Page 117 of Pretty Savage: Defy

“He asked whether I’d seen Evangeline Montgomery. The Sister he loved when they were younger.”

“Silas and Evangeline?”

“You know her?” I ask.

Father ignores me. “What else did Creed say?” he asks Laurel.

“Nothing.” Her face crumples.

A burst of gunfire tears through the room.

Bullets punch through the swinging kitchen door. One buries itself in the cabinets. Another strikes a hanging pan and sends it clanging across the tile.

I grab Laurel and pull her down behind the steel preparation counter.

Carr crouches beside us and shouts toward the doorway. “Who has the west corridor?”

“Thomson and Brentson!” someone calls back.

Laurel’s breath comes against my neck. The gun trembles between our bodies. I take it out of her hand before she drops it.

“I thought he was alone.” Shame makes her voice unsteady. “There are thousands of Order members here. Armed guards at every entrance. Brothers in every room. It never occurred to me that one man could do this.”

Father looks toward the ballroom as another round of gunfire rings out.

“Silas could have hurt you,” I say.

Laurel hesitates, and the pause opens a hollow place inside me.

“I don’t think he would.” Tears well in her eyes. They hang suspended on her lashes.

“Why?”

“Because he already had the opportunity, and he didn’t.” Her voice cracks. “I don’t trust him. I know he lies. I know he’s violent, and everything he does serves some purpose of his own. But after he helped me escape Jackson, I didn’t believe he would hurt me.”

The kitchen door slams open.

Jack Beaumont storms in with two armed men behind him. Blood stains the cuff of his tuxedo shirt, but none of it appears to be his. A tablet rests in one hand.

He points at Laurel. “Traitor.”

I rise from behind the counter to stand between them.

“Choose your next words carefully.”

“She knew Creed was here.” Jack thrusts the tablet toward Father. “We have proof.”

The footage is already playing. Laurel stands in the service corridor outside the kitchen. A man approaches in a blue jacket and stops beside her.

“Is that him?” Father asks Laurel.

“Yes.”

There’s no sound, only the motion of their lips as Laurel and Silas talk. She doesn’t call for a guard or try to stop him. When he walks away, she turns her back on him and never looks over her shoulder.

That’s the part that hurts. She trusted him enough to give him a clean shot at her.

Jack freezes the image.