Page 206 of Vexatious Queen

It had all been staged.

My mum’s murder never happened. Everything I’d seen while locked in that panic room was a lie. The unknown man who had brutally murdered my mother had been working for her the entire time. The man whose eyes haunted my nightmares. The men I’d sworn vengeance on stood at Mum’s back, protecting her.

A sound tore out of my chest, somewhere between a laugh and a wail. I wanted to scream, to demand answers, to ask how she could stand there knowing what she’d done to me—to us.

“Mum?”

She turned slowly, her hand steady as it pressed harder into the side of Vadin’s head. Whatever hope I’d been clinging to that this wasn’t real, shattered. My heart broke all over again, the pieces scattered across the floor.

There was no softness in my mother’s eyes. No recognition, relief, or longing. Only cold, sharpened hatred aimed at the man at the end of her gun, and something guarded and unreadable when her gaze finally locked with mine.

“You’re dead,” I said, the words flat. “I buried you. I grieved you. I wished that I’d died instead of you.”

Her jaw tightened. “I know.”

That single sentence did more damage than the gun ever could.

A whimper came from somewhere to my right. The sound cut through me like a blade and jerked me out of my trance.

Lip.

I turned my head and saw him at the table. His small hands were curled into fists, and his shoulders shook as quiet, terrified sobs slipped out. Myles was clutching him to his side, but Lip’s eyes were on the gun and the adults who were supposed to keep him safe, and failing spectacularly.

My stomach dropped.

Not again.

He’d already lost too much. Already seen more violence, more death, than a child ever should. And now this…another moment that would carve itself into him forever if I didn’t stop it.

I straightened, gently pulling free of Nash’s hold. My legs trembled, but I forced myself to stand anyway. Forced myself to breathe. Forced myself to remember who I’d become.

Not the girl who’d lost her mother, but the woman who had learned how to survive without her.

“Put the gun down,” I said.

My voice didn’t shake, and my mother’s eyes flicked back to me, sharp and assessing like she was measuring how much I’d changed in her absence.

“You need to stay out of this,” she said.

“No, I won’t.”

I stepped around my father, who was standing but unmoving. He didn’t try to stop me, but I felt Nash following me like a shadow.

“Ren, just walk away.”

“I can’t do that.”

“You don’t understand, and it doesn’t concern you,” she said, the first little crack showing in her steely exterior.

“Yes, it does. It always has. You made it my business the day you chose to have me.”

I took a step forward. Then another.

She looked at me, her hand shaking, tears shimmering in her eyes.

“I need to do this.”

“Maybe, but not here. There’s a child in this room who has already been through hell, and I won’t let him become collateral damage for your personal vendetta.”