The Tyrant's Wife

No one knew who was their friend and who was their foe, resulting in chaos. Gunpowder filled the air at the same time as the pungent smell of blood.

Amid the chaos, a door opened on the first floor and before anyone could process who had just arrived, Zeus had taken down most of Gabriel’s men. Apparently, they had snuck in. It was expected. A man as cunning as Gabriel couldn’t possibly go to a battlefield without his men. And to him, the wedding was a battlefield.

Seeing Zeus, Desmond remembered something. If Ciara was on Nathaniel’s side after being paid off, then Zaria…

He glanced over at where Nathaniel had been sitting and cursed. “Shit.”

He ran up the stairs despite the danger of it and took a bullet to his shoulder on his way up, but that didn’t stop him. He had to make sure Zaria was alright.

When he finally found her, he could hear another set of footsteps. That was not Zaria. Someone had come for her. Nathaniel. And he had been stupid enough to leave her alone, assuming she would be alright.

To be exact, he had not left her alone. He had left her with Zeus, who he assumed would rather die than put his sister in danger. Apparently, he had been wrong.

He wanted to murder Zeus, to strangle the life out of him. But most of all, he wanted to kill himself. He should never have been so careless. He had promised to come back to her in one piece. He should also have taken good care of her.

.....

He pondered kicking the door open, but then considered Zaria might be right behind it. He didn’t want to hurt her. At the same time, he didn’t want Nathaniel to know he was here too.

With a sigh, he tried the lock. It didn’t turn.

“No!” A whimper resounded from inside, making him lose all sense of rationality. He kicked the door so hard that it broke off its hinges and slammed against the door.

“Zaria!”

“Des, look out!” Zaria warned.

It was too late. Something heavy came crashing down on him so hard that he nearly passed out from the impact. Through his blurry vision, he saw the smiling face of Nathaniel.

“Very well. What a perfect way to say goodbye to each other. I heard love birds are fond of dying together to spare each other the agony of mourning the other.” He laughed. “What a shame that your little bastard isn’t here to die with you.”

“If you dare lay your ugly fingers on Rosaly, I will break them!” She growled.

“How cute. If only you could make it out of this alive.” He huffed. These were the kicks of a dying horse. He didn’t care.

Zaria glanced at Desmond. She wanted to run over to him, to kiss him and tell him everything would be okay, and to tend to his wound. However, she had to do this.

She went down on her knees.

“Zaria, what the fuck are you doing?” Desmond growled, his senses starting to recover.

She ignored him and faced Nathaniel. “I’m the one you want, grandfather. I’ll do anything. Just let my fiancé go. He has nothing to do with this.”

Before he could say a word, she looked down and when she looked up at him again, there were tears in her eyes. She had been trying her best to hold them back but now, all her fear was coming down crashing on her so hard that she couldn’t take it.

“Grandfather, there is no need to end this on a bad note, is there?”

But Nathaniel was not that gullible. Desmond had been planning his attack while Zaria bought him time. He moved away just in time as Desmond lifted his gun and punched his arm. Since he had not expected Nathaniel to be too swift, his guard was a little lowered and that was enough for his punch to knock the gun out of his hand.

Nathaniel was quite strong and swift for his age.

“Little tricksters.” Nathaniel hissed and launched an attack at Desmond, who had been slowed down by the immense amount of blood he lost and that hit to his head. Within seconds, they were tangled in a fight so ferocious that Zaria didn’t think any of them could get out alive.

The gun was abandoned merely a few feet next to them.

She could scream for help. She could wait for the chaos downstairs to die down and for someone to come and help since she couldn’t put herself in the line of violence…or she could take her chances. The latter won. It wasn’t even something worth thinking about.

She picked up the gun while the men were still tangled in a fistfight and took her aim. Desmond was at least a head taller than Nathaniel. If only it was the other way around, it would be easy to fire without hurting her man. But with Nathaniel being towered by Desmond, any wrong move and she would shoot the one man she didn’t want to hurt.

Still, she shut her eyes, opened them, and took her chances.

“Desmond!” She yelled. As expected, no matter what he was doing, he wouldn’t hesitate to turn to her. The momentary distraction gave Nathaniel the advantage he needed to land a blow right in Desmond’s face, but that was right before Zaria emptied the bullets into his skull.

She continued firing, even long after Nathaniel had fallen over, even long after her gun had emptied out.

She had practiced self-defense with a gun before, but she didn’t think she would ever do this kind of thing—kill a man out of the blue, much less her grandfather.

Once the reality of what had happened sunk in, her tears finally came gushing out. She couldn’t hold it in anymore.

Desmond pried the gun out of her hands and pulled her into his arms. “He’s gone. He cannot hurt us anymore.” He assured her.

Her body was still trembling in fear and rage, and although she didn’t want to admit it, guilt.

It took a scream from downstairs to finally pull her out of it. When she snapped out of it, she touched his bleeding shoulder. “You’re bleeding.”

“It’s only my shoulder. I’ll be okay.”

However, he was afraid he couldn’t say the same about Liam. He had taken the first shot and if their enemies were the kind to take advantage of their opponent’s weakness, he wasn’t sure his friend had made it. That shrill scream was Ximena’s.

“I’ll check on them.” He told her, letting go of her. He didn’t want to leave her but at the same time, he didn’t want to go back with her downstairs when he didn’t know what was going on.

Luckily, he didn’t have to do either. Zeus came running back.

“Are you okay? Oh my God. I heard mother and…” his words were swallowed when a punch from Desmond assaulted his face.