Dorian’s fist tightened on his knife, positioning it for what he needed to do next. “I’m assuming you meant George was the rather large gentleman with the kukri.”
Druthers didn’t miss Dorian’s use of the past tense, and his brow dropped with confusion as he did exactly what Dorian needed him to do. He turned his head and looked toward the empty spot from which the bear of a sailor had disappeared.
The moment Druthers looked away, Dorian let his knife fly. It embedded deep into the man’s right shoulder, and the force of it drove Druthers to his knees. The slimy bastard tried to raise his gun, but the knife impeded all movement, and Dorian was on him before he could grab for the weapon with his other hand. Druthers’s face made a satisfying crunch beneath Dorian’s boot, and the man crumpled to the planks with a pathetic noise. After kicking the gun across the dock and into the river, Dorian crouched over Druthers with his remaining knife pressed against his throat, one knee grinding down on the pimp’s uninjured shoulder.
Blood poured from Druthers’s nose and mouth, leaking into his eyes and ears. A man once thought dangerous now squirmed and writhed like a trapped snake, emitting little mewling sounds of pain.
Feeding a mean-spirited impulse, Dorian reached out and twisted the knife still protruding from Druthers’s shoulder. Pleasure speared through him at the hoarse noise that ripped from the pirate’s throat. Sometimes the pain was too great to take in enough air to produce a proper scream.
Dorian knew that all too well.
“I’m going to slit your throat,” he murmured to Druthers in a seductive whisper. “I’m going to watch the life drain out of your eyes as you struggle to draw breath and your lungs only fill with your own blood.”
“Don’t!” Farah’s desperate plea stayed the draw of his knife across the throat. Light footsteps ran up behind him.
“Stay back, Farah. Let me finish this.”
“You can’t kill an unarmed man.”
“Actually,” he gritted out, his knife nicking into the thin, stubbled flesh of Druthers’s neck, “the killing goes more smoothly once I’ve disarmed them.”
“Dorian…” She let his whispered name trail into the quiet sounds of the river. “Please.”
“He threatened you, Farah.” The cold rage surged again. “He should not be allowed to live.”
“It would be murder.” Instead of censuring, her voice was gentle behind him, using warmth to slowly melt the ice instead of force to bash up against it. “If you kill him in cold blood, this horrid man will be another black stain upon your soul. Must you grant him that?”
Dorian stared down into the disgusting, broken face of Edmond Druthers, and knew he didn’t want to add the man to the many that haunted his nightmares. Moreover, he didn’t want to turn back around and have the blood that Farah saw on his hands be a stain of dishonor.
Retrieving his knife from Druthers’s shoulder produced another tortured sound, but Dorian didn’t stop there. He sliced through the tendon in the man’s dominant arm. Edmond Druthers would never wield a weapon again.
“Dorian!” Farah gasped.
After wiping the blood from his blades on Druthers’s coat, Dorian stood and faced his wife. “Not a stain, my dear,” he said while replacing his weapons in their scabbards tucked beneath his coat. “But what’s one more smudge?”
Farah’s seemingly unearthly moonlight glow intensified as the corners of her mouth trembled before she fought off the mirth and pressed them together, adopting a stern look.
“Lord, you’re a wicked man,” she said wryly, as though she could think of nothing else and so she just shook her head in abject disbelief.
“So I’ve been told.”
A gunshot shattered the darkness. Shouting downriver echoed across the piers. A splash. Repeating shots.
Dorian thrust Farah behind him and backed them both toward the crates where Murdoch had drawn his pistol.
Irritation stabbed through him as he identified the dark shapes with buttons that reflected the brilliant moonlight spilling onto the Executioner’s Dock.
The tavern slut had been right when she said the night was full of shadows. In fact, those shadows had been full of the London Metropolitan Police.
A tall figure emerged from the army of coppers, wearing an impeccable gray suit and an air of superiority. “Lieutenant?” Carlton Morley’s pistol was aimed right where Dorian’s heart would go, his finger caressing the trigger with sensual promise.
A large blond bobby stepped from the line. “Yes, Chief Inspector?”
“Arrest them.”
“Which ones?” the lieutenant asked, his eyes flicking from Farah with astonished recognition to Dorian with apprehension.
Morley wasn’t glaring daggers at Dorian, but at Farah. “All of them.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Farah clenched her hands in her lap and stared at the myriad of commendation certificates hanging behind Carlton Morley’s intimidating executive desk. Next to her, Gemma sat in a similar posture, quiet and subdued.
Instead of taking his place of authority in the high-backed chair, Morley paced in front of it, his long legs eating up the space as he inspected the document held in hands shaking with rage. His collar was loosened, his unbound tie hanging limp around his neck. Without his jacket, Morley’s gray vest accentuated the width of his shoulders against his lean waist. He was more disheveled than Farah had ever seen him, and guilt pricked at her skin and stuck in her throat.