Her old life had returned.
There were days when she was convinced the last few years were some cruel dream, some mad trick of her brain. She thought perhaps that her time with the King - her time spent in luxury and wealth and far away from things like hunger and poverty; time spent being seen as more than just some whore and more like the right hand woman of a powerful organization; time spent in his loving embrace - was all an illusion.
She felt, sometimes, like she were waking up from a sweet dream. Reality awaited, and it was cruel and harsh, just as it was before the King arrived to whisk her off to his dream world.
She felt that perhaps she should be thankful, at least, to still be alive. She’d spent a few horrid hours hiding in her bedroom’s walk-in closet following the Captain’s coup, knife clutched to her chest, ready to stab the first man to come through the door. When the first of the traitor’s men burst into the closet she thought she truly felt as though she had seconds left on this earth.
Some days she wished that she was dead, wished that that minion had put two in her chest and one in her head and called it done. But he didn’t - he called the Captain over, and upon seeing her cowering in the corner of the closet a grin appeared on his face like he’d found some new treat to enjoy, a new toy to play with.
He didn’t kill her - much to her surprise. No, in some ways what he had planned for her was worse than that.
He kept her - as a trophy. He told her that she could continue to live, so long as she served him. Not in the way she served the King, as his right hand man, confidant and executive officer - no, that would be giving too much responsibility to a mere whore. No, she was to be a trophy in every way she could possibly be - hanging on his arm when he went out on the town to spend his ill-gotten wealth, or merely sitting on the armrest of his chair in a low-cut, embarrassingly short dress while he conducted business deals with the leaders of rival gangs.
She was a piece of eye candy, a symbol of how all that was once the King’s, from his cartel to his woman, was now his. She was an overt sign of his power and what he was capable of - once one of the most powerful women in the country, she was now a broken, obedient little pet that did her master’s bidding.
He showered her with gifts, luxurious ones with brands and tags and labels. She saw it for what it was - a display of his power and wealth, a reminder to others as much as to himself that all that once belonged to the King was now his to spend frivolously.
He used her body, too, but she was used to that.
It was merely another sign of how her life had regressed back into the ugly, dark mess it once was before she’d met the King. Back then her body was a commodity, something to be exchanged for currency, something that could buy her a couple of days worth of food. So it was again. Her body, for the privilege to live.
There were times when she heard the traitor’s subordinates speak of her in hushed tones as she passed by them - barely disguised whistles and catcalls, asking her when it would be their turn to play with her, when the traitor would share his new toy with his playmates. It hadn’t happened yet - it was perhaps a matter of time. Tossing her to his underlings like she was a piece of meat thrown in front of drooling dogs was not beyond the reach of his cruelty.
And so the days passed in this miserable, desperate life of hers. But then she supposed it was nothing new. No, this was the universe correcting itself. The years of happiness and love she’d spent with the King were an anomaly, a divergence from the plan destiny had set for her.
This is how her life was always meant to be.
She is standing by the bedroom window, gazing idly out the window at the setting sun when the doors burst open and he stumbles into the room. Even without looking away from the view she knows he is drunk, or high, or both. She knew it by the way he opened the doors. Some days, when he fancied himself half the gentleman the King was, he’d open the door slowly, gently, sometimes even knocking in advance, as though doing so would give him permission to treat her the way he did.
Those days were at least bearable - she could let her mind wander as he had his way with her, let her mind fly to heights he couldn’t reach.
But those days were far outnumbered by the times he merely stumbled into her bedroom, a curse on his lips and a half-drunken bottle in his hand. He was an angry, violent drunk, and it carried on in the way he treated her. He would hurt her, choke her, hit her - caring little for her or her body or what he did to it, so long as he got his way in the end.
And he always got his way with her. Because she let him.
Because she was a survivor. She was a survivor on the streets and she was a survivor now. And she was willing to do whatever it took to survive.
And so as he enters the room, slamming the door behind him, she prepares herself - girds herself with a long inhale as he stumbles onto the bed and sits at its foot.
A dirty, wet slur of words leaves his mouth between swigs of beer. He tells her to come and do her job - to put his cock in her mouth, then her pussy, then her ass - to give him the holes he owned, like the good little whore she was.
She takes a deep breath. One last one, before she submits herself and her body to what was to come.
She steps over to him, fingers working the flimsy belt that kept the folds of her blue nightgown closed. He didn’t notice, then, that it was the same one she wore on that fateful night of his betrayal. The alcohol clouds his brain, makes it foggy, unable to see more than the tight, slim body beneath the transparent silk folds, suddenly made naked and bare for his desires.
