The Prison-Made Queen novel Chapter 890

The inside of the pipe was swallowed in total darkness. A suffocating wave of damp earth, mold, and rot drifted up from the depths.

Leilani leaned over, leaning her upper body into the opening. She turned her head, listening closely to the echoing silence, and held her bare arm out to feel the air.

Pulling herself back out, she looked at the team, a spark of pure hope lighting up her eyes. "There's a breeze!" she whispered emphatically.

It was incredibly faint, but it was there.

Which meant the other side of the tunnel had to be open!

...

Elsewhere.

Zeus's attempts to treat Clive had bordered on sheer lunacy.

He wasn't just buying sketchy medications off the black market; he was actively stealing heavy-duty drugs from the hospital.

The bottles piled up on Clive's nightstand, threatening to spill over the edge.

Staring at the multi-colored, oddly shaped pills Zeus shoved into his hands every single day, Clive was filled with a deep, visceral dread.

He couldn't take it anymore.

His fear wasn't completely unfounded.

In the beginning, he actually felt a difference. The first few rounds of drugs Zeus brought him seemed to have a noticeable effect on his symptoms.

But as the days dragged on, Clive realized that Zeus's obsession with "curing" him had mutated into something terrifying and unrecognizable.

Zeus's desperate, manic drive to fix him had long surpassed brotherly concern—it had become a dark, twisted obsession.

What was worse, half the pills Zeus brought him came in unmarked plastic baggies with absolutely no labels or dosage instructions. He had no idea what he was swallowing.

Every day, the cocktail of pills changed.

Slowly, Clive began to realize that his body wasn't getting better. Under the crushing weight of the unknown medications, he was growing weaker and sicker by the day.

What terrified him even more was the manic glint in Zeus's eyes and his absolute, suffocating need for control.

But as his finger hovered over the call button, he froze.

How was he going to explain what the money was for?

Tell him he was sick?

Josiah would interrogate him. If Josiah got suspicious and confronted Zeus, everything would blow up. His illness, Zeus's psychotic, obsessive experiments, the illegal drugs... every dirty secret would be dragged into the light.

He couldn't even stomach the thought of the fallout.

The Sloan family was already teetering on the edge of complete collapse. If his scandal was exposed, it would break them entirely.

Pushed completely into a corner, Clive forced himself to swallow his pride. He pinned his last, desperate hope on the one person he dreaded facing—and the one person least likely to ever help him.

Winifred.

Even though he knew the odds were practically zero, he clung to a pathetic sliver of hope. They had shared some kind of history, hadn't they? Maybe, just maybe, she would remember the good times and throw him a lifeline.