Carver shakes his head. “No, he wasn’t. I would have known. He was a proud man. He would have boasted about it in private.”
I scoff. “You mean just how he boasted about killing my parents right after he admitted to trying to kill me?”
Carver stands, the anger pouring out of him in waves. “You have no fucking evidence.”
“He told me. He laughed about the way my mother screamed,” I yell back at him, the emotion far too high to handle. “He told me how he forced her to watch his sharp blade slice through my father’s throat and then did the same to her. So forgive me, but I did what any other red-blooded human would do, and I ended his fucking pathetic existence. Hold it against me for all I care, but I will never live to regret it. Royston Carver deserved to die an excruciating death. I only hate that I didn’t get the chance to drag it out.”
“What happened, Elodie?” Mr. Danforth says to my right. “What did you do?”
I suck in a shaky breath and look back at Carver, feeling the guilt sweeping through me. “I told him to rot in the deepest pits of hell and stabbed him with the dagger I’d stolen from the initiation, making sure to pierce his lung.”
Carver drops back to his seat, silence falling around the room. A beat passes where no one says a damn thing until Carver’s tortured stare lands back on mine. “You had no right.”
“I had every right.”
Cruz’s father clears his throat. “Whether you had the right or not, that’s beside the point. You murdered one of our heads, one of our brothers. That’s not how Dynasty handles things.”
“He did it,” I insist.
“I’m sorry, Elodie,” Mr. Danforth continues. “While I’m compelled to trust your story, you have no hard evidence, just the claim that he said those things to you.”
My world crushes and dread settles heavily in my gut. I’m not going to get out of here.
“Let’s put it to a vote,” Mr. Danforth says, “Then we can move forward from there.”
“Wait.” My head snaps back to Carver to see a darkness in his eyes that I’ve never quite seen before, and my nerves instantly stand on edge. “I just have one question before we take our vote,” he says, his voice low and filled with regret as he meets my eyes, waiting a beat to make sure that every fucking ear in the room has his undivided attention.
I wait, my heart thundering in my chest, knowing that this is it. Whatever he’s about to say is going to destroy me.
“Answer me this,” Carver asks, his voice wavering. “Two nights ago, when you first learned the names of the seventeen families of Dynasty. Did you, or did you not suggest taking out the head of each of the eight families that sit to your left, to rid Dynasty of its corruption and replace them with their sons or daughters? The young members of our people who can be easily swayed to vote in your favor?”
Well, fuck.
What the hell is he doing? I know he hates me right now, but this? This is just condemning me to life behind bars. I’ll never be free after this. I’ll never have their trust.
Gasps sound all around the room, cries of outrage from the left and shocked murmurs from the right. If they didn’t think I was guilty before, they sure as hell do now.
I meet Carver’s heavy stare with one of my own before letting out a breath and nodding my head. There’s no point denying it. I’ve never been one to lie, and while the comment I made was taken far out of context, I can’t deny that I ever said it. “Yes,” I tell the room. “Two nights ago, after learning the probability that the men to my left were most likely responsible for the attack in the woods, I suggested taking them out and rebuilding Dynasty without corruption, and in the image my grandfather, Gerald Ravenwood, first dreamed of. It was a comment made in anger, never meant to be taken seriously.”
There’s silence throughout the room and then finally Earnest takes pity on me and addresses the room. “Let us vote. All in favor that Elodie Ravenwood is guilty of murder and should receive further punishment, raise your hand.”
My heart races as I slowly look around the table, one by one, hands begin rise.
One. Two.
Eyes meet mine across the table, narrowed stares, and guilty expressions.
Three. Four.
All hands to the right remain down and I focus on the other remaining four to my left—Scardoni, Beckett, Montgomery, and Carver, and sure enough, hands continue to rise.
Matthew Montgomery raises his hand. That’s five. Preston Scardoni joins the party, making it six. Then just when I think I can’t take it any longer, Grayson’s father, Harlen Beckett slowly draws his hand high above his head.