The glass in his father’s hand crashed to the marble floor, the sound ricocheting off the walls like a gunshot. For a breathless instant the three of them stared at the mess of jagged shards and the pool of amber liquid spreading on the floor.
Then the duke turned cold, hard eyes on Evan, his face suddenly pale and old. He knew what was coming, but for a second, Evan hoped that for once in his life his father would do the right thing. If only to spare Apollo.
“Send everyone home, and find my wife,” he ordered his footmen, turning on his heel and walking out of the ballroom.
Twenty-Three
It was anticlimactic to walk quietly out of the crowded room and down the hallway leading to his father’s study. Evan felt as if he was in a dream. The family portraits that had been there since he was a child seemed eerily distorted now. As though every one of them was scowling at him for exposing their treachery to the world.
By the time they crossed the threshold into the study, Apollo appeared unwell, his usual easiness gone, his expression grave. It dawned on him that as much as his brother had prepared for this, he could not have anticipated just how vile their father could be.
Apollo’s need to see his mother’s death avenged had brought him here, but Evan didn’t think there was anything that could arm a man against seeing such hate in his own father’s eyes. It could make anyone stumble. But after a lifetime of dealing with his father’s cravenness, Evan was utterly unmoved by the Duke of Annan’s fits of pique. If necessary he would fight this battle for them both.
“Evanston, you will pay for embarrassing me,” his father spat out the moment they entered the room, spittle flying out his mouth.
“We embarrassedyou?” Evan laughed, and it sounded almost hysterical. He turned to Apollo, who was visibly shaken. “When my brother first came to me and revealed what you’d done, I wanted to believe that perhaps you didn’t know. I told myself that there was a possibility you’d really thought your child was dead. That not even you would do something so depraved.” The duke’s mouth moved without speaking, and for an instant Evan considered the room they were in. The elegant drapery made in the finest damask, the exquisite moldings on the ceiling, the lustrous dark wood tables and supple leather on the Chesterfield chairs. The fireplace made with red Languedoc marble. Every luxury and comfort imaginable for someone who did not deserve it.
How many lives had been laid to waste so that the Dukes of Annan could sit in this room?
“You’re a fucking monster,” Evan muttered, disgusted.
His father threw his head back, roaring with laughter.
“I’m the monster? I did what I had to for this family, to keep this linealive.” The older man’s words were fueled with the fervency that had always terrified Evan. “My own father forgot his obligations and squandered our fortune for his so-called cause.” That last word was delivered with absolute disgust. “And I made sacrifices to fix it, even if I had to put my conscience aside to fulfill my duty.”
“The duty of lying, stealing and exploiting others so you can live in opulence,” Evan said woodenly.
His father’s lips turned up in a bitter smile that chilled Evan to his very core.
“The duty of thedukedom. And now like a fool you’ve gone and thrown away your own legacy. I knew that deluded need of yours to be absolved would end in destruction. You are a disgrace.” He’d wondered if he could still feel anything when it came to his father, but the only thing Evan felt was exhaustion. “If you had any chance of getting the deed to that distillery, it is completely gone.”
Evan almost laughed at his father’s imperiousness.
“I would be very careful about making threats,” Apollo warned, then his lips turned up into a vicious smile. “Why don’t you tell our father, brother?”
“I am not your father,” the Duke of Annan blustered, and that vicious smile on Apollo’s lips turned sinister.
“Oh, we both know that you are,” Apollo said with astonishing calm. “And I have plenty of proof attesting to that fact, because if there is one thing that your lot is not, when you go on your feeding frenzies to the tropics, it’s prudent. But I’ll reserve my own tale for later. Now it’s Evan’s turn, and I advise you to listen...quietly.”
Their father pressed his lips together at Apollo’s words, the older man’s face turning ashen as he looked between Evan and Apollo, as though he finally realized there would be no denying a truth anyone with eyes could see.
“I have a copy of my mother’s will.” Evan recited the words he’d spoken in his head so many times and watched with little satisfaction as his father’s world began to unravel around him. “I also have a letter in her hand saying that you put her in that asylum after she confronted you for siphoning money from Beatrice’s and Adalyn’s dowries. You bloody parasite.”
His father stumbled, but only for a second. “It will take years to prove those are authentic,” the duke countered.
“It’s already been validated by the solicitor’s son as legitimate. And in the box with the will, Mother left each of us an heirloom from the Buchanan family. Did you not see grandmother’s aquamarine ring on my wife’s finger?”
His father’s eyes bulged, and he cried with outrage. It was so melodramatic and obscene, and yet Evan thought it was the first genuine emotion he’d seen from the man in years.
“Anyone can claim anything,” his father said, his typical unbothered demeanor crumbling under the weight of what Evan claimed. “No one will take your word against mine. Neither will they believe this interloper is my son.”
“They don’t have to believe me.” Apollo continued pushing the dagger in without mercy. “But they will have to consider the marriage record I obtained from the priest who married you and my mother. They can’t ignore the photographs from the wedding breakfast the Italian photographer took. Or my aunt’s testimony.”
“Your aunt?” His father recoiled. “She died.”
Apollo looked at his father with a mixture of horror and satisfaction.
“My mother had two sisters. The woman you handed me to with orders to get rid of me used your blood money to find the one who still lived.” Their father’s face was completely devoid of color now, his pallor a sickly gray. His hand, which had been on the back of one of the armchairs, began shaking so profusely the thing began to rattle. “Fidelina took me to my aunt and told her what you’d done, and she raised me as her own. My aunt’s husband owned most of the coffee in Colombia and Venezuela, and they had no heirs. I have more money than I know what to do with, and I am willing to use it all to see you destroyed. You buried my mother in an unmarked grave.” Apollo’s eyes were bleak, the words spilling out of him now. “She had a family, she had a name, and you put her in the ground like she was nothing.”
