Page 53 of The Broken Queen
Was I the only person who didn’t walk in with a fucking weapon?
“What are you doing?” Scotty asked, not taking his attention off Presley.
She had the look in her eye, the one that worried me. “You will not stand there and tell me it’s my fault Adrian was killed. Not when you’re the one who set this all up.”
Scotty raised his palms as if to calm her down. “I shouldn’t have worded it like that. I’m sorry.”
I watched her finger barely trace a line over the trigger as if she were considering pulling it.
“Don’t call me Lánya anymore.” Her voice shook with the smallest amount of rage.
Scotty waited, but after a few seconds, he nodded. “Fine, but will you at least come back to the manor and talk to your parents about this idea of yours of going back to Italy?”
“We’ll take her back.” I stepped forward, placing my palm on Presley’s arm so she’d lower her gun.
“Don’t speak for me, Gio. I’m not a fucking child anymore.”
Scotty laughed, then stepped backward. “You’re not even nineteen yet, Presley. You’ve had about six seconds of being an adult; that’s not exactly a lot of life experience.”
Her gun was back up, aimed at his forehead. “My knuckles are permanently scarred from how frequently they busted open. I got frost bite when I was ten. I dislocated my jaw when I was eleven, fought off six grown men at one time when I was just twelve. Fuck you and your life experience. Fuck you for stealing my childhood and using me however you wanted to use me.”
Then, without any warning, she moved as quick as lightning with tossing the gun up and catching it by the barrel, the butt of the handle was used against the side of Scotty’s head. She hit so hard, he went down immediately, and he remained there until she stepped over his body and exited through the barn doors.
I stoodwith my back to the wall in the dining hall. The place we ate as a family when the time called for it. Leather couches and armchairs were scattered around the room in a design that looked intentional. I always liked the long vines of greenery that stretched along the glass windows and mixed in with the iron beams along theback wall. Kingston sat perched against one of the long side tables that had copious amounts of alcohol stationed across it.
Presley stood with her arms crossed and her back to the brick wall across the room. She’d never stood there before, during one of our meetings, but she seemed skittish, or like she needed to ensure she knew exactly who it was that was standing behind her at all times. My gut told me she didn’t trust Scotty, especially after what happened in the barn.
“Thanks for agreeing to meet,” Presley said, meeting the eyes of my parents and hers. Alex was sitting on a leather couch with a bottle of water in her hand. Scotty had woken and made his way here, and now held an ice pack to his temple.
“I’m glad you said something, honey. We need to talk about the breach that happened yesterday,” Kyle said from his place on one of the couches. He had his wife, Rylie, under his arm, while she watched Presley with concern etched along her face.
“Yes, well, the reason I wanted to meet was to explain that I will be taking Adrian’s body back to Italy to lay him to rest there.”
Kyle glanced over at Scotty briefly before his wife slowly got up from the couch and took a step toward her daughter.
“Honey, I know you’re struggling with this. I can’t even imagine after what you were forced to?—”
Presley’s eyes slammed closed while interrupting, “Mom, I’m fine. This isn’t an emotional decision; it’s a pragmatic one.”
“This is in no way pragmatic, Presley. You’re feeling grief, and it’s not logical. Grief will cause mothers to crawl inside graves just to hold their children. It would have you sit in a blizzard if it meant you could feel someone familiar to you. It’s why you used to sleep in the twins’ beds when they were gone, all those months.”
That was why everything smelled like her when we got back.
I hated how pink Presley’s face became and how Kingston shifted on his feet, while he glared at Scotty.
“I understand what grief is, Scotty. This isn’t that…I am sad that Adrian is gone. He was a good friend of mine. I even loved him in my own way, and I could have been happy with him, I think, but his death isn’t causing me grief beyond logic. I’m not so blinded by pain that I can’t see if this is a safe decision or not. I know it’s not safe, but I’m determined to do it anyway.”
Scotty shifted the ice pack, revealing the purple bruise that Presley left him with.
“Well, the answer is no. It’s too dangerous.”
Presley shrugged. “I’m not asking for permission. I’m informing all of you.”
Kyle tapped his hand down against the leather armrest of the chair. “What’s your plan to get past Markos and his men? We just barely got you and Alex out of there.”
“Wegot them out,” Kingston spoke up, pointing at his chest and then over at me.
Kyle glanced our way before over at his daughter again. “Yes, I understand that, but she doesn’t have access to El Peligro again. She’ll need?—”
