The Queen || ✔

Chapter 49: Queen's Denial

Claudia

I heard it all. The lies which Charles was spewing to my little lamb, and I kept silent about it all. That all changed when Hera noticed my presence in their midst and Charles did the same.

He turned around to face me and his whole facial expression changed. He was obviously crying before, but now he was angry again. No matter, he'd be dead soon.

"I killed no-one." I announced, readier than ever to defend myself from his lies. Charles had always blamed me for the death of his father, and I always thought that he just saw me as his most noticeable scapegoat.

"STOP LYING!" He screamed at me with blood on his hands, and then the first thing that I did was look at Hera.

She was not her usual, far from it. I gripped my knuckles tightly and felt the need to punch the nose off of Charles' black face. Hera was lying on the floor on her own blood, with bruises on her face, a black right eye, a swollen lip and blood dripping out of her mouth and nose. Her white shirt had been ripped into shreds on her body and was covered in spots of dried blood.

"What did you do to her?" I asked in a faint voice, almost inaudible, and Charles only chuckled.

"I was only getting started." He said through his chuckles.

I did something that I wouldn't ever have done in my entire life. I did something that wasn't part of the plan.

I ran towards Charles' big body and tackled him harshly to the ground, and gave him a bone-cracking right hook. Then left. Then right. Then the cycle continued until I was sick of punching his bruised face.

Behind me, Mary helped Hera up and walked away with her, but Hera stopped her just as they were about to leave the kitchen and as I was about to begin digging my fingernails into Charles' skin.

"Let him go Ma!" She screamed out at me, but it was too late. My hands were gripped tightly around his neck and I was squeezing. He choked out for air, but I wasn't even going to give him a moment to breath. I had no weapon on me, Bullet took it away, but I was still capable of killing him with my bare hands, so Charles King wasn't safe from me now.

Charles tried to pry my hands off of his neck, but the longer he tried, the tighter I squeezed. "If Hera suffers from any permanent damage, it'll be your head on my wall." I gritted out while Charles' light-skinned face turned blood red.

"Ma, stop it! Stop it! You're killing him!" Hera tried to stop me, but it wasn't working at all. I pulled away for a second, but punched Charles square in the nose, breaking it, then resumed to blocking his oxygen intake. Slowly but surely, Charles began to die at my hands, and I felt a small weight being lifted off my shoulders.

"What was that you said? I should be your guest and kill you? Don't... mind if I do." I spat in his face, then pushed all of my weight onto my hands, which were gripping for dear life on his neck. I felt my fingernails digging into his neck, feeling his blood drip onto my hands. He was dying, such glory.

Suddenly, just as Charles almost closed his eyes, I was pulled off of his dying body and shoved towards the marble counter in the kitchen. My waist hit the marble stoned table and I held onto it in shock of the impact. It was Bullet, he saved Charles.

"YOU NEED TO FUCKING CALM DOWN NOW! THIS WASN'T PART OF THE PLAN, DAMMNIT!" He screamed at me while keeping Charles at a safe distance from me. He grabbed me by my arm and dragged me out of the kitchen and up the grand staircase into Charles' office. We were back on track with the plan, but my waist was hurting me so much.

"Why did you stop me from killing him?!" I barked at Bullet.

"You know why! It was your plan, remember?! We came here to do only two things, save Hera and frame Charles, anything else can and will screw us all up! I don't want that!"

"I came so close to getting what I really wanted to do. I could feel it in my heart, that finally, I would be free!"

"Do you think that killing Charles will change anything about who you are?! Are you really that naïve?! Wow, I thought you were smarter!" He barked back at me, but I wasn't going to budge.

"Yes! I do believe! I believe that once he dies, this life I've been forced to live for so long will finally stop, but you stopped me!" I yelled out from the top of my lungs and I could feel it in me that what I had just said was ridiculous, but I still couldn't let the possibility go.

"Claudia, stop being so paranoid! Charles' death won't change anything! You'll always be at fault for Luther's death." Bullet stopped screaming for a while and paced around the room for a while, rubbing his hands on his short hair. "Claudia, you of all people knows that Luther only died for you. So he died because of you."

"That's not true!"

"It's true and you know it! Luther loved you with all of his heart and that love got him killed. It weakened him and now instead of talking to him, we talk about him. He's dead Claudia, let it fucking go or else you'll never live in peace. Don't blame your bottled up guilt on Charles, Luther, the Kings or the Mafia empire. It's you, dammnit, it's all you!"

"I didn't do anything!"

"That's the thing Claudia, you did nothing! That's what got Luther killed. That's what made Charles a psychopath. That's why you have this cold-hearted look in your eyes. The same look Luther had! He saw himself in you, you completed him and that scared him. Your love was such a flame, it melted his stone heart, but also burned it in the process. You killed him. He died for you!"

"I didn't ask for him to die! I didn't tell him to die! I didn't tell him to fall in love with me! I didn't ask him to die for my love. I loved Charles!"

"And do you see where that got you?" He said to me in a much softer tone, and my heart sunk, "Charles is lying on the floor, dying. All because of your love. And Luther died, because of your love. You were just never made to love Claudia, admit it and fucking get over it!"

I cracked my knuckles and gripped my jaw in annoyance. I wasn't going to believe a word he said, it wasn't my fault. I had no hand in the death of Luther King. I didn't care if Charles hated me because he thought that I killed his father, I didn't do anything and I wasn't going to be accepting anything.

==*==

"Are you done?" I heard Bullet ask, and he got his response from the other side of the call.

Bullet was on the phone with Mary and Zeus who were parked a few miles away from the mansion. Mary was hacking into Charles' computer to plant the evidence, and we had come to plant some fake accounting books and fake files about the Mafia empire. So I decided that we could kill two birds with one stone and while planting the evidence, I could get my daughter back.

Hera was with them in the black van, and I was sitting on one of the couches in Charles' office, thinking about what Charles said and how he said it.

He made it seem like I had planned his death. He made it sound like I had had my eye on his inheritance my whole life when in actual fact, I just took what was offered to me. My main goal was to destroy Luther, I didn't know that he had fallen in love with me. I remembered Jacklyn telling me to stop what I was doing, but I didn't know what I was doing. I wanted Luther dead and he wanted me all to himself.

"Claudia, it's done. We need to leave now." Bullet told me while getting rid of any evidence of us being here. He was extremely good at being a 'cleaner' which was why I chose him to come with me for this task, that and Blade wasn't even able to stand without screaming out Bloody Mary in pain.

I walked silently behind Bullet, but once we reached the bottom of the stairs, bullet shots were fired.