your mother.”

The room spins, the weight of her words washing over me like a wave trying to pull me under. It can’t be true. My mother begged me to kill her. I suffocated her. I ended her life .

“You’re lying,” I breathe, shaking my head from the words trying to claw their way in.

“Technically, you delivered the final blow, I’ll give you credit for that, but I was poisoning her, giving her the long, slow, painful death she deserved.”

Everything stops; time itself freezes. My head sways as my body fights the gravity from the need to tip over.

My hand grips the box cutter so tight, my hand shakes as my thumb presses hard on the slider to slide open the blade.

Running my finger along the edge to dim the anger rising in me, I welcome the pain, feeling the blood dripping down my hand.

My beast peers through my eyes, stalking the pathetic excuse of a human before me.

When the moment is right, this blade is going right into her throat.

“As her nurse, I had to give her the daily medicine she needed, but no one knew I was adding an extra ingredient. Granted, she wasn’t my first victim, just the first to not die by my needle.”

She turns around to grab an injection off the table, speaking while she loads it. “The thing about this particular drug, if you use too much at once, it will kill you. Good thing I perfected the dosage on your mother.”

Red consumes my vision, all rational thoughts abandoning me as I leap out of the chair.