She finds his eyes with her own. He is a mess. Drunk and high on alcohol and drugs and power. In his mind he wants to take her, dominate her, because doing so will remind him of why he did what he did. It will remind him of the power and riches that his betrayal has brought him. Dominating his woman is his way of dominating the King, of spitting one more time on his grave, even if said grave was unmarked and a mere shallow pile of dirt somewhere in the woods.
She knows all this. She lets it happen.
She had to survive.
She kneels in front of him, her hands moving to divest him of his pants and the underwear beneath him. The stench of the man is almost unbearable - alcohol and sweat and grime fill her nostrils and make her recoil, but she keeps it to herself as best she can. Not that he would even notice, so clouded are his senses by his vices.
He is already half-stiff. Unfortunately for her alcohol and drugs did little to dull his ability to achieve or maintain an erection. It takes only a few strokes of her soft hand on his to bring him to full hardness.
When she lets his tip slide between her lips he fills the room with a groan. It’s more of a grunt of satisfaction, like a player who’d just won a game. An unfiltered expression of victory, as much as it was an expression of pleasure.
He looks down and sees his former boss’ mistress on her knees with his cock in her mouth and he thinks himself a winner.
She takes him in and out, in and out, in and out between her lips. She uses every trick in her book - and she knew many from her life on the streets - in order to pleasure him as much as possible.
He thinks she does it because she likes it, gets off on it as much as he. Because to him, she is just a whore, nothing more, a slave to her needs, as addicted to sex as he was to the alcohol and drugs polluting his system. He grunts and sighs and smiles to himself as she works, unable to comprehend the possibility that she might have other reasons for pleasuring as enthusiastically as she was.
He grabs her hair into a makeshift ponytail before thrusting her head down onto his cock and thrusting up with his hips. He doesn’t care that she taps his thighs, that her nails dig into his legs as he uses her mouth roughly and callously. All he cares about is the throat around his tip and the tongue on his shaft.
After another few minutes of this she decides to pull her head from his cock. She coughs to clear her throat - letting him laugh and chuckle and spit something about her choking on his dick. She wipes the spit from her mouth. She makes a show of it, makes she he sees her struggling to breathe.
He doesn’t know that she could have made him cum in her mouth had she wanted. But no, she had to get closer to him. She had to be on top of him, had to have him inside her. A blowjob wouldn’t have been enough.
And so she rises from her knees, giving him a stiff push on the shoulders that sends him onto his back on the bed. He is surprised by her newfound aggressiveness. He welcomes it. He is turned on by the idea of her fighting back because it will make breaking her that much sweeter. And so he lets her do it, lets her climb on top of his body as he scoots onto the bed, lying down on top of it spread-eagle, ready to see what she had in store for him.
He takes another swig of his beer. Apparently he still possessed the physical control to ensure not a drop of it was wasted, even as he lies on his back, greasy smile on his lips, eyes dripping with lust as his plaything, the piece of meat he is about to devour, joins him on the bed.
She sits atop his lap, raising her hips and crotch to level with his cock, glistening and wet with her spit. Eyes locked on his, she watches as his gaze travels her body, down her small, round breasts and the stiff nipples atop them, down her toned, flat stomach, and finally to her naked crotch and the wet, glistening lips of her pussy.
She was wet. Of course she was. He thought it was because she got off on being used. Only she knew how false her arousal was.
She takes him inside her, lets him spread her lips to fit him, making his tip slick with her juices. He was large and thick and it always gave her a little sting of discomfort when he first entered her. At least now, with her on top, she was in control of the first penetration - she wasn’t always.
She slides down his length, and he sighs and grunts in that dirty, messy, uncivilized way he always did, like he was some caveman fucking a cavewoman in the times before history was a thought. And she lets him have his fun, lets him be that caveman, because she knows him to be little more than one - a slave to his needs and desires and little else. After a short pause with him filling her to the brim, she begins to ride him.
With his free hand - his other still clinging stubbornly to the bottle of liquor - he clutches her small waist, pulls her hips down to his thrusting cock. There’s no subtlety, no emotion or passion, no slow building up to a rhythm. He doesn’t allow her to set the pace, cares little for her comfort or whether he is hurting her by thrusting too deeply or too quickly too soon. It was all about him. It always was.
