Page 158 of A Vicious Love

Harrison had hated what we did. He would hate it until one of us died, and maybe after.

Marcel looked at him. “Do not stand there and act as if I need reminding.”

“You do,” Harrison said.

“Harrison.”

“No. You called the meeting. We’re talking about it.”

I stepped away from the door and moved to the table.

“Both of you shut up for thirty seconds.”

Harrison looked at me. “He started it.”

“Christ,” I muttered. “We are not children.”

“No,” Harrison said, eyes hard. “We stopped being children when our parents were murdered.”

“Stop.” Marcel’s voice went low.

Harrison laughed. “Why? Because this is your deepest wound? It’s his too.” He pointed at me. “Mine too. Kingston’s most of all. So if we’re going to pretend this is only about a crest packet, I’d rather leave.”

Deep down, I had known this might happen. That was the part I hated most. The lack of shock about it. Because Kingston did not see Nikolai and Vince as cousins.

He saw them as brothers. Maybe more than brothers. Villain had raised him. We had visited. That was the ugliest truth in the room.

Marcel tapped the file once with two fingers. “Nikolai submitted the resignation without speaking to me.”

Harrison’s mouth twisted. “He has custody.”

“He had custody,” Marcel snapped. “That does not make him king of Kingston’s bloodline.”

“It made him the person packing his school trunks.”

Marcel stood.

I moved before he could step around the desk.

“Sit,” I said.

His gaze cut to me. I held it.

“Do not start a fight with Harrison over the one thing he was right about before either of us were.”

Harrison had been fourteen when our parents were murdered. He was fifteen when we gave Kingston up. He stood in the hall with red eyes and called us bastards.

I was seventeen at the murder. Eighteen when I backed Marcel’s call. Marcel was eighteen when our parents were killed. Nineteen when he made the decision that sat in his chest to this day.

I opened the file again because looking at paper was easier than looking at my brothers.

“Station after academy is listed as Villain.”

“Yes,” Marcel said.

Harrison frowned. “They already put his four-year station down?”

A crest was presentation. Symbolic, but not empty. A four-year station was training, with future authority.