Chapter 28

"Why aren't we going down there?"

Alex could not answer the whispered question for the bile was sick in his throat.

How his uncle could have been so foolish as to take Emmaline and her father to his own home was beyond Alex. Then again, the words his uncle had just spoken in the cellar below were also beyond his comprehension.

"We need to get down there before—" Sebastian hissed under his breath, trying to get past Alex's arm which barred the doorway of the cellar. From his vantage point at the top of the stairs, just out of view from the cellar, he could hear everything as his uncle's voice bounced off the stone walls.

"You… you set the fire?" Emmaline gasped, her voice barely audible compared to Frederick's.

Alex had been there at the top of the stairs for long enough. He had heard practically everything, Frederick's coveting his wife, his greed and jealousy, his boasting. Alex had long seen the dark side of his uncle but never in his wildest dreams could he have imagined this.

"Yes," Frederick said, and Alex had to fight his emotions in order to stay right where he was. Luckily for him, his time as the devil had equipped him for keeping his cool in tense situations, though in that moment he would have liked to run down those stairs and rip his uncle's head clean off his shoulders. Even he wasn't that strong.

He pressed his index finger to his lips, silently begging Emmaline's brothers to remain quiet. He knew how his uncle acted in these situations. He had seen him at the heart of his schemes one too many times and how his uncle loved to boast.

"Would you like to hear how it happened?" Frederick asked, true to his character. "Would you like to hear how I squeezed the life out of my brother, my hands wrapped tightly around his throat as he lay abed in the middle of the night, how I threw a candle upon the bedsheets afterwards to cover my tracks?"

The man's laughter was nauseating. Worse were the images he conjured in Alex's mind. He remembered his father, his bedroom, the place he was speaking of all too well. Imagining the scene was just too grotesque and yet Alex's mind was traitorous. It played everything out as if it were happening right before his eyes.

"My only regret is that the rest of them made it out alive."

That was it. Alex could take no more. He removed his arm from the doorway and inclined his head, gesturing for the brothers to go on ahead. For a second, they glanced at each other, looking hesitant.

"Do you want to help your father and sister or not?" Alex whispered.

At that moment, Frederick asked, "What was that?"

"Damn it!" Alex snarled. They had been discovered. The hammering of boots on the stairs below told him so.

"Look out!" Victor cried as Tiny came barreling through the door like a bull. Even without horns, he was far more deadly, though Alex had been prepared. In the seconds before he came through, Alex stepped sideways and reached into his jacket pocket for the brass knuckles he always kept there, one of the few gifts his father had given him that he would always carry close to his chest.

When Tiny spun on him, Alex was ready, aiming a blow at the side of his face, hoping for the temple but missing his nose by inches.

It would all be over in seconds, Alex knew. Nobody had ever beaten Tiny in the ring. He was even deadlier out of it.

But then the heavy twang rang out across the kitchen and Tiny went down like a sack of potatoes, eyes rolling into the back of his head.

Standing behind him, arms raised with a cast iron pan held tightly with both hands, stood Victor. The man quivered violently, his face pale. He, clearly, had never knocked anyone out before.

Alex, on the other hand, had and the second Tiny started to try and rise again he made sure his second swing counted.

"Victor, if he so much as opens an eye, hit him again," Alex ordered and though the man looked terrified, he nodded, lowering the pan so it was ready at waist height if Tiny tried to get up.

"Tiny! What is going on up there?" Frederick yelled.

Alex wasted no time. With only a quick gesture for Sebastian to follow, he charged down the cellar steps.

His foot had barely hit the stone floor when Frederick snarled, "Not another step!"

Alex froze immediately, hands raised, Sebastian almost stumbling right into him. He remained one step up, catching himself on the rail.

Bile rose once more into Alex"s throat when he saw the scene before him. Standing at the back of the cellar was his uncle but he was not alone. He had his back pressed against the mold infested wall but pinned against him, locked in place with his arm across her chest was Emmaline.

"How… how did you know?" Frederick demanded. The blade he had pressed to Emmaline"s neck gleamed in the candlelight and the way it danced told him how shaken Frederick was.

"You were clever, I"ll admit. You never thought I"d find out in time to stop you. You thought you could come back here, and nobody would ever think to look because the great Frederick is always so smart… but you didn"t count on one thing," Alex said, taking a half-step forward before pausing when Emmaline winced at the way Frederick pressed the tip of his blade into her throat.

A bead of blood trickled crimson down her snow-white neck. It was anger inducing but Alex barely kept a lid on it as he continued, "Lorraine."

"That good for nothing, foolish, fanciful girl. What did she have to do with any of this?" Frederick spat.

He squeezed Emmaline"s chest tighter.

"She recognized that the note I received from my beloved wife was not in her own hand," Alex stated, glowering at his uncle. Imagining all the devilish things he would like to do to him for putting a blade against the throat of the woman he loved. "And clearly your men at the docks did not clean things up nearly neatly enough. My spies are everywhere. Did you really think I wouldn"t find out?"

"Beloved? You love this, this simple girl!" Frederick laughed and Alex struggled to hold still as the blade came dangerously close to her throat again. "You fool. How can you love when you know it shall never be returned? How could she ever love you?"

Alex was no longer listening to his uncle. He had heard quite enough. Instead, he looked Emmaline in the eye, willing her to trust him, willing her to see that no matter what happened he would get her out of this safely.

"How did you even get in here?" Frederick demanded, clearly beginning to panic. A trapped rat was one willing to bite off its own tail to be free. Alex knew he must handle this carefully. He could not afford to mess this up.

