Every minute that passed by as the carriage sped through the almost barren streets of London at midnight felt torturous to Dorian. How had he gotten her away from the safety of Victoria’s house? Had he ambushed her? Lured her out somehow?
As he arrived at Covent Garden, the tea shop looked closed, but Dorian knew it was not. Even to an untrained eye, the hulking shadows of guards in the nooks showed it heavily armed. Dorian primed his pistol before he jumped out of the carriage and walked to the steps.
He hurried past the men in the shadows, who made no attempts to stop him, then leaped up the steps. A footman opened the door at the top, and he barged in, then took the steps up to the room above.
This was where the Serpents had meetings at times; he kicked the door in to the round room, his pistol up and cocked.
“You do not want to do that, Beaumont,” Sterling warned, as he reposed in his seat. His pistol was on the table, inches away from where Evelina sat.
To his left was Nathan, and to his right was Drake; behind them were a veritable army of bodyguards. Dorian did not have to do the calculations; he would never get out of here alive if hedidstart shooting.
Ignoring Sterling, he faced Evelina; her face was marked with tears.
“Evelina—”
“He told me everything, Dorian,” she whispered hollowly. “He told me about my father, about the inheritance, about how my aunt and uncle hid it from me,” she choked. “He even told me about the house in St John's Wood being owned by Ash… a-and about the boy you killed.”
“You don’t understand,” he tried desperately, his gaze flitting to Sterling and then back to her. “Wh-when I was in his gang, I told him I wanted out. He told me the only way I can leave his operation is if I fought my way out. I agreed. I trounced the boy, but Carrington said it was death or nothing.”
There, her voice hitched, “Was it… was it Ash?”
He lowered the pistol and went to her. “No, Evelina. It was not Ash.”
“Are yousure, Beaumont?” Sterling taunted him. “Do you even know who you are?”
His anger flared. “Yes, I damn well know who I am, and Ash was dead long before I bought the house!”
She gasped. “And you—you pretended to have someone look for him, knowing he was dead? H—how could you be so- so- evil.”
“Evelina, you don’t know the whole truth—"
Her palm met his face with a stinging slap so hard that he saw stars. “I know enough,” she spat before stalking out of the room. “Stay away from me!”
Rolling his neck to Sterling, he worked his jaw, then lifted the barrel to the man, “You’ll pay for that.”
“Don’t do it, Beaumont,” Drake warned him. “This is not a battle you want to fight.”
“No,” he kept the man in his sight, “it’s a battle I want to end. One I should have ended a long time ago.”
“If you kill him, it will be incumbent on us to make sure you see the noose,” Nathan said. “Do not do it, Beaumont. You can get your revenge another way.”
His finger trembled on the trigger, he could see that irritating smirk wiped off on a cold, dead body. He ground his jaw and taking aim, let a bullet fly. The bullet slammed into the wall inches away from Sterling’s face.
Lowering the weapon, Dorian muttered, “That is not a threat, that is a promise.”
“Let's see if you keep to it,” Carrington taunted him.
On the way back to his home, Dorian knew Evelina would not be there. Why would she? What sensible woman would walk back into a house of lies, knowing there was no truth to be left for her there?
She was gone, because in his effort to protect her from all the harmful elements surrounding her, he’d lost her to his dishonesty, his omissions, and his pedantry.
The pain he’d seen in Evelina’s eyes after she’d delivered that well-deserved slap… The one emotion he did not want to ever see in her eyes had been heavy in them—disgust.
Why didn’t I trust her?
If only he had not fallen back on his old ways of doing everything by himself, if only he had taken the risk and told her the truth about everything from the start, they would not be in this position.
She would have understood, she would have worked with him. Instead, he’d held everything inside, kept everything to his chest, and never showed his hand.
