Faced with the choice between an inconvenient truth and an alarming lie, Eve chose to evade.
“I say things like that too.”
“Oh? So the lady was encouraging her lover to kill her brother?”
“Are you determined to sink your teeth into me like a guard dog until I confess to a murder I didn’t commit?”
There was one reason for this.
“You don’t have evidence.”
All you have left is a confession.
“If Ethan breaks under your pressure and gives a false confession, I’ll do the same. Then let’s see how my father sings.”
This wasn’t the Middle Ages. If the heirs started killing each other and ended up in prison, the Kentrell reputation would collapse into a sewer, and her father would become a laughingstock. He wouldn’t want Eve dragged into this any further. Which meant he’d have to withdraw the very charges he’d filed.
The detective, chin resting on his steepled hands, stared intently at Eve. Then he asked:
“Wouldn’t you like to clear yourself of the false accusation of being an accomplice?”
Eve didn’t answer.
“Then stop covering for a criminal.”
That didn’t deserve a response.
“I’m sure the lady can feel it herself. That her lover killed her brother.”
Eve crossed her legs and snorted.
“Criminals leave evidence behind. Especially on their first offense—they always do. He was probably panicked after an accidental killing. That’s why he fled without even managing to wipe away the bloodstains properly.”
Eve didn’t care what fairy tales the detective kept spinning. She took a cigarette case from her purse and placed one between her lips.
“I bet Ethan Fairchild showed you signs too. Signs that he’d committed a crime.”
This time, she took out Ethan’s lighter and pressed the trigger.
Sparks flew. No flame. Eve didn’t try again.
“For example, being excessively nervous.”
Suddenly, she remembered him—so anxious at the departure control desk.
Why am I doubting him? He had reasons to be nervous.
She’d been nervous herself. They were running away behind her father’s back.
“Or saying something strange.”
Next came the words Ethan had muttered while lighting a cigarette at the pier after clearing control. This time, she couldn’t just brush them off with a laugh.
“So this is what it feels like—committing a crime and fleeing abroad.”
Ethan… was that really a joke?
Was that why—even after leaving Mercian soil—he couldn’t shake the feeling of being pursued?
Was that why there were bloodstains in the room?
If he hadn’t been involved in the murder, there shouldn’t have been any blood in that room. The truth—so obvious to any objective observer—had been invisible to Eve, looking through rose-colored glasses of love. But now, she’d reached the point where she couldn’t deny reality even through those glasses.
She wanted to grab Ethan and ask him.
Why did you do something so stupid?
She sympathized with his desire to kill Harry. But wanting to kill was just a thought. Killing was a reality he’d have to pay for with the rest of his life. They were in the same boat, and with this act, Ethan had driven their future to the edge of the world.
It’s over for us.
Fire raged inside Eve, but her body went cold. If she were being burned at the stake and frozen to death at the same time, the pain and confusion would feel the same.
With the detective studying every micro-expression on her face, she couldn’t afford to openly rage or despair.
“Ha…”
She exhaled, masking it as a scoff.
“Detective, I’m sorry, but there were no strange actions. No strange words.”
Eve still loved this foolish man. Even if he was a killer.
He must have understood that this act would destroy their entire future. And yet he’d done it anyway—which meant there had been a compelling reason.
Given the circumstances, Harry had come to Ethan’s house first. Late at night. And had Harry ever come there with good intentions?
It had been accidental. Or self-defense.
That meant Ethan hadn’t killed Harry to get the Kentrell dukedom. It had probably been unplanned, and he’d panicked—which was why he couldn’t tell Eve.
Or maybe he’d thought Harry hadn’t died. Yes, that made more sense.
Ha… Couldn’t you have at least erased the evidence properly?
What’s done was done. Recriminations could wait. Right now, she had to do everything possible to save him.
She needed a lawyer.
“We didn’t kill Harry. That’s all I can say. If you keep leveling false accusations at us, I’ll call an attorney.”
“Go ahead.”
