Dark Obsession (Vampire Royals of New York #3) - Sarah Piper Page 0,78
wouldn’t allow them to form; it was singularly focused on the story his brother had woven, searching for the loose thread that might—if only he pulled hard enough—unravel it all.
“You’ve made such an art of nurturing your guilt, Dorian, you’ve forgotten you weren’t the one to invent it.” Through bloodshot eyes, Gabriel glanced around at the hollow room—the stripped walls, the broken floorboards, the temporary plywood Aiden had nailed over the shattered windows and doors. “Do you think you have a monopoly on this pain? That the horrors of what happened in West Sussex are yours alone to bear?” Gabriel blurred into his space, hauling him upright and slamming him hard against the wall, his voice trembling with rage. “Do you think I don’t know what it feels like to look in the mirror and hate the man staring back at me?”
Gabriel glared at him with such malevolence, Dorian wondered if his brother might actually kill him.
It wasn’t their savagery that connected them, he suddenly realized, but their suffering. Or hell, maybe they were one in the same. Like a snake consuming its own tail, where did one end and the other begin? Did it matter? Ultimately, both would destroy them.
Gabriel seemed to be waiting for something, but still, Dorian didn’t respond. He was empty. Broken. And he knew, right then, if he uttered anything more than a breath, the last of his tattered soul would evaporate.
“I’m not the villain in this story, Dorian.” Gabriel finally released him. “My sin was keeping Evie’s secret. If I hadn’t…” He let out a deep sigh. “Perhaps we would’ve died as mortal men of England, entombed with our forebears as nature intended. Perhaps we wouldn’t be cursed to an eternity of choking on our own bitter lies.”
Dorian looked up and met Gabriel’s gaze, watching as all the cold, calculating rage faded away. For a brief moment, he looked like a young boy again, wild and reckless, but still innocent. Still trusting that his big brother would look after him.
Not since adolescence had he seen Gabriel so unguarded, and that—more than anything else—terrified him.
“You asked if I’ve ever cared for anyone,” Gabriel said, his voice nearly breaking. “Evelyn Kendrick was my friend long before she was your betrothed. And our father brutalized her. Her own family executed her. The look of betrayal and fear in her eyes when her brother’s blade bit into her neck… I’ll never… I…” A tear slipped from Gabriel’s eye, but he brushed it away before it even touched his cheek. “Not a day goes by when my choices don’t haunt me, brother. But if given a second chance, I fear I’d only make the same ones.”
At this, Dorian finally found the strength to speak. It was a single word, bearing the weight of everything that’d come between them. Everything that would keep them locked in this endless battle. “Why?”
Gabriel offered a sad smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes. “Because it’s what she asked of me, Dorian.”
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Not even a roaring fire and a bottle of scotch could chase the chill from Dorian’s heart.
He longed for Charlotte, but while he was battling with his brothers, she’d fallen asleep in his bed, her body undoubtedly worn out from the abrupt changes it’d undergone today.
A vampire. He’d turned her, yet still, he could scarcely believe it.
Now it was just he and Aiden alone in the quiet study, the scrapbook of Dorian’s Crimson City Devil horrors lying open in his lap, his guilt and melancholy sitting beside him like uninvited guests.
A curse.
A bloody fucking curse.
“For how long will I pay for my father’s crimes, Aiden? Another century? Two? Or will I carry the burden of his sins like an iron albatross for my immortal eternity?”
Dorian could scarcely carry the burden of his own sins, let alone those of the monster who’s shadow still haunted his every step. He should’ve let it go—let him go—yet in the quiet spaces between all the arguments, in the sadness that lingered in the long hours that followed, Dorian couldn’t help but feel his father’s looming presence.
Aiden glanced at the book in Dorian’s lap, his eyes skimming the headlines that echoed across Dorian’s nightmares.
city streets run red with blood; ‘crimson city devil’ eludes authorities
“I heard what you told Charlotte the night she found the book,” Aiden said. “The whole story.”
“You lived through the Crimson City hell with me, Aiden. It’s not as if you overheard any state secrets.”
Aiden nodded solemnly, nursing his scotch as if it were