Page 251 of Vexatious Queen

“Sabastian, that’s not true, I⁠—”

“It took the guards hours to find me. Hours! I was just a kid.”

Ren made a sound as if her heart was breaking in real time. She tried to step around me, but there was no telling what he was going to do next. I grabbed her hand and tugged her back as blazing hot anger filled his eyes.

I shook my head a Ren, as I tried to convey the danger with my eyes.

“You think that was intentional,” Yuliana asked, voice shaking now. “You think I set out to hurt you? An innocent child, out of jealousy? What lies has Christov been filling your head with?”

“I trust my father over anything you have to say to me. Did you even think of taking me with you,” Sabastian asked, and Yuliana looked shaken by the question.

She slowly shook her head. “Sabastian—you’re making it sound simple, but it’s not,” Yuliana tried to reason with him.

“Enough of this,” I snapped, leaving Ren with her mother and stepping through my guys.

I got in his face, the two of us staring into each other’s eyes.

“Back. The. Hell. Up. And go cool off.”

“Get out of my way, Collier,” he growled, bumping his chest into mine.

I held off on taking him down, but if he hit me, that was it.

“No,” I said flatly. “You want to have a discussion, then fine, but not here, not like this.”

“You don’t know anything,” he spat. “You don’t know what she did to us. To me.”

“You’re right,” I shot back. “I don’t, I wasn’t there, but you were also a kid. And this story you’ve been fed reeks of bullshit. You know your father is a liar, a murderer, and was in bed with my father long before you were born. That should tell you everything you need to know. Think Sabastian, use your fucking head rather than letting him turn you into his marionette as he pulls your strings.”

That landed.

He turned his head and looked at Yuliana, chest heaving. For a second, I saw it—the confusion. The fracture. The kid who didn’t know which memory to trust, or who to trust. He had gone from simply dangerous to a complete wild card, and I couldn’t allow for another one of those to be on the board.

“Sabastian, I’m sorry. I never thought to take you with me, and I’m sorry that it never crossed my mind. I have made many choices that I regret, and now I realize that this is one of them,” she said. “And I will live with the damage those choices caused for the rest of my life. But I did not abandon you out of cruelty. And I did not kill your mother out of jealousy.”

“You honestly expect me to believe that?”

“No,” she said softly. “I expect you to think for yourself. You were always intelligent, so what does logic tell you? If you want to know the whole story, then I will sit with you, but Nash is right, not like this.”

He shook his head, backing away like the ground was giving out beneath him.

“No. I don’t want to hear what you have to say. Just stay the fuck away from me.”

“Sabastian,” Dean Henry said, his voice turning all of our heads. “I want to see you in my office right now,” he ordered.

Sabastian glared at Yuliana and then turned on Ren. It was obvious he blamed them both. On some level, whatever Christov had told him had made him question everything and everyone in his life.

“Mum, I’ll walk you out,” Ren said as Sabastian disappeared inside the office.

“Myles,” I said, and he nodded, jogging after them while I turned to the others. “It’s time. We need to do this before Sabastian does something stupid,” I said, and they nodded. “Liam, set it for Saturday, and I’ll do the rest.”

“I still think—” Theo started.

“No, I don’t want to hear it again. We are not involving Ren. She will try to stop us, and we can’t allow that.”

The plan was in motion, and now it was time to do my part. I’d been willing to wait a little bit to see if Sabastian came around, but he was becoming more unstable with each passing day.

Delaying until something terrible happened had gotten us nowhere in the past. They said to grow, you must evolve. Well, this was me fucking evolving.