The detective, making it clear he wasn’t letting her go, turned the telephone around and pushed it toward her. Remarkable.
Either way, she needed a lawyer. Both she and Ethan did.
But Eve couldn’t call the number on the business card she had.
Robert Callas. He was her father’s lawyer. Which meant—he was on dead Harry’s side.
“I need a list of attorneys.”
Asking the very detective trying to frame her for murder to recommend a lawyer—she knew how absurd it sounded. But apparently it was routine, because he didn’t mock her.
The detective was just pulling a list from his drawer to hand over.
Knock knock.
“Chief Shepard. It’s Callas.”
The lawyer no one had summoned had arrived on his own.
“Well, well. The defenders who guard the duke instead of citizens have already tattled. Looks like our conversation is over.”
The detective sighed as if all was lost and said with sarcasm: “Good for you.” Some ‘good.’ Eve was equally devastated.
“Don’t let him in.”
The chief investigator smirked, as if amused.
“With all due respect, this isn’t the lady’s private chamber.”
He knew Callas had come to forcibly take Eve away—but he opened the door anyway. The middle-aged lawyer, with his mustache and frozen face, looked at Shepard. Callas, making it clear with his entire demeanor that he’d come to protest, pressed forward:
“The Kentrell maiden is a victim.”
“She says otherwise herself.”
“What do you mean?”
The lawyer tried to dig deeper, but the detective slid away smoothly:
“We couldn’t exactly leave someone so important standing outside until her family came to collect her. We just had a little chat. Take her.”
The chief spoke as if handing over a criminal—or a child. Callas was no better.
“Come in.”
He summoned someone from the hallway. Two women entered. Recognizing her father’s nurses, Eve trembled with rage, her fists clenching.
Her father had sent nurses in white coats to extract his daughter directly from the police station—so that everyone would mistake Eve for a madwoman.
She glared at Callas and ground out between clenched teeth:
“I’ll go myself.”
Eve rose. Shepard bowed to her with nauseating politeness.
“My lady, it was an honor to meet you. I look forward to our next encounter.”
“Don’t forget my warning. Touch Ethan, and you’ll lose your head.”
Her strange, inhuman brown eyes filled with a madness that gave them an eerie cast. The lady—clearly not in her right mind, threatening a detective like this—straightened her back proudly and left.
When the door closed, Shepard leaned back in his chair and smirked.
“Well, well… But her father had different instructions.”
The father she was seeing for the first time in a month looked like a dead man.
His once-corpulent body had withered by half. His skin sagged like rotting flesh. She almost didn’t recognize him. His greasy face had turned ashen—like a dried-up corpse.
As if he’d died the same instant his son had.
The instinctive pity she felt didn’t last long.
His hollow eyes, the moment they found Eve, filled instantly with hatred. He shot up—without even a servant’s help—and lunged at her furiously. A hand as large as her face swung upward. Eve realized he was going to hit her, but she couldn’t dodge. It had never happened to her before. She froze.
SMACK!
The blow—like a hammer strike—landed on her left cheek.
The sound of tearing flesh followed. A metallic taste of blood flooded her mouth.
“Ah—!” The nurses cried out and immediately clamped their hands over their mouths.
The victim herself was too stunned to register the pain.
Eve was knocked to the floor. Chantal tried to help her up, but her father squealed like a pig kicked in the groin:
“EVERYONE OUT!”
As the nurses hurried away, Eve braced herself against the floor and pushed up. Not standing fully, she watched Callas hand her father a sheet of paper. The hand that unfolded the paper was trembling violently.
“How dare you… how DARE you…”
Shaking—body and voice—he shoved the paper in her face.
It was the marriage certificate. Her marriage to Ethan.
How did he get it…?
The certificate had been in Ethan’s bag. The bag they’d seized when arresting him. The police had handed it over.
RIP!
The proof that Ethan and Eve were husband and wife—torn to shreds in fury, disappearing into her father’s hands.
The other proof. I have to protect it at all costs.
Eve thought of the ring—the one she’d taken off and hidden on the way home. She held her breath.
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