Filed to story: Watch Out, I’m The Lady Boss (Eleanor & Sebastian) Book PDF Free
He ventured, “Sebastian, why don’t we deal with this later, yeah? Let’s get Isobel upstairs before she catches pneumonia.”
“She can leave when she answers the question,” Sebastian said flatly.
His eyes never left her face.
“Will the tape back you up? Or not?”She blinked. Fast.
He could almost see the internal map in her brain, scrambling to remember where the cameras were.
He didn’t fill the silence.
Just stared.
She buckled.
Not visibly.
But he saw it.
The flinch behind the eyes.
The slight hitch in her breath.
He stepped forward.
Only a fraction.
Twenty centimetres, maybe.
But it was enough.
Isobel jolted like she’d been shocked, stumbled back onto the sofa without meaning to.
Her throat worked around words that never made it out.
Quentin dropped into a crouch beside her, resting one hand of her shoulder.
Even he looked uneasy now.
“Come on, honey,” he said, voice a notch too high. Just tell Sebastian what you saw, then we can go get you changed.”Isobel licked her lips.
A small voice piped up from the far side of the room.
“I saw what happened!”The voice was high-pitched, clear.
It sliced through the tension like someone’d just popped a balloon a silent church.
Sebastian’s head snapped around.
The kid couldn’t have been more than seven.
She wore a daffodil-yellow dress speckled with tiny white blossoms and had pigtails so neatly braided they looked vacuum- sealed.
She looked right back at him, completely unbothered by the fact that every single adult was now gaping at her.
A woman bolted to her side and slapped a hand gently over the girl’s mouth.
“Don’t talk nonsense, Freya,” the woman hissed, frantic.
“You don’t know anything.”She forced a shaky smile in Sebastian’s direction.
“She’s just a kid. She doesn’t understand-“
“Let her finish,” Sebastian said.
The woman’s lips kept twitching like she wanted to protest, but all she could do was shut up and move to the side.
Freya jabbed a finger straight at Isobel.
“I was playing out back just now. I saw you talking to that pretty lady, but she didn’t wanna talk to you. She tried to leave, and you chased her. Then you slipped and fell into the pool, and you dragged her in with you. You lied!”Isobel blanched.
Quentin’s jaw dropped.
“What? Isobel, is that true?”She forced a shaky smile.
“Of course it’s not. She’s just a kid. You know how kids are-they love making things up.”Quentin seized on that like a drowning man to a rope.
“Exactly. She’s six. She doesn’t know what she’s saying!”Freya’s eyes burned.
“I saw it!”She whipped off her tiny crossbody bag, unzipped it with furious little hands, and pulled out a yellow phone covered in sparkly stickers.
“I was filming a puppy in the yard and caught the whole thing by accident! Look!”
“What?” Isobel’s voice turned strangled.
Sebastian held out his hand.
Freya handed over the phone obediently.
Silence swallowed the room as Sebastian watched the video.
Centre screen: a playful Golden Retriever puppy.
Top right corner: two figures.
Eleanor with her back turned.
Isobel lunging.
A sidestep.
A slip.
Isobel’s land latching onto Eleanor’s leg and fall.
Both went under.
Sebastian played it again.
Then he held up the phone to Isobel’s face, pausing on the exact frame of her grabbing Eleanor.
Got anything to say for yourself?”Isobel’s throat bobbed.
Her mouth opened.
Closed.
Opened again.
Quentin rushed in before she could.
“Sebastian, I didn’t know, I swear I just believed whatever she told me-
“I panicked! Isobel blurted, her voice shrill and pitched high.
“It happened so fast-I might’ve tripped-I don’t remember exactly. Eleanor was beside me, I just… reacted! It was instinct! I didn’t mean to drag her in, I swear-“The lies tumbled out, quick and panicked.
A moment ago, you stood here and made everyone believe Eleanor pulled you in. I gave you the chance to tell the truth. You didn’t take it. Not until the video exposed you.”Around them, the crowd collectively stopped breathing.
More than a few had been on the receiving end of that tone before Sebastian’s calm, cold finality.
The tone of a man delivering final judgement with no reprieve, no appeal.
Isobel stood frozen, mascara beginning to crust at the corners of her eyes.
She turned to Quentin, clutching his hand.
Quentin looked at her, confusion, betrayal, disbelief, irritation, all fighting for space on his face.
Then he glanced at Sebastian.
Rock. Hard place.
But he never got the chance to choose.
A man and a woman stepped out from the crowd.
The woman’s voice was brisk, clipped.
“She has nothing to do with Quentin.”
“Mum!” Quentin choked.
“Shut up!” she snapped, then turned to Sebastian, voice quivering with both fear and urgency.
“She’s been playing us all!”The man yanked Quentin away from Isobel, gripping his arm tight.
“You’re done with her.”Quentin broke up with her,” his mother added quickly.
“Didn’t you Quentin? She’s nothing to do with us anymore!”Their words had no effect on Sebastian.
His gaze flicked to Quentin, then to his parents.
“If you hadn’t brought her here, none of this would’ve happened. She’s the culprit. You’re the accomplices.”Quentin’s mother blanched at the implication.
She stormed up to Isobel and slapped her hard across the face.
You troublemaker,” she spat.
“You dragged us into this mess. Now apologise to Sebastian!”She glanced back at Sebastian, seeking approval.
He gave her nothing.
The slap jolted Isobel out of her daze.