Page 111 of Original Sins (Dark Odyssey 6)

The scent of her floats around here like a ghost who hasn’t crossed over to the other side.

The clothes Henry bought for her on one of their shopping trips are folded neatly in the corner on the chair.

I walk over to it and pick up a little camisole top I absolutely loved her in.

Lifting the soft silky material, I bring it to my nose and inhale deeply, taking in memories of what she felt like when I touched her.

“I love you.”

Those words came from her lips. No woman has ever said that to me and meant it the way I saw she did.

It makes me wonder what the fuck I’m doing.

William fucking Reviello is going to have her. Am I seriously going to stand by and let that happen?

Since when have I allowed people to tell me what I can and can’t have?

Fuck this shit.

I can’t do it, and I know I’m putting everything on the line, but fuck, I just can’t be without her.

That’s the only reason I need to move. I drop the top and head downstairs. Grateful Henry isn’t here to stop me.

I’m not sure if he could. Right now, nothing can stop me.

I jump in my car and drive way past the speed limit to the house I now know belongs to Cordelia.

I did the checks I should have done, and the second I looked up the address and saw the house belonged to her, everything else I didn’t know revealed itself to me.

I’ve only ever spoken to Cordelia because she’s Donny’s niece.

On a basic level, Cordelia is practically the female version of me.

You’ll find her at anything from sex clubs to fuck parties, and she would have been going to places like that from when she was fifteen.

She’s the perpetual party girl and the proverbial social butterfly who can get the hookups you want to anything—like the Decadent Auction.

She would have been the mastermind behind the plan for Evie to escape, and she would have come up with the means for her to do so too.

The lax of security when it comes to her is down to her street smart nature and her mother’s liberal personality. When Helen Ricci married her laird and uprooted to live in her castle in Scotland, she refused to put her daughter under lock and key the way Donny does.

Dare I say it? From what I’ve heard about her connections, they probably would have pulled off whatever scheme they had planned for Evie to disappear.

And, it wouldn’t get back to her.

I pull up outside her gate an hour later, and the moment the guards at her gate see my face, they don’t ask questions, and the fuckers open the path for me to go in and make the situation worse than it already is.

Right now, nobody knows the secret Henry, me, and Evie share.

While I don’t know exactly who was at the auction, I don’t think anybody there went to the engagement party.

If they did, I doubt they’d think it was Donny’s daughter on the auction block selling her virginity. They wouldn’t be mad enough to go and approach him about it to check either. But it’s something they could hang over my head and hang me with the same noose.

I speed down the long driveway, and my car screeches to a stop. I park up in front of the house.

I jump out and open the unlocked door to the house.

Another guard approaches when I walk past the living room, one I recognize.

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