Chapter 5 Confrontation

# Chapter 5: Confrontation

For three days after the study incident, Dorian avoided me completely. He left before dawn and returned well after midnight, if he came home at all. The mansion felt like a beautiful prison, with Evelyn as my warden, watching my every move with newfound intensity.

On the fourth morning, I decided I couldn't wait any longer. If answers wouldn't come to me, I would go to them. I called my father.

"Lila!" His voice sounded strained despite its forced cheerfulness. "How's married life treating you? The merger transition is going splendidly—Blackwood's team is quite impressed with our operations."

"Did you tamper with Dorian Blackwood's brakes five years ago?" I asked without preamble.

The silence that followed lasted so long I thought the call had dropped. When he finally spoke, his voice had lost all warmth.

"Who told you that?"

"Is it true?"

Another pause. "Where are you right now? Is anyone listening?"

"I'm alone," I said, though I couldn't be certain in this house of secrets.

"There were... financial irregularities back then. Blackwood was investigating, asking questions. It would have ruined us."

My stomach twisted. "So you tried to kill him?"

"I never intended—" He stopped himself. "It was meant to be a warning. A minor accident to scare him off. The mechanic overdid it."

I closed my eyes, nausea rising. "And then I hit him. Your plan failed, so you let your own daughter believe she'd killed someone."

"Lila, you need to understand—"

"Did you know? When you arranged this marriage, did you know who he was?"

"Not until it was too late," he admitted. "By then, the contracts were signed. Breaking the deal would have meant bankruptcy, prison for me. I thought... I thought he didn't remember. That it was just business."

I laughed bitterly. "It's never just business with the Blackwoods."

After ending the call, I sat in numb silence. My father had attempted murder, and I had unwittingly finished the job—or would have, if Dorian hadn't survived. Now I understood the depth of Dorian's revenge: marrying the daughter of the man who'd tried to kill him, the same woman who'd left him for dead. It was elegant in its cruelty.

Yet his journal entries suggested his feelings had grown complicated. And mine... I couldn't deny that something had shifted within me as well.

That evening, I waited in the library, knowing Dorian often stopped there before retiring. The grandfather clock had just struck eleven when the door opened.

He paused on the threshold, clearly surprised to find me. "Lila."

"We need to talk." I set aside the book I'd been pretending to read. "You've been avoiding me."

"I've been busy."

"Liar."

His visible eyebrow rose at my boldness. He closed the door and moved to the fireplace, keeping a careful distance between us. The flames cast dramatic shadows across his mask.

"What would you like to discuss?" he asked with forced casualness.

"I spoke to my father today." I watched his posture stiffen. "He confirmed everything."

Dorian's hand clenched at his side. "And?"

"And I want the truth from you now. All of it." I stood, closing some of the distance between us. "You married me for revenge against him. Against me. Was any of it real? The merger? The business benefits?"

"Those were convenient justifications." His voice was tight. "The primary goal was justice."

"Justice or revenge?"

His visible eye flashed. "Is there a difference when you've spent years in pain, undergoing surgery after surgery, knowing the people responsible faced no consequences?"

"So this marriage is my punishment." I moved closer still. "What's the endgame, Dorian? Humiliate me? Break my father? What happens when you've had enough?"

"I don't know anymore," he admitted, surprising me with his honesty. "The plan made perfect sense until—"

"Until what?"

"Until you looked at me with guilt instead of fear. Until you treated me like a man instead of a monster." His voice roughened. "The plan didn't account for you being... you."

The raw confession hung between us. I reached out slowly, giving him time to move away, and touched his arm. He flinched but didn't retreat.

"I am guilty," I said softly. "I left you there, and I've carried that night with me every day since. But I never intended for any of it to happen."

"And I never intended to feel anything for the woman I married for revenge," he replied, the words seeming to escape against his will.

My heart stuttered. Before I could respond, he continued, his voice hardening.

"But intentions don't erase consequences. Your father tried to kill me. You left me to die. And now we're bound together in this farce of a marriage."

"Is that all this is to you? A farce?" I challenged, emboldened by his earlier confession.

"What else could it be?"

"I don't know. But I felt something on that terrace during the masquerade. And I think you did too."

His hand rose to touch his mask—that nervous habit I'd come to recognize. "It doesn't matter what I feel."

"It matters to me." I stepped closer, close enough to see the tension in his jaw. "I want to see you, Dorian. All of you."

"No." The word was sharp, almost panicked.

"Why not? I already know the worst of what we've done to each other."

"You don't know what you're asking." He turned away, but I caught his arm.

"I'm asking for truth. No more masks, no more games."

He wrenched away from me. "You think you want truth? Fine. Here's truth: I spent years hating you, planning how to make you suffer. I orchestrated your father's financial troubles. I manipulated the merger. I brought you into this house to watch you squirm under Evelyn's thumb while I dismantled everything your family built."

