Total pages in book: 178
Estimated words: 170884 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 854(@200wpm)___ 684(@250wpm)___ 570(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 170884 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 854(@200wpm)___ 684(@250wpm)___ 570(@300wpm)
It was frustrating. I expected this position to give so much more than it took. No wonder none of my brothers objected to my takeover.
Five brothers, and none of them wanted the throne. I should’ve known.
On the other hand, I had their respect. I’d told them all straight up. They didn’t have to love me; they didn’t even have to like me, but they would respect me. Because I was the motherfucking queen of The Dragons, and that position demanded respect.
It was important to me.
I started from the bottom and quite literally fucked my way up to the top, but now that I was peering down from Mount Olympus, I realized something was missing.
A king.
Only one man had ever been worthy of the title, and he was gone. He was missing. It meant nothing without him.
It was supposed to be us, the two of us, doing this together.
Sure, I might’ve been queen, but without a worthy king, the empire gained meant squat.
I still mourned the asshole, but I did it silently, in private, away from prying eyes.
So when Van pulled me deeper into his side and muttered, “Come smoke a blunt with me. We’ll talk,” I nodded.
Because nothing made me feel worse than being alone, and tonight, I was lonely.
The second we stepped inside Van’s house, I kicked my shoes off and threw my purse down on the counter before walking over to one of the three sofas and throwing myself back on it. Looking up at the ceiling, I wondered what the hell I wanted in life.
I had it all.
The money. The power. The grandeur.
Why was I being such a pouty little bitch?
Van came over to me, sat on the floor in front of me, put a hand to my knee, and squeezed it in a show of silent support.
He was my champion. My biggest supporter.
Sometimes, it felt like he was my only supporter.
Without a word, he took the small tin from his pocket and started rolling. He lit the end of the joint, taking a hit before passing it to me. I took it, putting it to my lips, and breathed in the strong, pungent smoke. I took another hit, then another, until the joint was plucked from my fingers.
We sat in silence a long time before I spoke into the dimly lit area, my voice just above a whisper. “Do you ever think about what Cha did to us?”
Our father was abusive in every way, shape, and form.
He didn’t hesitate. “All the time.”
It was hard growing up in a Vietnamese family and being the last of six children. To make matters worse, I was a girl. My father didn’t care for that at all. He let me know every moment of my life. The stories he told would shape me into the woman I was today.
How, the moment he found out I was a girl, he threw my mother down the stairs, right there in the hospital. How he reveled in her bleeding.
Unfortunately, I survived. In fact, I survived multiple attempts at termination, all at my father’s hand, and when I was born, he vowed to be rid of me, sooner rather than later.
Being groomed for sex was confusing. I remember being confused, at five years old, wondering why my father was suddenly being so nice to me. Had I been but older, I would have realized it was a trap. Being so young and craving my father’s approval, I did whatever was asked of me because when I did, he was happy with me.
It was your classic case of training. A textbook case of conditioning.
The coward didn’t even do the things he did himself. He would have my brothers do those terrible things to me, and when I took the throne from my father, I was going to make my brothers pay for what they did to me.
It was one night when Van and I had gotten into a relatively animated argument that I called him a pedophile. I wasn’t prepared for the blow, and when Van slapped me, he did it hard enough that I saw stars.
Panting through the shock, he leant over me as I clutched my cheek, and spat, “You think you’re the only victim here?” Well, yes, I had. And I watched my brother’s chest heave with anger, with anxiety, as he blinked away tears at the memories. “You think we wanted to do those things?” He shook his head. “You were too young to remember. You have no idea what was done to us if we refused.” He looked blankly at the wall. “He never touched you. That didn’t stop him from touching us.” When he snapped out of his trance, he blinked a moment then snarled at me. “You fucking watch how you talk to me, Ling Ling.” When he walked away, leaving me on the floor, he uttered, “Don’t talk about shit you know nothing about.”