“You could have kept quiet,” Sofia murmured to her mother as Roman and Henry rallied the troops over their phones. “You could have let him die and kept your involvement secret.”
The queen, always such a dominating presence, appeared small and uncertain. Still, a lifetime of being rejected by her made the next words almost impossible to get out. “You don’t have to talk to an empty bedroom.”
Her mother looked at her with the tiniest quiver of hope. “Can I be forgiven for my mistakes?”
Sofia had every right to disdain and condemn. It’s what the queen had given her her entire life. It’s what the queen received her whole life from the man she loved.
“If you can forgive me for mine,” Sofia said as she gripped her mother’s hands and helped her stand with her. “When I have him back, we will talk.”
With a tremulous yet tender smile, her mother nodded.
When she said the next words to her mother, they sang inside her with hope. “We still have time to be different.”
September 28
Part Three
The gun prodded Aish in his kidney again, just above where his hands were bound behind his back, and he groaned around the cloth shoved into his mouth and secured with duct tape. He didn’t know how John had gotten him down into the tunnel system that ran below the Monte, but he felt like John had dragged him over every stair and stone and stalagmite before he’d slapped him awake. They’d left behind the cut-stone archways, endless rows of dusty wine bottles, and ancient iron gates signaling some hope of civilization, and not even the jab of that fucking gun could keep Aish moving forward into what looked like an endless black hole.
They were beneath acres of sunlit vineyard rows Aish had gotten to know intimately over the last month. But down here, the Monte was hostile, hard and careless stone. The black was immense. The headlamp John wore cut through the darkness about as effectively as a butter knife through concrete. Aish was a kid who’d grown up in the sun, so it made sense how uncomfortable he was in this dark underground tunnel. He held on to “uncomfortable” because it was better than the utter fucking panic he was fighting off with every step into this cold and alien world, with his cold and alien best friend poking a gun into his back.
John jabbed again, but this time with a chuckle. “I’ve been shoving you where I want you to go your entire life. You think now, when I’m holding a gun, you’re going to stop following my orders?” It was the first thing he’d said to him beyond grunted single words; they were deep enough in the earth that John wasn’t worried about their voices seeping up through someone’s basement. “Don’t make me use it. I’ll just shoot off whatever gets you walking again.”
That voice as familiar as his own saying surreal things in this dead place—Aish swung around to see him, to make what was happening real.
He was instantly blinded. John chuckled again.
“Still can’t believe it, right, buddy? What a fucking idiot you were? Get a good look.” Keeping the gun aimed on Aish, John slipped the headlamp off his head and pointed it at his face.
Aish blinked to clear the spots from his eyes and then focused on the altered face of a person he’d trusted like a brother.
John had never had a problem getting laid with his classic square jaw, straight nose, thick blond hair, and bright blue eyes. The plastic surgeon had made him a regular face in the crowd, made his nose broader and built bulk around his cheekbones. The shorn-close brown hair hid John’s thick waves. John had gone from an All-American prepster to a Jersey dockworker.
Those rich blue eyes, though, those eyes looking back at Aish with so much smug satisfaction, they were the same.
“He did good, right?” John said, grinning. The surgeon had even put a chip in his gleaming smile. “Found him through a sob story from one of the girls waiting for you backstage—she told me about his oopsies with underage patients. Got him to do the work for free and burn my records.”
John put the headlamp back on but tilted it up so it cast a residual light on their faces and then motioned with the gun. “Go.”
Aish grunted, gave an emphatic jut with his jaw.
John smiled again. “Got something you want to say? Cool, cool. No one can hear you.”
He ripped the duct tape off along with a decent amount of hair. Aish shoved out the disgusting rag and then bent over, gagged, spit on the ground.
“You’ve been roofie-ing me since we were kids,” he croaked, not a question as he focused on not puking. His body ached, his head pounded. During the walk, he’d been trying not to throw up and choke himself. Aish recognized this particular hangover. When he’d get embarrassingly drunk on just a couple of drinks, or get a bout of food poisoning or stomach flu when everyone else was fine, he thought it was the dues he paid for his rock ’n’ roll lifestyle.
He’d felt this way twice since John “died.” Once at the festival with the gin maker and the hidden camera. Once when he’d hoped to calm his nerves with a drive through the Spanish mountains.
He’d been such a fucking idiot.
“Why?” Aish demanded as he straightened, taking big breaths through his mouth, his bent back shoulders screaming.
John smiled like a papa proud of Aish for figuring it out. “It was my favorite way to put you on ice. Aish Salinger, the guy everyone loved, slurring and puking like an asshole. Manon’s going to tell everyone she saw you drunk, crying, stumbling down to the cellar.” John was so fucking happy. “I asked you to
