Page 119 of Release Me

“Sit down, precious,” he urges, his hand on my shoulder to encourage me to lower myself into the seat. I do as he says, though I’m moving slowly, my eyes on his face.

“Sebastian. You have to tell me what’s going on because I’m freaking the fuck out here.”

He drops down onto his haunches between my legs and takes my trembling hands in his. “Everything is okay, Nadia. You don’t have to freak out.”

Why is he so calm?

How is he so calm?

I don’t get it. I don’t get anything right now.

“Of course I have to freak out,” I hiss. “You came home with a gun in your hand. I’ve never even heard you talk about a gun and now you know how to fire them? And you shot someone?”

“Beau, I shot Beau.”

Now things make even less sense.

“When did you…how did you find Beau?”

“Russ found him.”

“Did he also give you the gun?”

Sebastian nods, his eyes trailing over my face, cataloging every reaction to the information he’s giving me. “Yes, Russ gave me the gun.”

“And you used it to shoot Beau.”

This is the part that makes the least sense to me. The gun I can wrap my head around. Russ helping with procuring the gun tracks. Sebastian coming face to face with Beau is where it all falls apart. I can’t picture the two of them in the same room, but I should have known this would happen. I should have known that after the attack Sebastian wouldn’t let it rest.

“I used it to kill Beau,” he says, countering one hard to accept statement with another. I shake my head, tears of disbelief and fear cascading down my cheeks.

“No,” I whimper. “Sebastian, no. You didn’t. Tell me you’re joking.”

His brows pull together, and I read confusion and maybe even a bit of anger in his eyes. He doesn’t understand why I’m upset, why I would shed tears for a man who spent the last decade abusing me. The tears aren’t for Beau, though.

They’re for Sebastian.

They’re for me.

They’re for the child I’ll have to raise on my own because their father squandered his life and freedom on erasing a man who wasn’t worth the time or effort.

“You didn’t kill him, right? Please tell me you didn’t kill him.”

Instead of answering me, Sebastian lets go of my hand and reaches into his pocket, pulling out a small piece of gold jewelry that he places in the palm of my hand. With quivering breaths and a pounding heart, I look down and find a signet ring with a M in the middle.

It’s Beau’s ring.

“Oh, God,” I wail, dropping it on the ground. “Sebastian. Do you understand what you’ve done? Do you know what this means?”

“Yes, Nadia, it means that he won’t ever hurt you again.”

He’s right. Beau is dead, and the cloud of darkness his life has cast over my head for almost half of my life has disappeared. But that doesn’t matter to me right now.

“That’s true, Sebastian, but it also means you’re going to prison. That you won’t get to be there when our baby is born. That you’ll spend the rest of your life behind bars, away from the family you’ve risked everything to protect. Did you even consider that when you tracked him down and murdered him in cold blood?”

Both of his hands come up, and he cradles my face between warm palms. “Of course, I considered it, precious. I considered everything. I had a plan in place before I stepped foot inside the building where he and Vince were hiding out.”

“Vince?” I swallow the bile rising up in my throat, picturing Sebastian’s aunt’s face and the features she shares with his mother seconds before images of Vince’s corpse fill my mind. “Vince was there too?”

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