Page 58 of Vicious Kingdom (Dynasty of Queens #3)

T he Percolator wasn’t exactly glamorous, but it knew its place: a battered brick outpost straddling the no man’s land between law offices, yoga studios, and the canal with its brown scum of July thunderstorm runoff.

Even from my corner table—prime real estate, marked by generations of pen-etched doodles and a memorial ring of ancient coffee—I could see the Monday regulars trickling in and forming their silent alliances: laptop tribes, newspaper hermits, preemptive lunchers with their BLT wrappers already peeled halfway.

I lived for these writing sessions. This was when the world and I agreed to ignore each other.

The Percolator’s WiFi was slower than death, and its music—today, low brass and the kind of piano that sounded like someone was missing every fourth note—stayed on the right side of ignorable.

The air was a comfort food of its own: the astringent perfume of espresso, yes, but also that damp, mineral scent you only get in cities where rain hangs around until the asphalt can’t absorb any more and gives up.

They’d left the door open to catch the breeze, or maybe just because the barista was showing off her new ink to the delivery guy; either way, the place felt more alive for it.

I set my mug down—chai for the occasion, teeth-coating and sweet enough to remind me I was supposed to be celebrating something—and squared my focus on the laptop. Final chapter. The words glared up from the screen with the smugness of the nearly complete:

She took the key in her ruined hand, and for the first time in three lifetimes, she felt nothing but hope .

It was overwritten, sentimental, the kind of line I’d mocked in a book, but after 104,000 words, I’d earned the right to leave a little melodrama on the page.

This was my rewritten draft, the one that might finally grow teeth.

The first had been full of immature ideas, conceived in the half-light of too little worldly experiences, midwifed by desperation, and a project I was glad never saw the light of day.

The characters had started as escapism, now they were closer to being birthed into the world.

I rested my hands above the keyboard and just looked, blinking away the blue haze of fatigue, weighing whether the heroine’s sacrifice felt earned.

There was a ritual to this. I’d read and re-read the final confession, holding my breath to see if it could make me cry yet. If it could, I knew it was ready.

The first time, it hadn’t. Just a little throb behind the eyes, a professional’s respect for the attempt.

The second time was worse—flat, perfunctory.

I’d poured so much into the setup that I couldn’t even feel the payoff.

But this morning, something in the air—maybe the rain, maybe the reminder that endings were only ever borrowed from beginnings—made the words hit home.

My chest went hollow, then full, then nothing but a pulse of something raw and inevitable.

I was staring at the cursor when the woman at the next table made a theatrical show of coughing, like she was auditioning for tuberculosis in a student film.

I half-glanced at her, then away, pretending to scroll, but I could feel her watching, the silent rebuke of someone who thought Starbucks was a church and all laptops should be set to mute.

Picking up my mug again, I let the warmth bleed into my fingertips and resolved to finish this damn story before noon. A promise was a promise—my editor was in for the shock of her life when I sent this instead of the next best-selling thriller.

I toggled down to the epilogue, reread the heroine’s closing line—three times, just to be sure—then deleted a comma, reinstated it, and deleted it again for good measure.

After a last-minute tweak to the love interest’s sign-off—I softened his final retort; too much salt and the shippers would revolt—I saved the file, shot a backup copy into the cloud, and snapped the laptop closed with a satisfaction that bordered on violence.

For the first time in years, I let myself lean back and not immediately reach for another tab or another to-do list. My whole body stung, like I’d just uncurled after a twelve-hour flight, but it was a good ache.

The kind one felt after climbing something tall and ugly, just to say it was accomplished.

My notebooks—one gridded, one ruled, one scattered with colored tabs—sat in a gentle heap beside the mug. I opened the newest, the one I reserved for revision triage, and wrote three bullet points in a row:

· Revise character arc (heroine: more flaws??)

· Tighten magic rules (make consistent)

· Romance: raise stakes! (do not chicken out)

Underneath, in a fit of optimism, I scribbled: Fall publication, if I don’t lose my nerve.

It was surreal to write something my heart truly wanted. But there it was, done, and for a moment I let myself smile.

A half-heard jazz solo meandered into a cover of “Blackbird.” Somewhere near the front, the barista’s laughter ricocheted off the pressed-tin ceiling.

