The Modern Adam and Eve

Chapter 22

The following night, Stolas paced anxiously in his study, glancing at the clock as the minutes slipped away. He had agreed to meet Benedict in the garden—a neutral ground for discussing the chaos of the previous night. However, Octavia had her own plans.

As her father prepared to leave, Octavia quietly slipped out of her room, her heart racing with a mix of excitement and apprehension. She needed to uncover the truth about Alastor and what secrets her father was hiding. With careful steps, she trailed Stolas through the dimly lit corridors, her breath hitching as she neared the garden doors.

Peeking through the crack, she spotted her father standing beneath the sprawling branches of an ancient oak tree, its leaves rustling softly in the night breeze. Moments later, Benedict arrived, his expression tense and guarded. Octavia pressed herself against the wall, straining to catch their conversation.

"Stolas." Benedict began, his voice low but urgent. "First of all, I want to apologize for what happened at the party. It was neither the right time nor the right place to introduce Charlotte."

"Well, I suppose I should be grateful that you at least acknowledge that mistake." Stolas replied, his tone sharp. "What the hell are you doing, Benedict? What's your endgame here?"

"As I mentioned before, I intend to turn Charlotte into a perfect equal for men—the ideal woman."

"You speak as if she's some mare to be trained. You gave her a human brain and a human heart. You can't exactly train beings with those two particular organs."

"Why not? Your father had you trained like a dog."

"Trained? You mean stifled and abused! I can't believe you'd even say that!"

"Look, I apologized. I've made my peace. Can we part ways on good terms now?"

"No, we cannot! Because there's still the matter of Alastor."

"I told you what to do: get rid of him!"

"And I told you that I can't do that!"

"You were the one who said I should have destroyed him in the first place!"

"That was when he was a mindless, brutal killing machine! Now he's... I don't want to say domesticated, but... docile?"

"Docile?! He tried to kill me the other night!"

"And why is that, I wonder?" Stolas replied sarcastically. "You abandoned him and lied to him! I was there when you made that promise to him! I heard you swear you would give him a mate and let them leave, never to return. I tried to talk you out of it before you made that promise, but you went ahead anyway. Then you created that she-creation and changed your mind! What kind of fool does that to someone with a temper like his?!"

"That promise was a momentary lapse in judgment. True, I created her to mate with that abortion, but I quickly saw the foolishness of that. I thought she was fit for finer things."

"Who are you trying to fool? I know why you really changed your mind! When you were about to give her to him, it reminded you of when Milliana left you for Maximus, and you couldn't stand it!"

Octavia's heart raced as she listened, piecing together the fragments of their argument. The tension between the two men crackled in the air, and she felt the weight of their shared history pressing down on them.

"It had nothing to do with that!" Benedict shouted.

"It had everything to do with that, and you know it!" Stolas countered.

In a fit of frustration, Benedict threw his hands up, a journal slipping from his grasp and landing on the ground with a dull thud. Octavia's eyes widened as she caught sight of the leather-bound book, its pages filled with scrawled notes and sketches. She knew this was her chance.