Page 81 of Blood and Thorns

Sebastian

I was hyperaware of Arabella walking towards the lift, my body coiled so tightly as she was escorted by Miles. I should’ve lost interest by now, but there I was, watching until she disappeared before I could return my attention to anything else.

I’d been in the middle of one of my episodes, my demons howling so loud I’d almost knocked out my own cousin just to purge some of the fucking tension, and then I turned to her, and the roar of violence quietened. Just like that.

Langdon shouldn’t have brought her, not when I was so close to the fucking abyss.

And yet rather than run, she’d tilted her head back, a flash of disobedience in those fucking eyes that had me wanting to bury my face between her legs just to hear her scream.

“So, is anyone going to tell me why I’m here?” Alexander snarled, one of few men to ever speak to me like that and survive. The only reason I hadn’t killed him yet was because he was blood, and Caden had stopped me. “Caden, you were supposed to keep him under control!”

Purposely ignoring my uncle for the moment, just to calm down, I moved towards Langdon, realising his eyes were vacant.

“Lang,” I whispered, nudging him slightly. There was a moment his eyes weren’t so empty but instead widened and panicked as he relived the past, and then his usual, malicious spark returned.

“Let’s get this party started,” he signed, looking around. “Wait, where’s Ara?”

I pinned him with a glare, and he simply smirked in return. Bastard knew what he was doing.

“See, this is why you need to go back to the therapist, Sebastian.” Alexander touched Caden’s nose, who was ignoring the fact that it was still bleeding. “Acting like animals isn’t going to help your CPTSD. I’ll ring him in the morning and get you a new prescription.”

I wanted to laugh at the comment, Alexander yet again pushing therapy and drugs on me, believing I was like this because of my trauma. When in reality I was trained to be this bloodthirsty. First by my father, who’d been grooming me from five years old to take over his position within the Le Milieu. And then by Alexander himself, who encouraged me to carve my name amongst the powerful men of the underworld just so he didn’t have to get his own hands dirty.

Caden grabbed his dad’s wrist. “You want to tell us what happened to Margot?”

“Margot?” Alexander’s eyes narrowed, his upper lip curling into a snarl. “She’s dead.”

“You sound confident in that,” I said, flexing my hand to relieve some of the ache across my knuckles.

“Of course I’m confident.” He turned to face me. “Do you really think I’d leave the woman who’d murdered my sister alive?”

Langdon began to sign, his hands frantic in his anger.

“He called you a lying cunt,” I translated, and Caden simply dragged a hand down his face in exasperation.

Alexander’s face turned red, his eyes almost bulging. “You little bastard.” He pointed a finger towards Langdon, taking a step closer. “I should’ve left you to die in that house. You’re not even my–”

His words ended with a screech when I broke the finger pointed towards Lang. My uncle grunted in pain, and rather than stop me, Caden simply snarled, “Speak to him like that again, and I’ll kill you myself.”

Alexander snapped his mouth closed, his anger paling against that of his son’s.

“Now, let’s start this again, shall we?” I continued, enjoying the way his pupils dilated. He may act like he was the big man, but in reality, he was nothing compared to me.

Caden handed his father the photograph, which showed an older woman smiling. Her hair was still a copper red, with strands of grey that showed her age. There were lines on her face that weren’t there twenty years ago, but it was definitely my father’s mistress.

“Impossible,” Alexander whispered, curling his broken finger protectively to his chest. “She looks just like Margot Laurent.”

I barely stopped myself from reacting to the name, the edges of my peripheral darkening as I fought the memories that threatened to consume me.

“She’s supposed to be dead,” I snapped, my voice so cold it was arctic.

“Sheisdead, I made sure of it.” Alexander’s head whipped up, and I believed the anger that burned his eyes. “How do you know it’s even real? We all know how easy you like to make enemies, Sebastian.”

“He didn’t even fucking do it himself,” Langdon signed,but rather than comment at the lack of translation, Alexander simply clenched his jaw. “He lied to us.”

Caden reached for his discarded shirt, using the fabric to wipe the blood and sweat from his face. “Let him speak,” he signed back, his movements rigid.

“I thought this was an open conversation?” Alexander growled, a vein popping in his head. He’d had the opportunity to learn sign when the doctors first told us of the damage to Langdon’s vocal cords, but he decided it was beneath him.