Page 19 of Forbidden Until Midnight

He flashed his most charming smile, with just enough wickedness to melt the ice in her gaze, before her friend pulled her through the entrance to the Pavillon Dauphine. The grand building, situated at the bottom of the Avenue de l’Impératrice, was over a century old and every inch of its grandeur was marked in classic lines of beauty throughout. But at that moment Santo Sabatini couldn’t have given a damn for any of it.

He had one goal and intended to find her as fast as humanly possible. For almost the entire year he’d thought of little else. She had occupied his waking thoughts and tormented his sleep. The innocence of her request, the clear intention behind it, had driven him near wild with want. He’d almost begun to regret keeping tabs on her university career, the updates keeping him tied to her in a way he both wanted and loathed.

But then, a few months ago, something had changed. Her online presence had dropped away to nothing, with no mention of her or—more surprisingly—Edward Carson or his business. For a man who craved attention it was a little unusual. Then, a month ago, Santo had discovered that she had stopped attending class, making both him and Pietro deeply concerned. But no amount of digging had uncovered anything.

Santo stalked through the grand entrance and into the large sprawling conservatory, where a long dining table was overburdened with a spectacular feast, but the smell of the rich food only turned his stomach. Scanning the faces of those seated, he knew she wasn’t there. He couldn’t feel her presence.

He reached the lavish ballroom, one wall covered in large mirrors encased in ornate mouldings, honey-coloured wooden floors gleaming beneath the gentle lighting, and still there was no sign of her. Ignoring the way that the pace of his pulse had picked up in concern, he swept into the next room and the next, until he’d covered all the rooms bar the ladies’ toilets.

Then, through the window, he saw that there were people gathered outside, beneath the warm glow of heaters. An outside bar had been set up, and smaller seating areas attracted the few that were braving the cold in their furs and finery.

Ignoring his usual distaste for such things, he approached the patio doors that would have taken him out onto the area gently illuminated by strings of fairy lights, searching for a single face from amongst the crowd.

Already he felt a twisting deep in his gut. The only people outside were from Fairchild’s group. And with a blinding sense of betrayal, he knew she was there amongst them.

He hung back in a darkened corner of the room until he spotted her, laughing at something someone had said in a gauche way he had never before associated with her. The rage that he felt in that moment, the pure fury that she had gone back to the very people who would have used her, who had abused her, was a red haze that he could barely breathe through. His heartbeat pounded in his ears like a war drum and it took nearly everything in him to wrestle himself under control.

The realisation drained the blood from his head so quickly he became lightheaded. Because in that moment he’d felt a violence he’d only ever witnessed in his father. Instinctively and unconsciously, his hand went to his eyebrow, fingers pressed against the scar as a cold sweat lay in a fine sheen across his skin beneath the shirt and tuxedo he wore tonight.

He braced his palm against the wall, holding himself back, holding himup, knuckles gleaming white under the force of it.

How could she?

Past hurts mixed nauseatingly with the present as he almost violently forced himself back in line.

What had happened to him?

Behaving like some jealous schoolboy with his first crush. As if she had ever been anything more to him than a promise he’d made to an old man to whom he owed a debt.

In his mind, he wrote over the memories of their interactions, editing out the impact and the intimacy as if he could undo every effect Eleanor Carson had ever had on him. As if he could backpedal his feelings and shove them far back behind a line he had never crossed, and would never again.

He was done. He would fulfil his promise and no more.

Every single part of Eleanor was in agony. Her body, her soul, all buckling under the weight of the trauma that had taken everything she’d thought she knew about herself and those in her life and slashed a line through it all.

She laughed at something Ekaterina had said and it sounded as hollow and false as she felt. Resentment seethed beneath the surface as she reached for a glass of something she barely even tasted as she downed the alcohol, the faint buzz touching her senses but still not enough to take away the pain that cut at her lungs every time she took a breath.

She shivered, even though the heat from the outside lamps was such that many around her were without shawls or coats.

Tony slid a glance her way. Suspicion and anger mixed with that sense of snide superiority he could no longer hide from her. Because something had happened since she’d discovered the truth back in November, since her family had become something alien and unknowable to her. It was as if she could see through it all. The lies, the secrets, the bullshit.

She laughed to herself this time, uncaring of the concern in Ekaterina’s face. For all Eleanor knew, that was as fake as the rest of them. She’d seen Dilly earlier in the evening, her one-time best friend giving her a wide berth. And suddenly the tears she’d been holding at bay pressed terrifyingly close to the corners of her eyes.

She bit her lip, hoping that the sharp sting would work to pull her out of that moment. The moment when she’d thought of how much she wished there was someone to confide in. Someone to seek help from. Support.Love. But all of that was gone.

She was on her own now in a way that had truly shocked her to her core. Because eight months ago she’d discovered that Edward Carson was not her father. And overnight he had become a complete stranger to her.

‘Who is my father?’she’d cried, begged, pleading with her mother, whose own shock had been worn clearly on her ghostly white features, contrasting with the fierce red fury of her father’s.

Eleanor looked around hazily at the sea of faces, wondering who—if anyone—knew. Or whether they could somehow tell that she wasn’t Edward Carson’s daughter. Were they all laughing at her behind her back? Had they always been?

No one can know. No one can ever know.

Little Freddie’s blood drive to help the friend from school who’d been diagnosed with leukaemia had irrevocably changed the trajectory of her life. He’d happily gathered their donor cards together, ticking off each one of their blood types, blissfully unaware of the sudden, devastating change in room temperature. That evening, Freddie had been sent to his room without explanation and little drama because somehow, without explanation, he’d realised that something was terribly wrong.

The single slap across her mother’s face delivered cruelly by the man she’d thought of as her father had broken something deep within her. But no matter how many times he’d asked, yelled or shouted, demeaned or bullied, her mother had refused to name her father. She had simply said,‘I don’t know,’over and over again, in the hope that either her daughter or husband might eventually believe her.

And then Edward Carson had turned on her.

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