Chapter 3
“He called you,” Everett said softly. It wasn't a question. It was a cold, venomous knife wound. “And what did you tell him, Landon? Did you tell him to run to you? Did you promise him another romantic little hideaway where he could slowly tear his own mind apart while you played the benevolent protector?”
“I told him I was coming to get him,” Landon whispered, holding Everett’s gaze with every ounce of defiance he possessed. “I told him that by morning, he would be free of you.”
Everett leaned across the console. The proximity was suffocating; Landon could feel the heat radiating from Everett’s body, the electric charge of their mutual fury so potent it tasted like ozone.
“He didn't wait for morning, did he?” Everett whispered, his lips inches from Landon’s. “He died alone in that studio at three a.m. His heart stopped while he was packing his bags to leave for you. You gave him hope, Vance. And hope was the one thing his weak heart couldn't survive.”
Landon struck.
It was pure instinct, a violent eruption of grief and insulted righteousness. His fist slammed into Everett’s chest, catching the lapel of his heavy coat. But before Landon could push him away, Everett’s hands came up like iron clamps, seizing Landon’s lapels in return and yanking him forward until their foreheads almost collided.
For three seconds, neither of them breathed.
Landon’s eyes burned into Everett’s. Up close, he could see the shattered exhaustion in the older man’s face, the slight tremor in the jaw he kept clamped so tightly shut. And worse—infinitely worse—Landon felt the jolt of an unbearable, perverse heat coil low in his gut. It was sick. It was obscene. Julian was dead, Julian’s casket was barely cold in the ground, and here Landon was, chest-to-chest with Julian’s tormentor, his skin burning everywhere Everett touched him.
Everett’s eyes dropped to Landon’s parted lips. His breathing hitched, a dark, heavy hunger breaking through the ice of his expression for a fraction of a second—a hunger that had nothing to do with Julian, and everything to do with the war they had waged against each other for years.
“Get off me,” Landon hissed, though his voice lacked the force it had possessed moments ago.
Everett didn’t let go immediately. His thumbs grazed the edge of Landon’s jawline through the wool of his scarf, a rough, possessive friction that made Landon shiver despite himself.
“We’re going inside,” Everett said, his voice dropping into a raspy, gravelly whisper that settled deep in Landon’s bones. “We are going into his study. We are opening that safe. And before this night ends, Landon Vance, you are going to learn what your ‘clean hands’ were actually covered in.”
Everett released him abruptly and shoved open the driver’s side door, stepping out into the pouring rain.
Landon remained in the passenger seat for a long moment, clutching his own coat around him, trying to stop the violent trembling in his hands. His heart was hammering against his ribs like a trapped bird.
*He’s lying,* Landon told himself frantically, watching Everett’s tall, dark figure march up the stone steps toward the heavy front door of Blackwood Ridge. *He’s a monster trying to drag me down into the mud with him so he doesn't have to drown alone. Julian trusted me. Julian loved me. I was the only good thing in his life.*
Strengthened by the surge of righteous indignation, Landon pushed his door open and stepped out into the storm.
The wind hit him instantly, icy and violent, whipping his dark hair across his eyes. He slammed the car door and bounded up the stone stairs, following Everett toward the dark mouth of the house.
He would go into the study. He would open the lockbox. And he would force Everett Cross to look upon Julian’s final words until the tyrant broke upon his knees. Landon was certain of it. There was no other truth in this world.
The heavy oak door slammed shut behind them, cutting off the ocean's roar with the brutal finality of a tomb lid falling into place.
Darkness pooled in the vast entrance hall of Blackwood Ridge. The air smelled of cold ash, linseed oil, and old timber soaked through with decades of salt mist. There was no fire in the hearth. No domestic hum. Only the rhythmic rattle of windowpanes against the gale, and the sound of Everett’s heavy boots striking wet flagstones.
Everett didn't wait for Landon. He shrugged out of his soaked cashmere overcoat, throwing it carelessly onto a settee, and strode down the shadowy corridor toward the west wing.
Landon followed, his heart pounding in his throat. Every shadow in the corridor seemed pregnant with Julian’s ghost: an unfinished landscape leaning against the wainscoting, an easel draped in grey linen, jars of dried pigment abandoned on a marble console.
“Turn on a light, Everett,” Landon demanded, unbuttoning his own damp coat with trembling fingers.
“Power’s out along the bluffs,” Everett called back, his deep voice echoing off the cavernous ceiling. A match scraped, spitting a sulfurous spark, followed by the steady yellow flare of a storm lantern.
When Everett turned back, the flame lit the hard, chiseled planes of his face from below, turning his cheekbones into sharp blades and casting his eyes in ink. He held a brass key in his free hand.
“Julian’s private study,” Everett said, stopping before a set of double walnut doors bound with wrought-iron hinges. “He locked it four days before the end. The staff wasn't allowed past this threshold. Neither was I.”
“Because he knew what you would do to his work,” Landon said, stepping up to Everett's shoulder, refusing to yield the physical space between them.
“You think you hold the moral high ground, don't you?” Everett murmured. He inserted the key into the upper lock. It turned with a heavy, grinding groan. “Let’s see how long that sanctimony survives inside this room.”
Everett pushed the doors inward.
The study was cavernous, lined floor to ceiling with dark mahogany bookcases packed with leather-bound art folios, poetry volumes, and scattered sheaves of heavy drawing paper. In the center sat Julian’s massive rosewood desk, covered in stacks of manuscript boxes, unwashed china tea mugs, and dried brushes. At the back, tall arched windows looked out over the churning black water of the Atlantic crashing against the cliffs far below.
A violent draft caught the drapes as they entered, stirring the smell of old tobacco and bitter oil paint.
Landon moved straight toward the desk, driven by a feverish, territorial urgency. “I’m taking his personal diaries. The ones from Rome and Paris. He explicitly told me they were mine to safeguard.”
“He told you what you wanted to hear, Vance,” Everett countered, setting the brass lantern on the desk with a heavy clatter. The warm light pooled between them, reflecting in the polished wood. “You were his romantic escape fantasy. The boy who listened to his weeping, validated his neuroses, and patted yourself on the back for being so terribly enlightened.”
“I saved his life in Rome!” Landon snapped, whirling around. His chest heaved beneath his damp shirt. “You weren't there, Everett! You were sitting in your glass tower in Manhattan trading shares while Julian was lying on a tiled bathroom floor in Trastevere, shaking so hard his teeth were chipping! He didn't call his wealthy benefactor. He called me!”