She lets him. She gives him the false pleasure of thinking she was loving every moment of it. She is playing a character, a role - that of obedient pet. That of a whore that knows her place.
She squeezes his length inside her, her walls clutching and pulsing around him. She can read the pleasure in his rough, rugged features; strong and fierce even through the haze of alcohol and narcotics. He forgets about everything else in his life aside from the tight, wet, hot cunt he is pounding himself into.
He had to have more of her. He wants her on her back with legs spread, or face down, a position where he can really pound her, hurt her, exert his power over her-
After a few minutes he raises his upper body off the bed. She stops him. It takes every muscle in her body - she’s a small woman and he’s not a small man - but he quickly ceases resistance. He likes this new, feisty side of her. Later that night, when he’s made her a mewling, crying little broken thing, he thinks her resistance will make it that much sweeter.
And so he lets her ride him. She clenches and tightens around his cock, her juices flowing plentifully, and he deludes himself into thinking she is just as lost in pleasure as he is.
But he doesn’t know. He doesn’t know this is all an act, one she has perfected over years. It’s one that has allowed her to survive for this long, and with men even more vile than he. And it’s one that will allow her to survive this encounter just as it had many others.
He returns his hand to her hip. His fingers dig deep into her soft skin, hard enough to leave marks - but she ignores it, her brain blocking out the pain. She focuses on her job, her intent. She focuses on making his orgasm as strong as she can make it.
And it works. He grunts like some feral animal during mating season, robbed of his higher faculties, unable to do more than thrust and fuck and slam himself into her tight, wet little cunt.
But just as he’s almost there, just as he’s about to cum, she raises her hips enough to let him slip out of her body.
She wasn’t going to let him cum inside her tonight. No, not this night.
Before he can protest, shouted curses and profanities already on his lips, she has a hand down his slick shaft, jerking it hard, bringing him quickly over the edge.
She feels the spurts of his hot cum land in thick ropes on her belly, on her thighs and crotch. She sees his eyes glaze over and roll to the back of his head as the pleasure overwhelms him - it addles his mind, renders him defenseless. He doesn’t see her hand reaching behind her back, doesn’t see it close around a worn leather grip and the scabbard woven into her nightgown.
She sees her moment, and she acts.
At first, he doesn’t know what has happened. He knows only that something has lodged itself in his throat. He tries to cough to clear his airway, only to find that his lungs will not respond, for they cannot receive the oxygen they require to function. He only manages a wet, gurgling sound from lips that were suddenly moist and wet, a product of the fluid quickly filling his lungs.
She watches it all, savors every second, pale face silent. Her face is a mask, harbinger of judgment. Her eyes are locked on his, and no force could tear them away.
At first there is surprise in his eyes, as though he is shocked that she would have the gall, the audacity to do what she has done. His free hand reaches for her wrist, finds it already slippery with wet, warm stickiness. His other hand, once so stubbornly stuck to his bottle, flings it away to shatter with a loud crash against the wall. He clutches at her shoulder, tries to wrench her away from him, but his fingers are weak. Already he can feel his strength fading.
His neck and chest are wet and warm as his life pours out from his throat in increasingly weaker pulses. His fingers try to pry hers from the blade but his struggles are in vain; already he is weak, so weak, and her fingers are like steel around the hilt, fingers lent strength by her ironclad will. As if to respond to his attempts she pushes the knife in deeper - so deep she can feel the edge of it grind against bone, hear that sick sound of flesh parting before a blade.
There is anger in his eyes now. How dare she do this to him, after he has spared her life for so long? How dare she kill him. He thinks that once he gets out of this, he will truly break her, make her regret thinking she could ever do something like this. He will kill her, tear her into pieces and feed them to his dogs. How dare she do this to him. How dare she.
At the end, there is fear. His eyebrows arch. He looks, suddenly, like a scared little man suddenly faced with the reality of what is happening and realizing he had no way of stopping it. It happens so quickly - one second there is pride and anger, the second there is fear and terror. At the end, he is far from the proud, cocky man he once was. He is small, and afraid, and pathetic.
She watches him die. Drinks in every sight and sound and feel like some fine wine to be savored and tasted. She watches every second. And every second of it feeds her soul.
She witnesses it - that last gasp of breath leaving his lips as a wet gurgle before his eyes glaze over and his wicked soul departs his body.
Only then does she begin to cry. It makes her makeup run in dark tracks down porcelain cheeks. Not for the wicked, dead traitor, no - but for the man for whom justice had finally been served.
