Page 42 of The Broken Queen

“Nothing, just a family being sweet.” I took a sip of my latte and my eyes rolled to the back of my head.So good.

“Right. Well, back to our earlier conversation, you need to tell Slade.”

I shook my head, “No. You don’t understand. He just came back and he came back specifically for Julianna. We didn’t end well. He hates me.”

I took another drink but I was wishing it was stronger...something else.

“It doesn’t matter how he feels, it matters how you feel. You need to get it out in the open, tell him before you walk down that aisle. If you don’t, you’ll regret it and wonder what would’ve happened.”

I wondered all the time what would’ve happened if things were different. If he didn’t hate me as much as he did. The way he walked away from me that night, as if I was an insignificant ant on the bottom of his shoe...

“You went to the cops?”

I had just put Julianna to bed and walked out of her bedroom when I ran right into a fuming boyfriend. He was so mad there was steam coming out of his ears.

My eyebrows scrunched together,“What are you talking about?”

“There’s a warrant out for my arrest, Raven. That can only mean one thing. You framed me for your mom’s murder.” His words were a heavy blow to my gut. He was shoving a knife inside of my chest and twisting it.

I couldn’t say anything. How could he accuse me of something so horrible? Was he okay? He wasn’t acting like his normal self. Did something else happen that I wasn’t aware of?

His arms were stiff, and his hands were curled into fists. His silver gaze was so dark that it almost looked like little hell’s fires were inside his eyes. He was looking at me like I was someone he didn’t recognize. Like I betrayed him.

The hallway was dark, there was no one around but me and him. It was late, around eleven, and I was ready to get to bed.Julianna had been sick, and it wore me out. I didn’t have time for the silly games him and Elijah normally played on me.

“I didn’t, I wouldn’t do that! You didn’t do it! I’m not stupid, Slade.” My emotions were all over the place, how could he accuse me of this? I would never do that, and I knew he didn’t do it.

Before I could blink, his hand was wrapped around my neck. My eyes grew wide, he was squeezing me tight, like he wanted to kill me. I was his girlfriend, his daughter’s mother. Why the hell would he be trying to kill me? I didn’t frame him.

I clawed at his hands as I heard keys jingling in the distance. “Please,” I whispered. Something in him cracked, and he backed away from me.

I couldn’t read what he was thinking. He was so angry, and his face was a stone mask that I couldn’t figure out what was going through his mind.

“Tell my daughter that I love her.”

A piece of my heart cracked..

“Tell her I will come back...for her.”

Another crack.

More keys jingling in the distance and things started piecing together. The cops were coming for him and someone had let them through the door. No, that couldn’t happen. He didn’t do it!

They were getting closer, and all the sudden I heard crying in the background. My stomach clenched, they couldn’t take him away. He was everything to me. But why did he believe I would do something like that to him?

Mother’s murder was never solved.

Murdering the Queen was serious business. Death penalty business. I wouldn’t do that to the man I loved. We had a daughter together, she couldn’t grow up without a father.

He looked at me with no emotion. It was like I was a stranger, no longer the woman he loved. No longer the woman he was devoted to. It was a switch that flipped inside of him. There was a line between love and hate and he had crossed it. There was no going back now.

“You and I are finished.”

Those few words broke every resolve I had. I crumbled to the floor as the cops came running in, shoving him to the ground and putting his hands behind his head.

I screamed as they dragged him away. I realized that it was over. Julianna was crying for me, yet I couldn’t go to her. I sat there on the floor, unmoving as I watched them take the love of my life away for Mother’s murder.

This was something I would never come back from.

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