Each word landed like a blow, but I stood my ground. "And now?"

"And now..." He ran a hand through his hair in frustration. "Now I find myself wondering what might have happened if we'd met under different circumstances. If there wasn't all this history between us."

"We can't change the past," I said quietly. "But we decide what happens next."

He looked at me for a long moment, conflict evident in his visible features. Then he reached for his mask.

"You want to see? To know the full extent of what happened that night?" His fingers worked at the fastenings. "Perhaps then you'll understand why forgiveness isn't possible."

My heart pounded as the mask came away. The right side of his face bore the evidence of catastrophic trauma—a network of scars running from his temple to his jaw, the cheekbone slightly flattened, the corner of his eye pulled into a permanent slight droop. The damage was significant, but not the grotesque disfigurement his hiding had led me to expect.

"Now you know," he said, his voice rough with emotion. "Every morning when I look in the mirror, I'm reminded of that night. Of your father's betrayal. Of you driving away."

I raised my hand slowly, giving him time to stop me, and gently touched the scarred cheek. He flinched but didn't pull away.

"I'm so sorry," I whispered, tears filling my eyes. "Not because of how you look, but because of what we did to you."

Something in his expression cracked. For a moment, I glimpsed the vulnerable man beneath the vengeful persona he'd constructed.

Before either of us could speak, the library door burst open. Evelyn stood there, her face contorting with shock as she took in Dorian's unmasked face and our proximity.

"What is happening here?" she demanded.

Dorian turned away sharply, reaching for his mask, but the damage was done. Evelyn's eyes narrowed dangerously.

"I see she's gotten to you," she said coldly. "I warned you about this, Dorian. She's manipulating you, just like her father."

"That's enough, Evelyn," Dorian snapped, securing his mask back in place.

"Is it? Have you forgotten everything we planned?" Her voice rose. "Have you forgotten what Richard Kensington did? What his daughter did?"

"I haven't forgotten anything," Dorian replied, his voice turning glacial. "But this is between Lila and me."

Evelyn's laugh was bitter. "There is no 'Lila and you.' There is our family's vengeance, which you swore to uphold." She turned her icy gaze on me. "Do you know what your father's actions cost us? Not just Dorian's face, but my sister—Dorian's mother—who had a fatal heart attack when she saw what had been done to her son."

The revelation hit me like a physical blow. I looked to Dorian, who wouldn't meet my eyes.

"You never told me," I whispered.

"It wasn't relevant to us," he said, but his tone lacked conviction.

"Not relevant?" Evelyn's voice was incredulous. "It's the reason for everything! Your marriage, the merger, all of it—justice for Elaine."

"Leave us, Evelyn," Dorian ordered. "Now."

For a moment, I thought she would refuse. Then she straightened, her composure returning like a mask sliding back into place.

"As you wish. But remember your promises, Dorian. Remember who stood by you when no one else would." She looked at me with unconcealed contempt. "And remember what happens if this charade of a marriage ends before the year is complete."

After she left, silence fell heavy between us. Dorian moved to the liquor cabinet and poured himself a generous whiskey, downing it in one swallow.

"What did she mean?" I finally asked. "About what happens if our marriage ends?"

He refilled his glass before answering. "The merger contract contains clauses you aren't aware of. If our marriage dissolves before the one-year mark, your father loses everything—not just the company, but his freedom. The evidence of his embezzlement and the brake tampering goes directly to the authorities."

The calculated cruelty of it stole my breath. "So I'm not just your wife. I'm my father's jailer."

"Yes." No apology, no justification.

"And us? These... feelings developing between us? Where do they fit in your revenge plan?"

He turned to face me fully, his expression conflicted even behind the mask. "They don't. They can't."

"Why not?"

"Because I don't know how to separate the woman standing before me from the nightmare that's haunted me for five years." His voice softened fractionally. "And I don't know if you can separate the man from the monster who orchestrated your family's downfall."

The truth of his words hit home. Whatever was growing between us existed in the shadow of unforgivable actions on both sides.

"So where does that leave us?" I asked.

"In dangerous territory," he replied quietly. "With Evelyn watching our every move and too much history between us for anything resembling normalcy."

I nodded slowly, acknowledging the impossible complexity of our situation. "What now?"

"Now?" He set down his glass. "Now we navigate this mess we've created, day by day. But Lila—" His expression grew grave. "Be careful. Evelyn sees you as a threat to everything she's worked for. And unlike me, her dedication to vengeance hasn't wavered."

As I left the library that night, I felt the weight of new understanding on my shoulders. Dorian and I were bound together by tragedy, manipulation, and the tentative beginnings of something neither of us had anticipated. But Evelyn's warnings lingered in my mind, a reminder that in the Blackwood household, the past was never truly buried—and forgiveness might be the most dangerous territory of all.