Page 111 of The Enslaved Duet

Mytopolina.

My wife.

“They’ll kill you for loving her,” he told me as he languidly gained his feet and flicked a piece of grass off his grey bespoke suit. “They’ll kill you, and you know it, so do us both a favour and don’t get the heir of Greythorn killed for something so idiotic. Stalking around like an enraged bull in a china shop will only get you murdered and your precious slave lost for good. They’re just looking for a reason to take you down a peg or take you out entirely. Ever since you took that beating for Ruthie, they’ve been watching and waiting.”

“Her name is Cosima,” I corrected pointlessly.

He waved his hand through the air as if it didn’t matter.

“If the Order did take her, you’re better off lying low and playing the dedicated soldier so you can figure out who did it.”

I exhaled roughly, side-eyeing Riddick where he stood off to one side, ready and waiting for any directive. He looked pissed right off but also conflicted.

We both knew Noel was right.

As much as I hated my father, as much as I’d had to live with him and be groomed by him as dictated by British upper-class social mores and secret society directives, but mostly because someone had fucking killed my mother, I knew life was a game.

A complicated game of chess that only the very best could succeed at.

And if I wanted to beat the Order when they had the most powerful pieces on the board, then I’d have to play the long game.

Which meant doing exactly what Noel said.

Playing nice until they cocked up well enough for me to capitalize on it and end them.

For fucking good.

“Happily, I have a solution that won’t end in your execution,” Noel offered blasély. “Wentworth has petitioned for divorce from his wife and plans to run away with his slave. I’ve known this for some time, but I was waiting for the right time to make it known.”

“Of course.” Noel never gave an inch of himself or his knowledge away unless it would earn him a mile of leeway and influence.

“Unfortunately for the poor chap, he’s grown careless as the date of his departure looms, and he made an error. An error that I happened to catch on film.”

I stared into my father’s eyes and noted how empty they were, like a steel room filled with stale air just waiting for someone to accidentally wander into. A holding cell. A torture chamber.

The eyes of a man without a heart.

I wondered painfully if those were the eyes Cosima had seen staring back at her in my face as I broke her into submission those first few weeks in the ballroom.

“Wentworth was one of the men who tried to claim Cosima at The Hunt,” Noel mentioned casually, only the sly cast of his eyes sweeping in my direction gave away that he knew he was putting the final nail in Simon Wentworth’s coffin with his words.

“Why would he do that if he’s as in love with his slave as you claim he is?” I retorted.

“Why have you done so many horrible things to your slave? You know as well as he did that you are constantly watched for misconduct. They’ve been keeping tabs on him since he sent his wife to live on their Irish estate so he could be alone with the slave. It was the right call to capture and bed someone else at The Hunt, a callyoushould have been smart enough to make yourself. I believe he was almost successful in claiming your little mouse before another man knocked him from his horse and nearly beat him to death in a stream… think about what the man would have done with her if he hadn’t been interrupted?”

It was sheer manipulation.

Grossly obvious, crude as a prehistoric tool chipped roughly out of stone.

Yet it still found its mark.

“Set it up.”

Growing up, I’d always been drawn to the study of the classics, the great epic poems by Homer and Virgil, the Olympic gods, and the tragic, heroic stories.

I’d always identified with Hades the most, a hero who’d drawn the worst prize and been stuck as king of a dark, desolate kingdom he wanted no part of yet still ruled fairly over.

But it was the relationship and difference between the two gods of war that had always seemed most apt for Noel and me. I was quick to anger, though I’d curbed my impulsive actions over the years, a man of rapid decision-making and immediate execution like Ares. My father was like the Goddess Athena, studied and patient, with the ability to formulate a plan and implement it over years, even decades.