“Your father created an iron-clad trust for a reason,” Peyton says angrily. “He wanted his daughter and her descendants to be provided for regardless of who she married, and I’m here to honor that man’s dying wish. And neither one of you lying motherfuckers is going to stop me.”
Fuck, now she’s lumped me in her Wintervale pool of enemies. I can’t blame her, but it stings nonetheless.
"Perhaps, but I'm offering you something Blake can’t…a future. Safety. A place in this world that doesn't require you to trust a man who's already betrayed you once."
"By signing away my power and letting you control me?” Peyton's voice is exhausted. "No, I’m not doing that either."
"Then what will you do?" Edmund asks. "You're alone. Surrounded by enemies. With no allies you can trust. Not even your own father. If you’re wondering, the moment he learned about the trust, he immediately tried to figure out how he could take advantage of it like the reptile that he is.”
"I'll figure it out." She pretends as if the information he just delivered didn’t hurt her, but I know better. Then she moves toward the door, doesn't look at me. "I always do."
"Peyton, you’re breaking our agreement,” I reach for her arm in a desperate attempt to remind her that she’s supposed to stick close to me no matter what. There’s still a huge possibility of danger tonight. Silas is still at play.
She jerks away like my touch burns. “I said, don't touch me. The one true thing Edmund said tonight is that I can’t trust anyone. You played me, Blake Delano, but I won’t make the same mistake twice.”
I lie for a living and have never felt any sort of way about it, but in this moment, I feel like complete shit. I’d been avoiding this conversation, this confession, since the moment I spotted her on the terrace. I’ve never regretted anything more.
"Stay away from me, Blake. I mean it. This partnership…it's done."
She walks out.
I move to follow, but Edmund's voice stops me.
"Let her go. She needs time to process and realize that her only real option is to accept my offer."
"She'll never accept it."
"She will because the alternative is elimination, and despite her brave words, Peyton wants to live." Edmund pours himself more scotch. "You, on the other hand, your uncle is waiting. You should go and see about him.”
My patience for this arrogant son of a bitch has come to an end. I pull my gun and aim it at his head. It would be so easy to shoot him and put him six feet under. The world would be a better fucking place for it.
“You should be more worried about where my uncle is than me,” I tell him coolly.
“You want to shoot me, Delano?” He doesn’t even flinch.
“You’ve threatened her life twice tonight. It would be my honor to pull the trigger.”
“She's safer in my ballroom tonight than she is with you." He mocks with a cruel smile. "After all, you're the one with a history of getting the women who trust you killed."
The words hit like a physical blow because they ring true. My mother trusted me to be strong after my father died. She drank herself to death while I was off trying to be the man the family wanted. Lila asked me to help her. She died alone because I was too indifferent to act.
And now Peyton?—
"Get out of my house, Blake. Go back to your uncle and play whatever role he's written for you. But stay away from Peyton. You've done enough damage."
I step closer to him and aim the gun at the center of his forehead, pressing it into his skin. “No, you stay the fuck away from her, or I promise you, I will burn all this shit down with you in it.”
I leave the study, move through corridors that feel like they're closing in, and emerge into the gala where Christmas music plays, and people laugh, and nothing looks like the nightmare it is.
I scan the area for Peyton, find her near the windows with Helena. The Frost Society matriarch has her arm around Peyton's shoulders and is speaking quietly, intently. Protecting her. Good. If she doesn’t trust me, at least there’s someone she can lean on.
Talia appears at my elbow. "What happened? Why is Peyton over there, and you are over here?”
"Edmund told her something about me that she’s pissed about.”
“What?”
“I met her mother.”
