Chapter 4
Everett didn’t flinch. He stood tall, the lantern light carving the severe line of his throat as he slowly unbuttoned his collar, loosening his black silk tie with a fluid, dangerous calm.
“Rome?” Everett echoed, his voice dropping into a register so cold it was venomous. “October, two years ago? Is that the sacred memory you wrap yourself in at night to feel righteous?”
“He told me everything,” Landon said, his voice trembling with furious vindication. “He told me how you controlled his representation. How you threatened to pull his studio lease if he didn't produce twelve canvases for the Venice Biennale. You treated him like a thoroughbred horse you owned outright. He took fifty milligrams of temazepam that night because he said your name felt like an iron collar tightening around his windpipe!”
Landon leaned forward, planting both hands on the dark wood of the desk, glaring across at Everett. “Deny it. Look me in the eye and deny that you drove him to that floor.”
Everett took a single, measured step closer. He didn’t drop his gaze. Instead, he reached into his breast pocket and drew out a thick leather folio bound with an elastic strap. With a flick of his wrist, he tossed it onto the desk between them. It hit the surface with a dull thud.
“Open it,” Everett said quietly.
Landon hesitated, his jaw tight. “What is this?”
“Open it, Landon. Or are you only brave when you’re preaching from the pulpit of your own delusion?”
Landon snatched the folio, undoing the strap. Inside were not letters or sketches, but neatly organized bank ledgers, medical invoices, and carbon copies of confidential wire transfers stamped by a private clinic in Lausanne, Switzerland.
Landon’s eyes flicked over the dates. *October 14th. October 16th. October 20th.* The exact week of the Rome breakdown.
“What am I looking at?” Landon asked, his brow furrowing as the numbers blurred before his eyes.
“You’re looking at the three hundred thousand dollars I transferred to Dr. Marianne Weber to charter a private medical flight into Ciampino airport while you were sitting on that tiled floor playing the sensitive poet,” Everett said, his voice low, unrelenting, cutting through Landon’s defenses like a scalpel. “You held his hand and whispered sweet platitudes about how cruel the world was. While you were basking in his artistic suffering, I was keeping the Italian press from finding out he’d tried to slit his wrists with a palette knife.”
Landon felt the floor tilt beneath his feet. “He… he told me it was an accidental overdose of sleep medication.”
“Of course he did,” Everett sneered, stepping around the corner of the desk, closing the distance between them until Landon could feel the ambient heat coming off Everett’s broad frame. “Because Julian was terrified that if you saw the grotesque, ugly reality of his illness, you’d stop looking at him like a tragic masterpiece. You wanted a tortured muse, Vance. I had to deal with the vomit, the psychosis, and the bills.”
“No,” Landon whispered, clutching the edge of the desk, his knuckles turning white. “No, that’s your version. You bought his silence. You bought his doctors to keep him compliant, to keep him dependent on you!”
“Dependent?” Everett let out a harsh, rasping bark of laughter. He grabbed Landon’s shoulder, spinning him around so violently that Landon’s hip slammed against the edge of the heavy desk.
Landon gasped, raising a hand to push him away, but Everett seized Landon’s wrist in an iron grip, pressing him backward over the cluttered rosewood surface.
“You think I wanted him dependent?” Everett snarled, leaning down until their faces were inches apart. Landon could see the broken red capillaries in Everett’s grey eyes, the raw, unhinged grief that Everett had kept locked behind his aristocratic mask all morning. “I begged him to leave Blackwood Ridge! I bought him a villa in Provence under his own name! I set up a blind trust so he wouldn't owe me a single cent! Do you know what he did, Landon? He tore up the deed! He threw it in the fireplace and screamed that if he left, you would find him and drag him back into the gutter of your bohemian fantasies!”
“You’re lying!” Landon spat, his voice cracking. He struggled against Everett’s weight, but Everett was heavier, broader, using his torso to pin Landon against the desk. Landon’s heart was hammering like a trapped bird against Everett’s chest, the rhythm wild and erratic. “He loved the city! He loved the life we shared before you bought him!”
“He hated it!” Everett roared, his composure finally shattering completely. The sound reverberated through the empty room. “He hated every pretentious café, every parasitic art critic who fed on his blood, and most of all, he hated the way you looked at him—like he was a puzzle you were noble enough to solve!”
“Shut up!” Landon shoved hard against Everett’s chest, but Everett didn’t budge.
Instead, Everett leaned down further, his forehead nearly touching Landon’s, his breath coming hot and ragged against Landon’s mouth. The proximity was overwhelming, terrifyingly intimate. Landon could feel every ridge of Everett’s chest against his own, the violent shudder running through the older man’s muscles.
For six years, they had circled each other like rabid beasts around Julian’s sickbed, exchanging venomous glares across crowded galleries, trading bitter insults in hospital waiting rooms. But right here, locked against the desk in the dark, the air between them turned molten, suffocating with a heat that had nothing to do with grief and everything to do with the repressed, poisonous attraction that had festered between them for years.
Everett’s eyes dropped to Landon’s lips. The fury in his expression suddenly warped into something dark, possessive, and starving.
“You’ve been fighting me for six years, Vance,” Everett whispered, his voice shaking with a dangerous, gravelly tremor. His free hand came up, not to strike, but to cup the side of Landon’s neck, his fingers digging into Landon’s skin with rough, desperate pressure. “Every letter Julian wrote to you, he showed to me. Did you know that? Every time you told him I was a monster, he brought the letter to my study. He wanted to see if I’d get angry. He wanted to see if I cared enough to kill you.”
Landon froze, a cold jolt of horror and adrenaline shooting through his spine. “He… he showed you my letters?”
“Every single one,” Everett breathed, his thumb pressing hard against the pulse fluttering wildly in the hollow of Landon’s throat. “I know your handwriting better than my own. I know the way you turn a phrase. I know how you beg when you think no one is watching.”
Landon’s breath hitched. His eyes widened, searching the dark intensity of Everett’s face. “You… you kept them?”
Everett’s fingers tightened on Landon’s throat—not choking, but holding him with a fierce, suffocating claim that left Landon completely breathless.
“I burned every one of them,” Everett rasped, his face descending until his mouth hovered a fraction of an inch above Landon’s lips, his voice dropping into an agonizing whisper. “Because every time I read your words, Vance, I didn't want to destroy Julian. I wanted to come to London, break down your door, and rip that self-righteous sneer off your mouth with my bare hands.”