I looked up from my notes, and for the first time all day, the world didn’t feel like it was closing in.

It felt like it might even, with a little bribery and a lot of revision, let me belong.

The phone was on silent. I liked it that way, a tiny act of rebellion against the relentless pinging of chaos and updates and…family. But the screen lit up anyway, casting a jittery square of light over my scribbles. The name on the caller ID hit like a fist to the sternum: Mom .

I watched it pulse, watched it threaten to buzz straight off the table. I wasn’t ready—not for congratulations, not for questions about whether I was coming to the next event, not for whatever fresh disappointment she’d conjured up since our last stilted call.

But I owed her an answer. She was alone in that big mansion.

With one last look at the closed laptop, the safe harbor of my finished manuscript, I picked up the phone.

“Hi, Mom,” I said, forcing my voice into the shape of a smile.

The storm, as always, waited for me to invite it in.

Mom didn’t waste time on pleasantries. She came in hot, the line rattling with the force of her breathing. “I can’t believe your husband!”

If I was religious, I would have crossed myself. She’d read the article. In the Percolator’s gentle lull, her voice sounded like a fist pounding through drywall.

“What’s up?” I tried to keep it light, like this wasn’t the day I’d atom-bombed my family’s reputation in the city’s biggest newsfeed.

“Those lies ! They’re outrageous!”

“You saw it?” I winced.

“Of course, I saw it. Everyone’s seen it.” Her syllables vibrated with shock, then steeled into accusation. “Your uncle’s phone hasn’t stopped. My phone hasn’t stopped.”

I tucked away my own joy deep in the recesses of my mind where it wouldn’t be touched by her poison.

“Mom, calm down—”

“Do you know what this has done?” She was doing that thing where she pretended her voice wasn’t trembling, but it gave her every sentence a serrated edge. “He’s ruined your father’s memory, Anna. I’m appalled. Appalled! That little exposé, it’s in every morning briefing and every political blog.”

I flinched, though no one else in the café even looked up. “It wasn’t done to hurt you. Or Dad’s memory. You know that, right?”

She laughed, bitter and small. “Don’t patronize me. I read the whole thing. It’s destroying our legacy! He needs to recant. Now!”

I tried to find a patch of steady ground in the conversation. “It’s a true report, Mom. Everything is sourced. Triple-checked. If you want, I can send you the court filings, the email threads—”

“Do you hear yourself?” Her volume spiked.

I could picture her in the kitchen, pacing around the butcher block island, white-knuckling a martini glass and checking the clock every five seconds.

“Your husband’s reporter cast your dead father as some cartoon villain.

Did it ever occur to you to stop him? Where’s your loyalty to our family? ”

The truth was on the tip of my tongue. I didn’t owe the Hertz name squat.

For the sake of any frayed bond to the only parent I had left, I swallowed the urge to defend the article.

The piece held Voss to the same standard as every other crooked politician.

That was the point, wasn’t it? Impartiality.

Justice for the people the politician hurt and stories my father’s covered up.

“Voss is a bad man. And Dad had his chance,” I said. “He’s had his chance for twenty years. You think he would’ve told the truth if I called him last week, just to double-check?”

There was silence, the kind that expands until you want to claw your skin off just to break it. In the background, I caught the distant whirr of a blender, and somewhere nearer, a baby squealed.

“Anna. He’s your father.”

She didn’t have to say more. Family first. Well…Leo was my family now.

“I wrote the article, Mom.”

Silence ticked through the line.

“I found the evidence,” I continued. “I only wanted to make sure that scum never was elected to office. To make sure he never hurts anyone again.”

Now I was the one who’d set fire to the wagons.

I pressed the phone tighter to my ear, as if I could crowd out everything except her voice. “I’m not going to apologize for doing the right thing.”

She exhaled, shaky and wet. “You traitor.”

I ignored the ache in my chest, dragging my mug to a semi-private corner near the window. The sunlight was starting to break through, bleaching the rain streaks into silver lines.

I hunched over, hand cupped around the phone. “You knew the kinds of things Hertz Media covered. It wasn’t anything personal—”

She snorted. “You still said Alfred bought witnesses, you still called him ‘the white-collar predator.’” Her breath hitched. “Did you even think about how it would feel to read that about your own family?”

