Page 213 of Vexatious Queen

“Don’t you dare say that to me,” Ana said, eyes burning with the fury of twin flames.

We stood locked in a silent standoff, and I didn’t know that you could die so many times in one lifetime and still breathe, but it seemed that I could. My heart still beat wildly for the same woman, and yet it had darkened with time.

I turned to leave, but Ana grabbed my arm.

“Don’t you dare do that, Edmundo Genovese. Don’t you dare dismiss me as easily as you would a servant.”

“You mean like how you dismissed me? How you dismissed our daughter? You are in no position to order me to do anything.”

I yanked away and marched for the door.

“He raped me,” she cried.

Those three words were filled with so much anguish that it stopped my heart all over again with a sharp, piercing pain. My stride faltered, and I stumbled. I slowly turned around to see tears streaming down Ana’s face.

“You wanted to know what set this all in motion, why I didn’t stick to our plan and come to you so we could finally be a family. Why I chose to go rogue.”

I didn’t move, my chest aching for what she would say next.

“The night he found me changed everything.”

Ana took a deep, shuddering breath. She let her guard down, and I could see everything she’d been trying to suppress laid bare in her eyes.

“Who?” I growled the word softly, and she shivered.

My hands balled into fists. No matter what transpired between us, I’d kill whoever had touched her.

“Lawrence.”

My stomach dropped. I knew exactly what kind of evil he had been.

“He found me…us. But thankfully, Ren wasn’t home that night.”

“How?”

“What matters is that I realized in that moment, as he forced himself on me, that I’d never be free of men like him, unless—I stopped running—stopped hiding—stopped letting others protect me and fought back. I needed to take back what Lawrence stole, and what Christov had stolen before him. I needed to take back the choice that my father stole long before either of them.”

She unzipped her leather jacket and let it fall to the floor, then slowly unbuttoned her white blouse.

Ana looked at me, her lip trembling as she pulled it off. There was nothing weak about her being vulnerable with me. I’d always seen her as the pinnacle of strength and hated that she felt it had been stripped away.

Turning slowly, she showed me her back. There, carved into her beautiful skin, were long, ugly scars that spelled the word NOTHING.

I sucked in a sharp breath. The shock and wrath I felt made a deadly cocktail in my system.

She turned again, arms out to the side, and faced me with her chin held high.

“He said that I was lucky he didn’t have his branding iron or I’d be marked as a Collier for the rest of my life—inside—and out. I snapped.”

Her voice was soft, but as strong as steel.

“I was determined to kill all those who conspired to hurt us and would try again if given the opportunity. I became the red queen, doused in blood, feared by all. I couldn’t just be the great Edmundo Genovese’s treasured wife. No, I would be his equal in all things and just as ruthless.”

This time, when she came toward me, I didn’t back away. She put her hand on my chest, fingers shaking, and God help me, I still loved her with every fiber of my being.

“You cannot understand, not because you’re not a good man. Not because you wouldn’t want to, and not because you don’t love me. But because you can never know what it is like to live your life and have your sexuality turned into a weapon every single day. You will never be held down by your neck and told to take it, made to feel like you are nothing but a toy for the whims of men,” she said, her voice breaking.

The tears I didn’t know I still possessed spilled free now.