Page 51 of Beauty and the Billionaire

The man had allowed me the silence I had needed for the last two hours. He had given me the space in which I could cry soundlessly and attempt to process what had happened. I cried, yes, but I hadn’t even begun to understand the events of this afternoon.

“What will you do?” I whispered when half a minute had passed and neither of us had left the car.

Orwell was solemnly silent. “I will return.”

I gritted my teeth.

Perhaps he’d heard it, or he simply understood the entire context of it. “He can’t be alone, Zain. He is his worst enemy when he is alone.”

“I don’t think Dominic Blackthorne has a shortage of enemies,” I said, surprising myself with how cruel this thought was.

Orwell seemed to sag back into his seat like strength was deserting him. “You know him. You know what he is like.”

Silence filled the car, disrupted only by the windshields swiping away the thick snowflakes and the vents pumping hot air. “I thought I did. I’m not sure anymore.”

“Yes, you are sure,” Orwell said kindly. “Few people know the man he is capable of being, Zain. You are one of them, and I have the privilege to be another.”

I let out a quiet scoff that made Orwell turn around and look at me more clearly.

“He lashes out when he’s uncertain of the intentions of those around him,” the loyal valet said softly and carefully. “He hurts first so he won’t have to feel pain, but it’s misguided. It hurts him just the same.”

“What are you trying to say?” I whispered, not daring to hope. I didn’t believe that I could just return there tonight and solve it all by showering Dominic with love. I didn’t believe he would feel it.

The corners of Orwell’s lips sagged as he considered this. “I have been with him since the time when he was just another upstart. I’ve seen him love and lose. I’ve seen him be the center of gossip, of vile fabrications, and I’ve seen the men of the upper echelon chip away everything that was good in him. Even afterhis parents had disowned him, he still clung to hope. That was when I met him. When he shined with it.” The man’s gaze grew distant as he returned to times long gone. “But they didn’t want him. He was smart and practical. He didn’t want to play by the rules that bound them all together. He didn’t want to rub elbows and buy favors when he was rich enough to be noticed. So, it offended them. All those Hales and Vosses and the rest of them. They couldn’t understand how someone could be as successful as them and not be flattered by their attention, you see. And when they realized they would never get the respect and gifts they demanded, they turned on him once again. The pervert, the sicko, there isn’t a slur they didn’t utter. They fabricate stories about the things that went on at Harringford when the truth was Dominic only wanted to be left alone. The boy in his couldn’t face the hatred, so Dominic trapped him somewhere nobody could find him.”

I realized then that I was holding my breath. I tried to look into Orwell’s eyes, although I couldn’t be certain the man even knew I was still there. He spoke distantly, and more than a few regrets added their weight to the sound of his voice.

“I didn’t think the boy was still alive, you see,” he said, his voice rising higher with emotions. His eyes were suddenly clear, gaze intensely locked onto my face. “You found him, Zain. Even I believed that Dominic had given himself to his worst impulses, but you found him.”

“I don’t know which one is real,” I whispered hopelessly.

“No,” Orwell agreed, to my surprise. I had expected him to convince me—or at least to try—to return to Dominic and search for the long-lost innocence in him. “No, I don’t think you could. It’s up to Dominic.”

My lower lip quivered of its own accord. “Then why are you telling me all this?” It wasn’t until I had flung those words at the wounded valet that I realized just how much I had hoped forsome quick, magical fix to all these problems. I had hoped that he would take me back there and make me try harder. But his words didn’t entertain the possibility that I could do something anymore.

“I wanted you to know,” he said softly. “He was better with you.”

“No,” I whispered, shaking my head.

“But he was.” Orwell’s words were final. It was as though he had told me that the one chance of saving Dominic was now gone. It was up to Dominic himself to decide whether the person he had once been would live or die and who would take his place.

I feared that Dominic would surrender to the heartless monster he was capable of being.

It was a future I could see all too clearly.

“Thank you,” Orwell said. “For giving that young man a chance to shine again.”

Hot tears rolled silently down my cheeks as I nodded. There was nothing else to be said. And I had never felt more powerless than at the moment I opened the door of Dominic’s car and stepped out.

CHAPTER 13

Kill the Beast

Dominic

The man was insufferable.

In the pale whiteness of snow-reflected light that poured through the windows, Orwell’s lines seemed deeper, his face sagging like he had lost all will to go on. He looked at me with such shameless pity that I was tempted to send him into an early retirement.

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