mine up before she’s growling hate and anger at me through the line.
“You had no right to spread lounge business around the way you did!” she screeches at me. “You are not the matriarch, and you don’t know what’s best for my people!”
Ah, so she found out. Well, fuck her. I’m not in the mood.
“No,” I growl back. “You don’t know what’s best for the people. Look at what you’ve done. Look what your vanity and thirst for power has done! You single-handedly took down one of the strongest lounges, and for what?” I scream at her, furious tears joining the heartbroken ones on my cheeks. “Out of spite? Because some alpha said he didn’t like your hair? Or worse, did he disagree with you, mother?” I demand. “You were prideful and stupid. You inherited a whole new lounge and a mountain of debt with it that you had no hopes of paying off.”
She opens her mouth to let me have it, but I’m done taking her shit. “The lounge didn’t even know they should be watching each other’s backs and protecting themselves. All because you’re too selfish to warn them that there was a threat. What kind of leader are you? You should be ripped apart for your incompetence,” I seethe at her, and for the third time in my life, I see my mom smile.
She stands up and leans toward the plexiglass, and I mirror the movement.
“Well, too bad that you’re in there and not out here to challenge me, little girl,” she declares, her eyes filled with venom and her words filled with hate. “You won’t be there to protect all your little gossiping, disloyal friends. How well do you think people like Cena, Mack, and Stur will be able to survive out in the world after they’ve been exiled and declared rogue?” she taunts, and my face drains of color.
I look at the sick smirk spread across her thinning lips, and all I see is an evil, vindictive, power-hungry bitch. She wants me to beg her not to do that. She wants me to promise to be good and to go to Alpha Bowen when I get out of here and fix all of her problems for her. But I know her. She’ll exile everyone anyway. Nothing I do now other than killing her will change their fate.
I shake my head at her, and a new plan clicks into place. I came here to escape until everything blew over and Alpha Bowen got bored of me. I scoff humorlessly. Rook was right. I was a coward. But that’s all going to change.
I stare at my mat’s crazed green eyes, and I know exactly what I need to do when I get out of Nightmare Penitentiary. I need to take her out.
And what better place to learn all the ways to make that happen than prison? Yeah, Zen and her protection is gone, and I need to watch myself around the guards. A life with Rook is still impossible, but I knew shit in here wouldn’t be all Pop Rocks and meatloaf. I can do this. I can get fiercer and stronger and more brutal. I can become exactly what I need to become to take my lounge from my mat and finally lead and protect them the way they’ve always deserved.
A determined smile creeps across my face. “I’m coming for you,” I tell her, and then I hang up the handset on my side and turn, giving her my back.
For the second time in my visitor history, my mat loses her shit and attacks the thick bulletproof—and probably magic-proof—barrier between us. I hear her claws raking down the glass as she goes into an enraged partial shift, and I revel in the fact that I got under skin.
I mentally start switching up my plans and think of ways I can reach my goals in the next eight months as I bang on the door and Sandbag opens it. His eyes lift over my shoulder at my hissy-fit throwing mat, and he speaks into his walkie-talkie to get people to go handle her instead of forcing me to stay and deal with her vitriol. He gestures me out of the room and motions for me to lead the way.
I move in the direction my cell block is located, but I get a kick to the back of my knee for that directional guess. Stumbling forward with a yelp, I turn to glare at Sandbag, but when I