Of course I had. I’d lost sleep over it, second-guessed every adjective, every quote. But nothing changed the facts.

“Mom, I can send you my notes. The interview tapes. I can prove it’s all real.”

A new edge crept into her voice, quieter but so much meaner. “You think I care about your notes? You think anyone reads footnotes?”

I clutched the mug, knuckles whitening. “The truth matters. If it didn’t, I wouldn’t bother.”

I thought she’d hang up then, that I’d get the cold radio silence I half-wanted, half-feared. Instead, she softened for a moment, a single feather-light touch of the old warmth. “You were always too honest, Anna. Even as a girl.”

No…I wasn’t. But that changed. Ever since returning from Germany, I grew stronger with each day. Knowing someone who cared for me had my back was the biggest strength in my arsenal.

I swallowed. “Someone has to be.”

She didn’t answer. I heard the sound of her glasses being set on the counter, a muffled click.

“He wasn’t the monster you painted him as,” she said, barely audible now. “You know that.”

I didn’t reply. There wasn’t a script for this part.

“Your uncle called,” she continued. “He wants to talk to you, but I told him to wait. You’re probably busy. You always are.”

I stared out at the sidewalk, at the people moving through the rain, all of them with places to go and stories to keep to themselves.

“I hate you,” she said, softer than I’d ever heard. “I can’t forgive you. Not for this.”

I nodded, even though she couldn’t see. “I understand.”

The lines were firmly drawn in the sand. The ties were cut.

While part of me, the part that screamed because it was natural to feel for the people who I came from, I felt a rush of calm.

“It was the right thing to do, Mom,” I murmured.

I let the silence stretch, hoping she’d say more, maybe even find some way back to the bond of mother and daughter—between rage and reconciliation.

But then she said, “Goodbye, Anna,” and hung up.

The sound echoed through the muggy air, leaving my side of the conversation unmoored. I lowered the phone, pressed it to my lips, and just breathed. All around me, the Percolator kept humming, jazz spilling out, espresso machines hissing like nothing had changed.

But inside, everything had.

I returned to my table, the manuscript waiting like an accusation or a comfort, I couldn’t decide which. I stared at the notebooks, the triple bullet points, the black ink already starting to bleed from my fingers.

I didn’t regret what I’d written. But I did wish, just for a second, that endings didn’t always have to hurt.

In the wake of the call, the quiet came back meaner than before.

It hovered, thick and pulpy, like the aftertaste of burnt grounds on the back of my tongue.

I kept the phone pressed to my cheek a moment longer, as if she might change her mind and dial back, say there’d been a mistake, that she’d always been proud of me.

But the screen stayed black, cold glass reflecting a face I barely recognized.

I realized I hadn’t moved in fifteen minutes, maybe more. Every muscle in my body was clenched, waiting for a verdict that had already come and gone.

I forced my hands open, let them rest palms up on the table. They looked like someone else’s hands. Not the reporter who’d torn apart a senator’s career, not the failed daughter who’d just been exiled by her own blood. Just hands. I almost laughed.

In the echo of my mother’s words, I heard every other disappointment she’d never said aloud. It struck me then, hard, that I’d never even told them I wrote fiction. Maybe I should’ve been braver. Or maybe I was braver than I knew.

But I didn’t need the old family.

I had something better. Leo—my husband. My other home, the one I’d built brick by uncertain brick, on the ruins of everything my parents thought I should be.

He’d been the first person to read the story I started five years ago.

He encouraged me and insisted I finish, even when my own voice wavered.

Now I had, in the space of one morning.

I thought about calling him, just to hear him say “proud of you” the way he always did, like it was as easy as breathing. Instead, I drew the notebook toward me, thumbed the page with the three bullet points, and wrote a fourth underneath:

· Family is what you choose

I stared at the words, heart thumping. Maybe I’d tattoo them on my arm, just to remind myself the next time I decided to light a match and burn my bridges for good.

The barista called out another order, her voice bright and ordinary. Someone raised their voice in an animated conversation. I closed my eyes and let the noise fill the emptiness, not as a shield, but as a promise that life kept going.

I squared my shoulders, breathed in deep, and stood up.

Somewhere in the world, the story I’d written was already setting fire to the right people.

And if it turned my name into a curse? At least I’d earned it.