How could I ever have believed he loved me, cared about me, that he knew me at all, when he could accuse me of such things?
‘I want you gone,’ he said curtly. ‘Out of my father’s house. Today.’
‘But...’ I couldn’t speak, couldn’t even protect myself, the calmness in his voice almost as devastating as the flat, impersonal look in his eyes as the guilt, the anger, the bitterness, the cynicism all melted away and became nothing.
‘I’ll have the lawyers pay you off. I never want to see your face again.’ He turned to climb into the car and I grasped his arm.
‘Please, Alexi, don’t do this. Don’t shut me out,’ I begged. ‘You’re hurting, you’re in pain, I understand that, but so am I. We both loved Remy very much. Neither one of us is to blame for his death. It was a freak accident. We can get through this together.’
The bitter laugh shocked me to the core.
‘We didn’t love him. We killed him. Now we’re both going to have to live with that betrayal. If I see you at the villa when I return, I’ll have you arrested. You’ve got two hours to get your stuff together and leave. Send a forwarding address to my lawyers and I’ll wire you a severance payment.’
He yan
ked his sleeve free. His gaze sliced over my figure and my body shuddered in an instinctive response that shamed me to my core even now.
‘Don’t worry, I’ll be generous. Your hot little act on Friday night was worth at least a few thousand euro.’
I stood shaking as he climbed into the car and the long, black limousine pulled away from the curb then took the cliff road out of the cemetery. He didn’t look back, not once.
The numbness returned, but this time it was all-consuming. The hollow ache in my insides became a black hole as the huge loss left by Remy’s death combined with the agonising evidence that the dreams I’d had about Alexi ever since I’d hit puberty had always been a foolish schoolgirl’s fantasy.
He wasn’t the man I had believed him to be. The man I had adored from afar.
And he wasn’t the man Remy had believed him to be either.
Alexi wasn’t just reserved, or lonely, or simply wary of love. He was dead inside. Much deader than Remy could ever have been.
I walked down the path away from the cemetery and hailed a taxi to take me back to the Galanti estate where I had spent so much of my childhood.
But I didn’t feel like a child any more. I felt about a thousand years old as I packed my belongings. It took me less than an hour before I was on the bus to Nice. I had some savings, enough to get me out of Monaco. I wasn’t going to send Alexi’s lawyer a forwarding address. I didn’t want his money any more than I wanted him to know where I was.
I would return to London, I decided, my mind surprisingly calm. I had a second cousin there who might put me up if I begged. Since my mother’s death two years ago, she was the only family I had left.
I needed to get away from Alexi, away from the agonising memories of my best friend, Remy, and the hole that would be left in my life for ever. I needed to leave the remnants of my girlhood behind me—and the tattered remains of a dream that had never been real.
I’d loved Alexi for so long. I’d put him on a pedestal and idolised him. And when we’d finally made love I’d felt such passion, such excitement, in his arms.
But I’d never really known him. Not even while I had been clinging to his strong, powerful body and glorying in the feel of him inside me as he’d rocked us both to orgasm.
I knew him now, though. I knew his cynicism, his bitterness and his anger because I had become the target of all three.
‘I’m so sorry, Remy,’ I whispered as the bus made its way out of Monaco and along the coast road towards Nice. ‘I couldn’t keep my promise.’
The tears I had refused to shed flowed down my cheeks as Monaco’s glittering lights disappeared behind the cliffs.
I scrubbed the tears away with my fist before any of the other passengers could see them, swallowed down the choking sobs making my ribs ache and kept my gaze on the road ahead.
At last, the numbness returned.
I embraced it this time, because it protected me from the agony threatening to consume me.
The numbness gave me strength.
A strength I would need to survive Remy’s death—and Alexi’s brutal rejection. And to find a new home, a new job and a new life far away from the Galantis.
CHAPTER ONE