It was like Eve didn’t even hear him, like the only person in this room she could see or hear was me.
“Where did you even get a gun?” I was stalling for time, assessing the situation. “There’s no way you made it onto the estate with one that first morning.” Even as I said the words, I thought about Eve bolting the moment she’d “discovered” Vincent Blake’s name.
“Put the gun down!” Oren repeated. “I guarantee you that I can get a shot off before you can, and I don’t miss.”
Eve took a step forward, utterly, beautifully unafraid. “Are you really going to let your bodyguard shoot me, Avery?”
This was a different Eve. Gone were the layers of self-protection, the vulnerability, the raw emotion—all of it.
“You helped Blake abduct Toby, didn’t you?” I said, certainty washing over me like a wave of heat.
“I wouldn’t have had to,” Eve replied, her tone smooth and hard, “if Toby had opened up. If he’d just agreed to bring me here. But he wouldn’t. ”
“This is the last time that I’m going to tell you to put the gun down!”
Oren boomed.
“I’m still Toby’s daughter,” Eve said, adopting a familiar, wide-eyed expression, her gun unwavering. “And honestly, Avery, how do you think Gray will feel if Oren shoots me? What do you think will happen if that beautiful, broken boy walks in here to find me bleeding out on the floor?”
At her mention of Grayson, I instinctively looked for him, but he wasn’t there. My body shaking with pent-up rage, I turned to Oren. “Put the gun down,” I told him.
My head of security stepped directly in front of me. “She puts hers down first.”
A haughty expression on her face, Eve lowered her weapon. Oren was on her in an instant, taking her to the ground, pinning her down.
Eve looked up at me from the chapel floor and smiled. “You want Toby back, and I want whatever you found in that tomb.”
She’d called it a tomb. She’d said earlier that there were supposed to be remains in there. I wondered how she’d come to that conclusion, and then I remembered where I’d left her—and with whom. “Mallory,” I said.
“She admitted that Liam didn’t leave. I believe her exact words were There was so much blood. ” Eve’s gaze went to the altar. “So where’s the body?”
“Is that really all you care about?” I asked her. From the very beginning, she’d told me that there was only one thing that mattered to her. I was starting to think that wasn’t a lie—it was just that her single-minded purpose had nothing to do with Toby.
It had never been about Toby.
“Caring is a recipe for getting hurt, and I haven’t let anyone hurt me in a very long time.” Eve smiled again, like she was the one who had the upper hand, not the one pinned to the ground. “In all fairness, I did warn you, Avery. I told you that if I were you, I wouldn’t trust me, either. I told you that I am a person who will do anything— anything—to get what I want. I told you that invisible is the one thing that I will never be.”
“And Toby,” I said, staring at her, sick understanding coming over me, “wanted you to hide.”
“Blake wants me by his side,” Eve said, zeal in her voice. “I just have to prove myself first.”
“You don’t have one of the seals yet, do you?” I asked. I thought about Nan saying that Vincent Blake didn’t give anyone—not even family—a free ride.
“I’m going to get one,” Eve told me, her voice burning with the fury of purpose. “Give me that USB, and maybe you can get what you want, too.”