Wicked Kingdom

WICKED KINGDOM AMAYA BLACK CONTENTS Acknowledgments Wicked Kingdom Prologue Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Chapter 8 Chapter 9 Chapter 10 Chapter 11 Chapter 12 Chapter 13 Chapter 14 Chapter 15 Chapter 16 Chapter 17 Chapter 18 Chapter 19 Chapter 20 Chapter 21 Chapter 22 Chapter 23 Chapter 24 Chapter 25 Chapter 26 Chapter 27 Chapter 28 About the Author ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Thank you to the readers who kept asking for a conclusion to this story. Thierry and Diamond were a handful to work with. Pulling the two of them back together after lots of obstacles, I appreciate you so much for hanging on till the very end. WICKED KINGDOM “Mirror, mirror…on the wall…who is the wickedest of them all?” For five years I waited. I plotted. With every breath I took into my blackened and bruised heart, I yearned to hurt those who hurt me. Nothing was going to get in the way of my revenge. But Thierry, even with the deepest betrayal of all, had always been the one to see me. He had always been the other half of wicked being, even if I hated the fact. He’s taken Atlanta from me, my kingdom. When it’s all said and done, he’ll beg to back in my bed and back in my wicked little heart. I just might let him… PROLOGUE Five years later… Rain was beating against a window high up in the crack of the wall. I could feel his eyes boring into the back of my skull. If I kept my composure, things would be better for me. I had to stay in control of myself. It was the only way I could get home to Tiberious. “Diamond, will you please say something,” his voice cracked behind me. He had been coming every Sunday for nearly a year to visit me. He was out there running my kingdom while I rotted in a psychiatric prison for the criminally insane. Once upon a time, I’d been the belle of the ball. I’d been the Diamond of Atlanta but everyone I’d ever known had turned their backs on me. They’d locked me away hoping I’d become a forgotten piece of coal. Every day for three years, over 1,000 days, I’d been planning for the moment I walked out of this place. Revenge, danced in my mind. I’d made a fucking list and I was checking it twice. Nautica. James. Thierry. “Tesoro…” Thierry whispered behind me. “Please say something.” I never said a word. He couldn’t touch me, and I didn’t have to talk to him. There was a clock ticking down on the wall in front of me right next to the window above us. My eyes darted upward and read the time. It was one minute from seven thirty and this show was just about over. He would go home to our child, and I would be here still locked away. Not for much longer, I thought. My ears picked up Thierry’s heavy breathing. It sounded as though he wanted to say something, but he paused before speaking. He sighed again and then spoke. “Tibs has 1 DIAMOND Dreams weren’t what they use to be. I’d had them once. Dreams. I dreamed I’d be the best goddamn wife a motherfucker could ever have. I dreamed I’d be the best mother on the face of God’s green earth. But all that had come to a shivering stop five years ago. “Ungh,” I licked my lips. “You know this is illegal,” the man looked up and smiled at me. Mayor Willis was now Governor Willis and I was calling in a favor. He owed me. “Is it Governor Willis…because I think you like being a nasty bad motherfucker,” I smiled. “Goddamn it, Diamond. Marry me.” I thought about it for a nano second. “A life with me would be too much,” I told him. “What you need to do is sign these papers granting me a reprieve. “I told you I would,” Governor Willis smiled. Motherfuckers loved to play checkers. A bitch like me though? I played motherfucking chess. That son of a bitch judge had ordered me to spend twenty-five years to life in a mental institution for a crime I didn’t commit. So, I’d had to play the long con in a fucking psych ward. The first thing I’d done was start kingmaking. Governor Willis had lost his wife in the Debutant Bombing for which no one had ever been caught or brought to justice for. I had watched him on the news, one year to the day the bombings had occurred, crying about the senseless attack. He was ugly crying real tears; his eyes had been red and bloodshot. While the other lunatics in the asylum had been doing whatever it was lunatics did, I had studied the former mayor on the television screen. He had a look about him. A cross between