The doors to the bedroom crash open. Her back is turned but she can hear three men enter, likely alarmed by the sound of the bottle that felt like it had shattered a million years ago, even if in reality only a few seconds had passed. She hears the sound of sidearms being drawn from kydex holsters, and she can hear their shouts.
She takes one last look at his dead eyes. She savors it. It may well be that she had seconds to live, but she doesn’t care. She welcomes the bullets that will take her pathetic life from her, and, if the gods she cursed on a daily basis did exist, she hoped they would find enough pity to reunite her in the afterlife with the only man who had only mattered to her.
But the bullets don’t come.
She rises from the bloody bed and turns to face the men. What a sight she was, she thinks, covered in tears and sweat and semen, the knife in her hand and her entire right forearm covered in crimson.
She recognizes the first of the men as the Lieutenant - the man who’d remained loyal to the King in his last moments, had tried to warn him of the impending betrayal. He, like her, had been spared following the coup in exchange for a vow of loyalty - one he had given only begrudgingly.
His eyes flick between her and the body on the bed. They see the knife - the King’s knife, still dripping crimson drops of vengeance onto the cold hardwood floor - in the bloody hands of his mistress.
In the hands of his Queen.
His pistol lowers. He extends a hand to the pistol of the man on his left, urging him to lower it, and the man on the right follows suit.
He catches the eyes of the Queen, and he gives her the faintest of nods. Justice had come, and it gladdened his heart to see it done.
He takes one knee. A sign of allegiance.
The other two men follow, and soon enough so do the rest.
—
She had her fair share of tattoos, but this one was special. It wasn’t overly detailed - just a simple outline of a queen’s chess piece - but it meant more to her than all the others.
It was fitting that it was on the small of her back. Its placement reminded her of her love for him - always there, always present, even if she couldn’t see it or him. It was a part of her, and it always would be.
She gives the Lieutenant - now her bodyguard and right hand man - a nod and a smile as she exits the tattoo parlor. He returns both as he holds open the door to a black armored sedan, ready to whisk her off to her next appointment.
It had been a tough couple of months since the night she’d taken her revenge against the traitor. Most of the organization had been happy to hear that the usurper had been ousted, but some were hesitant to place their allegiance with a woman - even if she was the King’s mistress. It had taken some convincing, and more than a few instances involving the threat of repercussions, to convince those holdouts of her legitimacy. But in the end, they bent their knees. She made sure they did.
With her claim solidified she had turned her attention to expanding the metaphorical borders of her realm. She’d reached out to the leaders of rival cartels and organizations, informing them of her intentions. Some had joined her, others had resisted, and still others laughed her out of the room or sent her insulting messages and “gifts.”
So be it. They would come around. One way or another.
She is already in the vehicle when she hears a commotion at her door. She peers outside to find her Lieutenant, his arm extended, free hand at the hem of his shirt and ready to draw the concealed firearm beneath.
Past the Lieutenant’s extended arm, she sees a young woman. She is roughly the same age as herself, and with a rough look in her eyes, the kind that comes from a hard life on the streets. She is peddling something to the Lieutenant, who is doing his best to shoo her away. In this rough part of town, streetside peddlers like her were common - each looking to sell enough trifles to feed themselves for another day or two.
The Queen pokes her head out from the backseat. She asks the woman for her name.
Tiffany is the reply, from suspicious lips.
The Queen smiles.
She opens the door. When Tiffany peers into the backseat, she is a little puzzled at what she sees.
There is only the Queen’s hand, palm upward. A gesture of greeting, of welcoming.
Confused at first, the Lieutenant finally catches the Queen’s intent, and lowers his arm to let Tiffany into the vehicle. The young woman is a little on guard at first, but the warm, inviting smile on the Queen’s lips convinces her that she is meant no harm.
The Lieutenant hops into the passenger seat, and the driver peels away from the curb to their next destination - a meeting with the boss of a new organization that had decided to encroach upon her territory.
In the backseat, the Queen asks Tiffany about herself, and she obliges. Tiffany, it appeared, was living as hard a life as the Queen herself once lived. The Queen listens to it all, an understanding, comforting smile on her face.
She wanted to expand on what the King had built, but she needed followers in order to make those goals come true - followers who knew what it meant, and what it took, to survive in this world.
Tiffany, still on guard, asks the Queen’s name. The Queen smiles as she answers.
“My name is Taeyeon.”