For years he had been on the sidelines, the silent watcher who never lifted a finger save to inflict fear with words and let his uncle"s men do the dirty work. He had been their puppet, but his words had always been the poison that dripped fear into men"s ears just as it had been the nectar that drew them into drink in the first place, encouraging their spending, allowing their debts to pile up, letting his uncle reap the rewards.

Now was the time to use that voice for good.

"Did you really think that you were the only one who could buy people?" Alex asked. "Loyalty is earned, uncle, and you have earned none from those you stomped under your boot."

"I… I don"t… I don"t understand."

Alex rolled his eyes.

"I paid off the guards at the door and the pretty little maid you keep around to torment and pleasure yourself," Alex snarled taking a step forward.

His uncle gave a sudden and swift nod of his head, but Alex was prepared once more. He had already seen the movement out of the corner of his eye. Swift as a striking predator, he spun and grabbed his uncle's final man by the throat. He, unlike Tiny, was almost exactly Alex"s height and build but he was entirely unprepared for Alex"s swiftness.

"Uncle, did you really think that after all these years I didn"t know all of your tricks? You may have blindsided me with this double crossing, but I have seen you in action one too many times," Alex said, never taking his eyes off the man whom he was choking. "Your name is Hobbs, isn"t it?"

The man barely managed to nod.

"Do you have a family, Hobbs?"

Again, he nodded.

"A wife? Children?"

He nodded a third time, beginning to gargle.

Alex shoved him back so hard it was likely to bruise his windpipe. "I suggest you go back to them then and beg the lord for mercy for all you have done under this man"s rule."

Alex threw an accusing finger at his uncle before grabbing his coin purse from his pocket. Dashing two silver coins at the man"s feet, he snarled, "Go before I change my mind."

The way the man stared at him told him all he needed to know. He was just as scared of the devil without his mask, as anyone had been with it.

"Don"t you dare!" Frederick snarled when Hobbs looked at the coins consideringly.

"Last chance or you shall join my uncle wherever he may end up. A jail or a grave, the Thames, perhaps. It matters not to me."

Like a frightened bird, the man swooped, grabbed the coins and barged his way right past Sebastian. Another loud twanging sound as he went suggested Victor had struck Tiny again.

"Looks like you are the last man standing, Uncle," Alex said, turning on him once more. Now he was seething, made worse by the reminder that his uncle still had a blade to Emmaline"s throat. "Take your hands off her and I may show you a little mercy too."

"You wouldn"t hurt your own flesh and blood!" Frederick spat. "You don"t have it in you."

Alex leveled his gaze with his uncle.

Hell, Emmaline, please connect with me as we always have, Alex prayed. He knew that in a matter of seconds, this could go one of two ways. Holding his breath, he gave a barely perceptible flicker of his gaze, a momentary gesture to his wife.

As luck would have it, he knew her and he knew their relationship, even better than he had hoped.

Almost as swiftly as he had gripped Hobbs, Emmaline grabbed the wrist of Frederick"s hand holding the blade and braced it away from her throat even as she slammed her heeled shoe right into the top of his foot.

Alex was on top of them immediately, taking hold of his uncle"s hand and yanking her free of his other arm.

"No, no! You cannot do—" Frederick began but already Alex was prepared. His free hand swung upwards just as Emmaline danced away. Still wearing the brass knuckles, he jammed them into his uncle"s throat.

"You killed my father. I should kill you!"

Like an angel upon his shoulder, Emmaline was there, both hands gripping his bulging bicep. "No! Alex! You are not the monster they made you into!"

She pulled on his arm, but he did not budge. She was nowhere near strong enough to stop him. Had he wanted to, he could have crushed his uncle"s windpipe just as he had confessed to doing to his father.

Instead, in one swift movement, he released the pressure on his throat and aimed his knuckles at the blade still gripped in his hand. He felt. more than heard. the bones in his uncle"s wrist snap as the blade was knocked from his hand.

Frederick crumpled onto the ground, clutching his wrist to his chest, weeping like a child.

"Who is sniveling now?" Alex asked, crouching before his uncle. "Lucky for you, my wife is right. I am nothing like you."

Alex spat upon his uncle then and rose back to his feet. "You are no uncle of mine."

With that, he turned to Emmaline but quickly realized she was gone from his side. Panicked, he looked for her and found her crouched over a huddled mass in the corner.

"Papa, papa? Can you hear me?"

Realizing it was her father, Alex ordered Sebastian, "Don"t take your eyes off that snake," throwing his hand in Frederick"s direction before he rushed to his wife"s side.

Dropping down beside her, he helped her to sit her father up.

"Moreau, can you hear me?" Alex demanded, tapping his cheek, holding him against the wall by his shirt.

Just when he thought they had arrived too late, with Emmaline weeping on his shoulder, her father opened one eye and smiled a bloody smile at him.

"I was wrong about you, dear boy," the earl said, raising his bloodied hand to Alex's shoulder.

Hearing his voice, Emmaline looked around, the tears drying in her eyes.

Still clutching Alex"s shoulder, the earl lifted his free hand to clutch Emmaline"s face. "You were right, my sweet girl. He was not the monster I believed him to be."

Emmaline turned her still watery gaze on Alex then and he felt his heart breaking with the sheer emotion he found there.

"I was a damned fool," he said, choking up. "Can you ever forgive me?"

Emmaline"s gaze darkened then, and she scowled at him. Just when he thought she would claim him the devil, declaring she never wished to see him again, she lunged and grabbed his face. Kissing him ever so passionately, she very nearly knocked him over. He might have fallen if not for the earl's surprisingly sturdy grip on his shoulder.

And when Emmaline pulled back, she declared, "There is nothing to forgive."