Page 64 of Wanted

The malice in his voice rang bells in my ears. I’d done this to myself. I’d crafted this reputation of mania around me. Now, I had to live with people accusing me of being cruel. I nodded. “Anything else?”

“Get her to talk to a therapist. She’s blatantly refused to attend a single meeting.” The man led me out of the bleak waiting room, down the freshly painted hallway, and into the private room that I suspected had hosted Mandy for the last two weeks.

As I stepped into her view, she didn’t look at me. With a blank face, she sat in a wheelchair. Her clothes were neatly folded on her thighs. Her hands gripped the fabric intensely.

The pressure in the back of my head returned. It overwhelmed me to see her like this. We hadn’t known each other for too long, but in the time we’d spent together, I had never experienced her as cold as she appeared today.

Ms. Bengtsson soon joined us, explaining the fine print of Mandy’s release. I listened, and I asked questions, much to Mandy’s dismay. The doctor gave me her phone number, the new one she’d purchased for her stay in my country, and she asked me to be patient with Mandy.

Once we were out of the hospital, I helped Mandy out of the wheelchair. She all but murdered me with the look of wrath in her eyes.

“Where are you taking me?” Mandy asked as soon as we hit the highway. “The palace is the other way around.”

“We’re going to my mother’s vacation home,” I told her, stealing a swift glimpse at her. “I figured the palace wouldn’t be a good place to recover in.”

She didn’t say another word.

♥♠♥

We arrived at the vacation home with the sun staring down upon us. I parked the car in the garage, and before I could help Mandy out of the car, she opened the door for herself. Holding on to any surface she could grasp, she stumbled away from me.

I took a deep breath.

Then I exited the car with all the medical documents in hand.

When I heard a loud shriek from inside the house, I ran, following the noise. Past the hallway, I entered the living room, where I found Aram standing by the window that overlooked the front yard.

“Ah, nice of you to join us,” Aram said plainly.

“What are you doing here?” I asked, approaching Mandy. Her face was red, and her hands were trembling. When I touched her shoulder, she flinched, shoving me away.

“I came to wish my niece a speedy recovery,” Aram commented. There was a numbness inside of me, one that I couldn’t shake off. Of course, he knew. His eyes studied the living room, eventually landing on me. “Your mother loved this house. It reminded her of simpler times. Days when her parents were still living with her in SoCal before they abandoned her to move to Katantia. She put a lot of effort into making this place home. In fact, she put a lot of effort into making every place outside the palace home for herself and her children.”

“Get to the point,” I urged him, my patience running low. Mandy shook beside me.

“I gave you an ultimatum, son.” He inhaled through his teeth, his silver eyes scanning me. He gestured at Mandy and me. “You certainly went above and beyond. You’ve outdone yourself, making your pathetic little girlfriend infertile. Good for you. I didn’t think you had the balls to go that far.”

“He didn’t make me,” Mandy interfered. “I had to do it. It was my choice.”

“Silence,” he thundered. “You don’t talk in my presence. You’re not even a woman anymore. You’ve lost your purpose at… how old are you? Twenty? Twenty-one? You might as well go ahead and kill yourself since you don’t want to be a whore either.”

Mandy scowled at Aram. I balled my fists.

“Clever, what you’ve done. Unnecessary but clever. You see, Mandy’s safe from me. You can come to the palace and fuck your brains out, for all I care. She’s now less of a threat to me than a fly. Not that she ever was, my niece.” Aram smirked at Mandy, and I wanted to grab a knife and butcher his face. “I’ll get your sister. Her fate’s still the same. But my little niece? She can die on your dick. My other son is producing my worthy heir. You can waste away in here.”

“And? Are you done preaching your shit?”

“Son, I’m not done in any way. It all just began. You need to buckle up.” Aram cleared his throat. “It’s time for a little story, don’t you think?”

KAMILA

Upon putting on oven gloves to remove the almost burned chocolate cake from Alex’s hyper-modern oven, I placed it on the kitchen island. The men were studying me hard. Father and son looked like mirrors of each other if you took out the fact that Jordan was straight-up miserable most of the time. Fylox didn’t open his mouth. I said I would finally tell them what had been bothering me, and he respected that.

I stared at the cake, speechless.

I didn’t know how to process what my brother had done. Knowing that we could’ve taken care of her just as well here in Indianapolis… It rubbed me the wrong way. However, I also factored that her father was this close to taking her away from us. Perhaps it was a better idea to have her isolated in Katantia. Nonetheless, I still felt like shit because they hadn’t consulted me. At all. I couldn’t even begin to imagine what Mandy felt like.

So I started talking, and when I finished, Fylox and I gazed at the Winters men like we were expecting an explosion.