Page 289 of Vexatious Queen

“Stay down.”

I crawled toward the gun that Vicky had dropped, but realized too late that the last shot had hit Patricia. Vicky screamed.

“Mama!”

Vicky’s pain-filled wail echoed in my ears.

“Mama, no.”

I froze.

Patricia collapsed to the floor, blood blooming across her blouse as Christov loomed over her. He turned toward me then, smiling like a crazed clown.

He ran at me, and I scrambled to reach the gun, but my feet slipped and my coordination was off, making me slow. The thumping of his feet were loud, and shaking the floor. Terror filled me but I had to push it aside as I focused on the black metal.

I lunged for it, desperation burning through my limbs, but my fingers only brushed cold metal before he yanked me back by the ankle. The world spun as I hit the floor hard. My chin smashed against the wood and my breath was forced out of my chest. I rolled onto my back Christov’s gun was aimed at my heart.

Time slowed. Not in the way people romanticize, but in a cruel, clarifying way. Images flashed behind my eyes—my father’s smile, my mother’s fire, the kings who had chosen me and those that died to protect me. The life I had clawed back piece by piece became a movie that played on fast forward in my mind.

This couldn’t be the end. It couldn’t be after everything I survived, everything I’d endured, everything I’d become. I had not fought this hard, burned this bright, just to be erased by the man who started the terror so long ago.

But if this was the end, then I would not die begging to be spared. I would not shrink. I lifted my chin, met his eyes, and let him see exactly what he had failed to destroy. I wasn’t a little girl anymore. I wasn’t his to break. And I would die unafraid, staring down the man I once called Daddy.

“God, this is going to feel good,” Christov said and with a smirk, he pulled the trigger.

Click.

Nothing happened. His smile fell.

Click.

Nothing.

I didn’t wait for the third one.

With a bloodcurdling roar, I kicked him with all my strength, just as Liam had taught me. Christov yelled as his knee popped out of the socket with a sickening sound.

I moved backward as he went down.

“You bitch, you fucking little bitch,” he snarled, holding his leg. Agony written across his face.

I reached behind me, and my fingers wrapped around the handle of the gun. I slowly stood and stared down at him.

This moment felt—wrong. But it also seemed inevitable. My life had been bending toward it since my conception. The day I was born, I’d unknowingly become the weapon that would finish the monster who tried to take everything from my parents and then me.

I raised the gun. Christov looked up, hatred burning in his eyes.

“Say hi to Lawrence for me.”

My voice was cold as I pulled the trigger.

His body jerked.

Christov stared at his chest. My ears rang. He looked at me and then the blood on his fingers as disbelief and reality converged.

“What have you⁠—”

I fired three more shots to shut him up forever.